“Alexa, please play the music; after that, please tell me the weather and fetch a newspaper.” This is the real thing right now. But, have you ever noticed how our lives are dependent on such AI & voice commands for almost everything. From playing music to shopping from online stores, we live in a world of convenience where everything starts with AI, bots & voice assistants. There’s a quote that says,
“Artificial intelligence will reach human levels by around 2029. Follow that out further to, say, 2045; we will have multiplied the intelligence, the human biological machine intelligence of our civilization a billion-fold.” —Ray Kurzweil
When it comes to the eCommerce niche, it is all about algorithms, which provides the foundation. AI technology helps eCommerce businesses to deliver an optimized customer experience. It also enables them to collect customer data to make better business decisions and predict the future more accurately.
Let’s walk you through some of the ways the technologies like AI, chatbots & voice commerce are changing the eCommerce industry, from streamlining automation business processes to customer interactions & retention.
A Brief Introduction to AI, Chatbots & Voice Commerce
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the niche of computer science, which replicates the thought process of humans.
Chatbots are AI systems that interact through text or voice interfaces. On the other hand, users can speak to a device instead of typing on a keyboard; it is all about voice commerce.
The most common examples of chatbots are Facebook Messenger, Slack, and text messages. Bots can be adapted to any language depending on the region. Undeniably, these technologies are a boon for the eCommerce industry. Since eCommerce handles several international requests and it needs multilingual support. Thus, such technologies eradicate the language barriers.
Moving ahead. Technologies like AI, chatbots, and voice commerce keep pushing the limits of what the eCommerce industry can do. They have also changed how we shop earlier, including payments, security, inventory management, and fulfillment.
Retailers have an abundance of data and analytics. However, AI and machine learning can provide highly accurate customer support without hiring humans.
In this article, let’s explore how these technologies affect the eCommerce industry.
Let’s get started!
How Do These Technologies affect eCommerce?
- Seamless Automation
The main objective of automation is to get tasks done without as little human help as possible. It includes automating tasks by using Zapier to schedule emails in a CRM. If we’re talking about the future of eCommerce, then the most talked-about technologies are machine learning and robotics. AI plays a significant role in helping to automate the repetitive tasks that keep online stores functioning. For example, businesses can automate product recommendations, low-level support, and loyalty discounts with AI.
- Increased Customer Retention
The booming demand for AI is expected to continue in almost every area. The spending on AI will jump to $500 billion in 2023 globally, as per the new IDC forecast. AI-based marketing has a significant impact on getting more and more customers in eCommerce. The research shows a 10-15% uplift potential in revenue and retention from omnichannel personalization strategies.
AI technology helps to refine marketing strategies that are based on consumer behaviors. It also helps eCommerce users to identify trends, which are their interests. This way, revenue reporting and marketing analytics capture consumer behaviors, which can refine the strategy.
In short, personalization builds better data and insights on customers and generates added value. Therefore, the ROI for personalization will be outpaced comparatively traditional mass marketing.
- Effective Sales Process
AI technology helps eCommerce companies to create more efficient sales processes in many ways, such as:
- By collecting data about customers
- Automate follow-up abandoned cart inquiries
However, eCommerce businesses can help their site visitors or customers move through the funnel by engaging with chatbots with some simple questions.
- Bots use NLP (Natural Language Processing), which is more advanced than the previous and does more through their ability to acknowledge natural language.
- Bots understand the intent behind the customers’ queries. After that, they provide relevant information with the exact answers. ML creates more branches to the root questions. This way, it gains better accuracy over a while.
- Users can receive accurate package tracking or shipping information directly on messaging apps. In addition, it helps in creating a personal bond with the company.
- Chatbots display the previous purchase history and then suggest new items based on their purchases. Hence, bots are recognized as one of the most effective remarketing tools.
- Like other chat platforms, past conversations will be visible for future reference. In addition, bots can send mass messages since messages are better than emails in terms of performance.
- Increased in Targeted Market & Audience
Customization has always been a top priority when it comes to eCommerce. Online businesses can only stand out from the crowd by only implementing personalized messages. Or, one-to-one conversations with customers can also be beneficial to add. Moreover, eCommerce PWA (Progressive Web App) can do wonders for better conversions as it provides a better user experience for customers. It means higher conversion rates.
Choosing AI and ML technologies enable deep personalization techniques to customize content by users. For example, if you want to know your customers’ interests, analyze big data from purchase histories and other customer interactions. Therefore, it will be easier to deliver what they want or are looking for.
- Voice Commerce is the future.
Voice shopping uses AI voice recognition, allowing shoppers to shop without typing. The AI identifies the words and phrases a shopper uses. Then, by simply clicking on the microphone icon, the user can initiate a voice search —for example, Alexa, the voice-controlled intelligent assistant service. In 2017, it was recorded that orders for the Echo were seven times more on Prime Day than the other years before, according to the report. Now, it is 2022, and there is no room for doubt that voice commerce will be playing a much more significant role in the shopping interface than in previous years.
Wrapping Up
Technologies like AI, Chatbots, and Voice Commerce bring a lot to the eCommerce industry. Except for AI, you must have heard less about the other technologies; however, they also play significant roles in improving customer experience, increasing conversion rates, and helping streamline the way the business is run.
Predictive analysis has made it possible for eCommerce stores to provide shoppers with related items based on their purchase history or current activities. But, of course, the more history a customer has, it will be easier to predict and address shoppers’ requirements. As a result, bots can do wonders for eCommerce industries.
AI also enhances both the eCommerce UX and management controls. Shoppers can get what they search for by just asking. Retailers can track shoppers’ activity to offer targeted goods and services. In addition, it is suggested to implement them correctly. In the end, it is a win-win for both shoppers and retailers. They both can get benefits from implementing these technologies.
