TOPICS: Chatbot for Ecommerce    Building a chatbot   

Ecommerce Chatbot – 4 Chatbot Tips To Grow Your Ecommerce Business

Practically every online store has been building chatbots lately. Generating leads, finding relevant products, answering questions about shipping and returns, and tracking orders – there’s a lot that these online chatbots are able to do. And they do it at a small fraction of what it would cost to hire dedicated staff for the same tasks. These capabilities make chatbots a very handy tool for new ecommerce businesses who need to establish themselves in a competitive market without the luxury of time or resources. In this article, we’ve brought you some quick tips on how to use a chatbot to your advantage as a growing ecommerce venture.

Tip 1: Know that chat tools are more popular than apps.

When it comes to choosing between smartphone apps and chatbots for websites, more and more online stores are opting for the latter. Multiple studies indicate that the app boom may be over, with download rates dropping considerably since 2016. This is about the same time that online chatbots came to the fore as a mainstream business tool, and users warmed up to them with immediate effect.
The reason ecommerce chatbots are so great at interacting with customers stems from a simple fact – people want to talk to them. Mobile sessions are much shorter than they used to be a few years back, and online shoppers now expect to find a chatbot option on any ecommerce website that they visit. They like the speed and convenience of typing a query into a chat window and receiving an instant and relevant response. In comparison, the process of manually navigating a website and searching for something from scratch can get tedious and take up way more time than the customer can afford to spend on one shopping site.
So as a new ecommerce business looking to get the attention of potential customers, you’d do well to create a chatbot for your website as soon as possible.

Tip 2: Find the right chatbot development platform.

Once you’ve made the decision to create a chatbot, your next step would be to find the right chatbot platform. Many small business owners make the mistake of trying to develop their own chatbots from scratch. Unless you have specialized programming skills and knowledge about artificial intelligence, this decision can cost you dearly. You’ll end up spending way too much time, and by extension a lot of money, on something that has a good chance of not working out.
A competent chatbot development platform, on the other hand, will understand your requirements and create a chatbot that meets them. Your new chatbot will be ready in quick time, without needing much effort on your end. When you decide on a chatbot platform, remember to choose one that has a simple interface you can understand. Using such a platform will help you setup and manage the chatbot on your own later, without the need for programming or code writing.

Tip 3: Don’t aim for perfection from the get-go.

Yes, you need a good chat script to get the results you want from your chatbot. But you don’t need to spend too much time polishing the script right at the start. This is because it’s impossible to predict each and every question that your customers may ask. The best you can do is start with the most common ones, and then leave it to the chatbot’s AI to identify the rest and bring them to your attention. Once they start talking to customers, the best chatbots are able to learn from their language, tone and keywords, processing them to identify gaps in the existing chat script. You can later use these insights to update the script and keep tailoring your chatbot to your customers’ needs.

Tip 4: Integrate your new chatbot with your CRM system.

Once your chatbot is live and talking to your customers, it can give you invaluable information and insights about customer behavior, preferences and concerns. To make the most of this advantage, integrate your chatbot with your customer relationship management system. By sending new leads and support tickets straight into your customer service framework, you and your team will be in a great position to follow up with new leads and provide better support to existing customers.
In short, treat your chatbot like a core component of your ecommerce business, rather than an additional feature on your website. This will allow you to capitalize on the many advantages that chatbot development brings to your new business, and use them to build credibility and drive profits.