I Chatbots are taking the market by storm. There are several eCommerce chatbot examples like H&M’s Kik, Staples’ Facebook Messenger bot, eBay’s advanced bot used for Google Home, etc. that have contributed to the success of these brands.
Drift 2020 State of Conversational Marketing Report suggested that there has been a 92% increase in Chatbot usage as a brand communication channel.
With such rapid growth of chatbots, we are pretty much certain that the chatbot industry will continue to expand. Also, as of 2021, 68.9% of chats are handled by AI Chatbots from the beginning till the end. Looks like we’re going to have more chatbot conversations in the future!
With most businesses going online, eCommerce chatbots are becoming a necessity, regardless of business size or industry. eCommerce bots let you engage with prospects, customers in real-time, without really paying for it. It is like making a one-time investment and then reducing your operational cost by 30%.
This article will guide you in building eCommerce chatbots for your business. But before we get into building an eCommerce bot, let’s see the reasons behind getting one.
Why Should You Get eCommerce Chatbots?
eCommerce chatbots, through carefully scripted conversations, can offer customers the support, information, and resources they need.
Using eCommerce bots is like a two-way street – both the business and the customer can derive benefits. From the customers’ end, they can get information quickly without waiting forever. Plus, on-demand support, assistance in shopping is available for them for a smooth shopping experience.
On the other hand, brands can also derive benefits from using eCommerce bots. Like;
- Offering 24/7 customer support
- Reducing the support costs
- Freeing up resources for other complex business affairs
- Gather customer feedback on shopping experience
- Offering product recommendations
- Updating customers about shipping status, returns, etc.
So, if you are a brand that believes in establishing customer relations, enhancing support service, increasing engagement, and driving sales. Then, eCommerce chatbots await you. All you have to do is get a smart eCommerce bot and enjoy its benefits.
Today, we will cover building an eCommerce bot and luckily, it is not as tough as you think! But before that, there are few important aspects that you need to remember.
5 Things to Consider Before Building an eCommerce Bot
Building a perfect eCommerce bot requires you to select the best bot-building platform as per your requirements. You must go for a platform that offers automation for most business use cases. Plus, it should offer easy bot development features that are time-saving and cost-effective too.
Before you choose a platform and start building your chatbot for an eCommerce website, these are the checkpoints to consider:
- Where will the eCommerce bot function? Example – Website or App
- Which other platforms (including social media) will be integrated into the eCommerce chatbot for capturing customer data? Example – CRM, booking platforms, Shopify, Magento, etc.
- What are the use cases that you plan to automate with the eCommerce bot? Example – customer engagement, support queries, product recommendations, order/ return status, etc.
- Do you want your eCommerce bots to be able to route conversations to a live agent when needed?
- How well will your eCommerce bot contribute towards driving sales?
When you have such laser-focused goals or needs, it will be easier for you to choose the best bot-building platform. Plus, it will also help you distract yourself from the numerous other things an eCommerce bot can do.
5 Must-Have Potentials in an eCommerce Chatbot
Your eCommerce bot must be that wonderful salesperson who assists customers at your brick-and-mortar store. The chatbots for eCommerce websites must be efficient enough to offer personalized assistance to your customers. A smart eCommerce chatbot must be all of the following:
1. Understanding
Your eCommerce chatbot must be able to understand the need and intent of users. Plus, the preferences and concerns that they are trying to address. In short, Visitors Intelligence is important.
Konverse AI offers the visitors intelligence feature wherein AI detects the visitors on your website. With this feature enabled, your eCommerce bot will also detect if the buyer has a high intent of making a purchase. Consequently, your sales team can proactively reach out to the customer and lock a sale for the day.
2. Convincing
eCommerce chatbots must suggest and convince customers to get the products that have the best ratings and reviews. This will certainly add to customer satisfaction.
3. Recommending
eCommerce bots must recommend products to customers that are best suited to their needs and requirements. Product recommendations work well for customers, especially the new visitors on your website.
4. Communicating
The eCommerce bot must be able to communicate with users throughout the buying process. It must offer information regarding product availability, offering the best prices, discounts, assisting customers to place an order, tracking orders, returns, and refunds, etc.
At Konverse AI, you get a ‘sub-stories’ feature on the bot-building platform. Using this feature, you can build multiple stores related to different key elements in a conversation. For instance, you can build multiple stories like ‘place an order’, ‘return product’, ‘issue refund’, ‘track order’ etc.
5. Personalizing
Personalizing conversations is a way to engage customers better and offer them an enhanced shopping experience. Your eCommerce bots must be able to accompany customers in their buying journey, helping them navigate through products. Plus, the bots must also be aware of the customer’s order history to take personalization to the next level.
Building Smart & Skilled eCommerce Bots with Konverse AI
Building a good eCommerce chatbot requires choosing a platform that can offer you a hassle-free bot-building process. There are several no-code bot-building platforms to choose from.
In this section, we will highlight how you can build a skilled eCommerce bot using the Konverse AI platform.
Building an eCommerce bot with Konverse AI is pretty hassle-free. Here are the steps to building a skilled and intelligent bot.
- Sign up for the Konverse 14-days trial. No credit card is required.
- Log in and choose Bot Builder from the Konverse Dashboard.
- Design your bot (use sub-stories feature under story builder), train it by providing FAQs. Keep saving the changes to update the bot automatically.
- Lastly, test the bot, and you have it ready to be implemented across different platforms – website, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, etc.
The bot-building process at Konverse is easy. Most no-code bot builders usually have similar steps to building a bot. However, what Konverse focuses on is helping you to boost business sales.
With an end goal of driving sales, Konverse offers you the means to achieve the end. Here is a list of features (apart from sub-stories and visitor intelligence) that Konverse offers to help you build an efficient eCommerce bot.
1. FAQs
Training the eCommerce chatbot with FAQs is significant for automating standard customer queries. Placing an order, tracking order status, return, refund, etc. are common aspects that an eCommerce bot can handle.
Konverse AI has a feature in FAQs. This feature offers you suggested questions just like the ‘related search’ section on Google Search.
For instance, you set an FAQ – How can I place an order? As soon as you input the question, you will get similar suggested questions. You can use these questions for better bot training.
2. Team Routing
Live agents and AI Chatbots must work hand in hand for maximum improvement in customer support. Konverse bots can route a customer conversation to a live agent if there is a fallout.
While routing a customer conversation, ensure that the eCommerce bot transfers the query to the agent who can resolve it. Here, Konverse AI’s ‘Users & Team’ feature under ‘Settings’ works great.
Using this feature, you can create multiple teams – return & refunds, order tracking, etc. and according to the customer intent, the conversation can be routed to the ideal team by the eCommerce bot.
3. Conversation Starter
When the user's intent is clear, starting a conversation becomes easy, right? So, Konverse allows you to do so.
At Konverse, you can let the eCommerce bot start a conversation after knowing the user’s intent. With the help of AI, the bot can detect what the visitor is looking for. Hence, it can strike a conversation to address the user problem.
For example, a user visits your website and is navigating through the watches section. AI will be able to detect the visitor's intent of getting a watch. Thus, your eCommerce bot can appear through a pop-up chat and strike a conversation – ‘Hi! Would you like to see the new arrivals section in watches?’
4. Customer Journey
Throughout the customer journey, it is necessary to maintain communication. So, you can train your eCommerce bots to send reminders to customers who have abandoned their carts.
With Konverse, your eCommerce bots can send WhatsApp notifications to customers, reminding them about the products in their carts. This way, you can also reduce the issue of cart abandonment.
5. Integration
With Konverse AI, integration is super easy. You can integrate Shopify, Magento, and other apps with the Konverse platform. This feature allows you to fetch any information or customer details directly from the system.
- Click on settings on the Konverse Dashboard
- Choose ‘App store’ and;
- Select the apps for integration.
Ready to Try Konverse?
All being said and done, choosing the best bot-building platform for your business is your decision. But we would recommend taking a tour at Konverse to understand how the service can boost your sales.
Do you still have queries? Then visit our Help Center to know more about the features and functions at Konverse AI.