Despite generational and regional differences there’s something common among people all over the world—our phones are always with us. An average Indian spends 1.4 days a week on their smartphones and it’s changed everything—from the way we communicate, to our preference for convenience and ease. From browsing dating apps to banking or ordering groceries online, e-commerce has bridged the distance. However, many businesses in this industry are challenged with creating memorable online shopping experiences—ones that keep customers coming back for more. The answer can be found in conversational commerce at scale. It’s possibly why 74 percent of companies in India that have found a way to effectively use conversational commerce say it’s a key enabler of the company’s business and customer engagement strategy.
The solution is simple: investing in the right AI technologies for conversational commerce that proactively tackle customer issues, offer deeper personalisation and deliver experiences that build loyalty. Here’s how AI-powered conversational commerce can help e-commerce companies.
Actioning abandoned carts
Abandoned carts are endemic for e-commerce companies. Research from the Baymard Institute shows that for every 10 customers who add items to their shopping cart, seven of them leave without completing the purchase. While it’s common for customers to window shop, another reason for abandoning carts is the lack of a frictionless experience. Clever interventions like conversational chatbots, proactive messages, and quick response times can increase the likelihood of customers completing their purchase.
Making messaging easy is paramount as it reduces the friction needed to start a conversation with your brand and creates an opportunity to proactively reach out and help them check out.
Deeper personalisation for better customer retention
Customers want interactions to feel authentic and personal. They want past interactions to inform future conversations—82 percent of Indian customers say that they expect brands to have access to their past purchases, context from interactions and other information. Rather than being treated like a one-off-ticket, they want to be remembered for doing business with your brand. E-commerce companies looking to retain customers can do this with CX solutions built with a layer of intelligence that enables smooth conversational experiences.
Picture this: A customer looking to purchase a particular dress and unable to find it on your app messages you on WhatsApp for help. Without the right AI solution to enable conversational commerce, the customer could end the conversation dissatisfied with a clunky bot with limited scope and the inability to understand the issue.
With AI solutions that are built on CX-specific data sets, the technology would have access to the complete customer interaction history, past purchases, and have the ability to detect sentiment and intent. In this scenario, the experience can be highly conversational and seamless where the customer gets a message back—“Here is the dress you’re looking for. We noticed your size is X based on your past purchase”—with a link to the product in the customer’s choice of colour, along with their preferred shipping address selected, and a payment option within the chat.
With just a single message and a link, the e-commerce company would have met the customer’s unique needs and converted it into a purchase. This is the power of conversational commerce and such agility can help businesses retain customers.
Identifying new revenue opportunities
Customers today want conversational experiences — as much as 84 percent of them will buy more from companies that offer seamless conversational experiences. With the explosion of online shopping in India, many companies are already sending out messages about upcoming sales or new products they have. But are they really engaging customers?
E-commerce businesses must understand the importance of engaging your customer at the right time and enabling personalised conversational commerce to boost sales. This can be challenging as manually identifying new revenue opportunities is time-consuming.
With AI-powered CX solutions, intelligence lives at your agents’ fingertips, making it easier to identify new revenue opportunities by upselling and cross-selling. When more than one in three customers globally make a purchase after receiving a WhatsApp or text message, e-commerce businesses can no longer ignore the treasure trove of customer data to suggest products that compliment the customer’s purchase and increase the order value.
With the right CX solutions, agents are able to view the entire customer history and proactively reach out to the customer with alternatives if the customer hasn’t checked out after some time. This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to using AI-powered conversational commerce to identify new revenue opportunities.
Conversational commerce has the power to differentiate e-commerce companies in a highly saturated marketplace. It enables customers to interact more directly within the conversation, giving them a greater sense of agency and empowerment, while also opening up opportunities for what companies can do to increase revenue and drive loyalty.
The demand for seamless, conversational experiences is undeniable. It’s imperative for e-commerce companies to invest in the right AI solutions that can help them conversationally engage and support their customers. And if these businesses deliver the best conversational commerce experience, they can build lasting and meaningful relationships with customers.
The author is the , RVP, India & SAARC, Zendesk.