You definitely have had an interaction with a chatbot at least once even if you don’t know anything about them. The messenger bots on Facebook and other services such as Kik and one in your own smartphone can be considered as a form of chatbot. Chatbot development has been a major buzzword for large enterprises for the past 3 years now. With its applications already up-and-running in various services, it may perhaps make the most significant impact on eCommerce development.
But before we understand the role of chatbots in an eCommerce web design company and in an eCommerce business, let’s first try to understand what a chatbot by itself really is. In a nutshell, a chatbot is just an interface for communication between a business/service and the customer, but one which interacts in a manner similar to human communication.
It can be in the form of either voice-based assistant similar to Amazon’s Alexa (Alexa itself sets a benchmark for a perfect eCommerce application of chatbots, more on that later), and in the form of a text-based conversational chatbot such as those in the FB Messenger and tons of other chat support services you may have used already.
In the present day, chatbots are mostly put into use in customer support services. Within this realm, all a chatbot could do is to solve user queries or connect them with human representatives who may offer better support to their problems.
However, times are changing, and chatbot development is scaling new heights and developers are finding new use cases new use cases for this technology. If eCommerce web developers can churn out some innovative patterns of functioning, chatbots can offer much more than just query support. Below is a rundown of the best applications of chatbot development in eCommerce.
Chatbots as personal shopping assistants
For a moment, imagine yourself as a customer looking for a unique electronic item at an eCommerce store such as Amazon. Let’s say you’re looking for an electronic item which isn’t easily available, isn’t mass-manufactured by many reputed companies and caters to a niche category of users including you.
Now, in such a case you’d have various questions rolling over the mind. Is the e-seller trustworthy? Is the product really durable or a fake one? The rating? The reviews?… so on and so forth. To get the answer to all these bubbling questions, you’d have to look around the website, and probably google a thing or two about stuff related to the product.
Hold on. I know this example is too long. But if reading and imagining such a scenario itself takes such a toll on your mind. Think about the time you’d waste as a customer to shop for your essential items.
Now let’s come to the better part of it. Imagine having a chatbot help solve all these problems for you. Now, think not as a customer, but as a businessman looking with a pitiful perspective on this thoughtful customer shopping online. What if you could provide a chatbot for this customer, to which they can convey these queries?
With the help of advanced technologies such as Machine Learning, predictive analytics, and artificial intelligence, a smart chatbot can fetch an answer to all such queries and concerns in the blink of an eye! If you happen to be an eCommerce business owner or aspire to be one in the future; what better way can exist to deliver useful information to customers?
Chatbot as a marketing tool
Delving further on to the business end of things, chatbots can also be the most effective tools for personalized marketing and selling of sponsored products. The marketing weapons of today’s businesses consist of website ads, banners, and other forms of promotional content. Chatbots can push any required brand/type of products to consumers in the form of suggestions, recommendations or through an answer to a query asked by the user.
This would not only help marketers push the right product to the right customer in the perfect way possible, but it would also consequently help consumers make better choices. Amazon’s use of the Alexa is a perfect example of how the same can be achieved.
Amazon’s echo line of products which include everything from smart speakers to smart screens uses the Alexa virtual assistant to help customers access the eCommerce platform. In-turn, Alexa collects and analyses user-data to generate the most suitable recommendations and answers to the target customers.
A Chatbot in your eCommerce business
Developing a proper functional chatbot for your eCommerce website isn’t so difficult today in the presence of easily accessible proficient Magento eCommerce developers and specialized eCommerce development companies.
All it would take for you is to make a choice of the best and the most cost-efficient eCommerce website design company for your business, have the idea for your own business chatbot and get ready to leverage it to drive your brand ahead of the competition.
Pushing eCommerce Development to Meet the Demands of Emerging Markets
