In today’s world, when you run a company, your customers require your service availability all the time – 24/7. Not all customers are so demanding, but a considerable group surely wants you to offer professional support at any moment. With traditional solutions, providing 24 hours per day customer service is very expensive. Fortunately, you can use AI-based solutions for e-commerce.
What is Artificial Intelligence and how can you use it in your business?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science used to build smart machines that can perform various tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence. The rapid development of machine learning and deep learning (two subsets of AI) made it possible to apply AI-based solutions that use customer data and advanced analytics to ensure the best UX and increase sales.
How technology brings you closer to your customers?
Using artificial intelligence can help you better predict future market changes and plan your actions. AI can study patterns and allows you to leverage business data in real-time to:
● improve overall customer satisfaction from using your e-commerce platform,
● solve their problems more efficiently,
● personalize marketing campaigns and reach more users,
● automate various business processes,
● ensure high cybersecurity.
To sum up, AI-based solutions for e-commerce can be used to improve your business operation, as well as to optimize and automate multiple processes. It also gives you a chance to become more competitive and win the loyalty of your clients by providing them with the best possible shopping experience.
What kind of AI-based solution can you use to improve your e-commerce platform?
Here are some examples of the best ways to use AI on your e-commerce platform.
Improve customer service with chatbots
As already mentioned, customers want their problems solved here and now, as fast as possible. The moment when a customer needs help could be the moment when they either become a loyal customer or leave your shopping platform and never return. It is a big challenge – what can a company do?
- Create complex FAQ and write a blog to provide clients with information.
- Hire customer service representatives to deal with the problems of your customers 24/7.
- Develop a chatbot that will be able to inform customers and perform some actions to improve UX.
The first solution would not be sufficient in all cases, while the second solution can be really expensive, which makes it unsuitable for small and some medium-sized companies. Chat-bot, however, is a one-time investment and if well-designed, may solve many problems of your customers. What are the benefits of such an e-commerce solution? It works around the clock and may help a massive number of platform users at the same time. It may do more than just answer questions. In some online shops, it is even used for choosing the form of a refund in the case of shipping failures.
You will quickly realize that most of your customers do not need to interact with a human assistant if they can get their problems solved in a short period. They will be satisfied with your services as chat-bot will ensure a very good UX.
Enable visual search for products
We do online shopping in two situations:
● when we need some specific product,
● for entertainment.
As ridiculous as it may sound, the reality is that many people use mobile e-commerce apps in their spare time to simply pass the time. For those who are searching for a specific product, there is one thing that can completely kill the joy of using your platform – ineffective search solutions.
Text search may barely be useful when you have only seen an item and you do not know the brand, serial number, or collection name. How many times have you typed in, say, “red dress” and could not find the one that fit your needs? This is why so many consumers abandon the e-commerce experience – they get too many irrelevant search results.
Artificial intelligence technology can be leveraged to deal with that problem. Visual search is quickly gaining popularity. Some e-commerce platforms are using it already. Imagine that all your client needs to do is to point a camera on the object he would like to search for – like a sofa from the photo or a pair of shoes – and he receives multiple results with the same or similar products available on the platform.
Better customized recommendations
You can increase the average shopping cart value by implementing an intelligent product recommendation system. How does that work? AI-based recommendation systems use client information your e-commerce website collects every day. This smart solution analyses the purchase history of customers and looks for specific patterns.
So let us assume that your customer is buying sports shoes. An AI-based recommendation system can check what was bought by other clients that chose specific shoes and suggest it to the new customer who added shoes to the cart. This system may also be used to increase the amounts spent by regular clients by recommending them products they have been interested in earlier or which they have added to the cart but never actually bought.
This system combined with personalized discounts may convince your customers to finally buy some additional products – as a result, your customers feel satisfied and the average basket value increases.
Content personalization for better UX
Content personalization is a nice approach to UX. By analyzing user data your e-commerce platform can decide which version of content should be presented to a particular consumer. You may personalize almost anything on your e-commerce website. Your home page may be different for new customers and for returning clients. You may also choose a group of clients who will get a pop-up form or who will be sent special notifications. Recommendation systems may suggest a relevant blog post to your platform visitors, based on their profile (personal information) or online activity. You may also easily personalize marketing campaigns.
Fight with SPAM reviews more efficiently
Fake comments can be a real plague on your e-commerce platform. You have to remember that many customers read and rely on comments they find on your platform – both negative and positive. Not all comments are relevant though… or real. Counteracting SPAM or fake comments can feel like a never-ending ordeal, but now you may automate this process with artificial intelligence.
What are the key benefits of using AI in e-commerce?
Clients love artificial intelligence because it makes the shopping experience simpler and more enjoyable. What are the most important benefits of implementing AI-based solutions on your e-commerce platform?
Improved user experience – solutions like visual search, content personalization, recommendation systems, or chat-bots make shopping easier. Your clients can search for products more efficiently. They will not get frustrated, because most of their problems will be solved by a smart chat-bot in no time.
Reduced costs of running the business – chat-bot is also a one-time investment that will allow you to save a lot of money on maintaining traditional customer service. You will not lose your money due to your customers’ lack of satisfaction. You can also reduce costs of marketing campaigns thanks to AI-based ad optimization and automate various processes in your company and delegate your employees to more important tasks.
Read more about AI:
Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing
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Andrzej Kopera • Sep 05
