How to Leverage Conversational Chatbots to 10x Your E-commerce Sales?

When you enter a store, usually, you appreciate help from shopping executives. It's nice to have someone who will converse with you, help you, clarify your doubts, and more.

A good experience will bring you back again. This is what chatbots do for your e-commerce store.

With the help of chatbots, e-commerce sales are estimated to reach $112 billion by 2023. Staggering, isn’t it?

Chatbots work exceptionally well in providing your customers with what they want and need. At the same time, they represent you well and provide invaluable data.

Moreover, the e-commerce study in 2020 showed that the average conversion rate for e-commerce websites is only 2.86%. Chatbots and especially conversation AI-based chatbots can help you climb higher numbers and better your revenue stream.

What are Conversational Chatbots? 

Conversation chatbots are chatbots with more flair, intelligence, interpersonal skills, and smarter capabilities. They provide answers beyond FAQ, help customers make decisions, promote products, and make decisions based on the customer’s emotions.

The chatbots need you to understand your customers so that they can understand them better.

For your online customer, it is the friendly digital voice that says, “Hey there, how may I help you?”.

You can leverage this tool to achieve 10X sales. Wondering how? Let’s dive in. 

1. Utilize Chatbots to up Your Customer Experience 

Make sure your chatbot greets customers right away so that they know they can take virtual assistance if they need it.

Provide information about your website navigation, and help the customers find different sections with the chatbot. The customer can enter what they need and the chatbot finds it for them - faster than most humans could.

The chatbot can even clarify any doubts they may have with an FAQ option.

Among the invaluable customer experiences chatbots can provide, multi-language support is indispensable. You may be selling in more than one country and your website must be easy for users to understand globally. Chatbot platforms like WotNot can help you serve international clientele by building AI chatbots.

For some customers, having the option to talk to a chatbot is crucial. Several online shoppers might be dealing with anxiety over talking to customer support. Chatbots enable them to shop without stress and talk to your friendly bot whenever they have concerns.

Additionally, some people simply do not want to wait for IVR calls to connect. 33% of customers find it frustrating to wait on hold. During customer calls, your executives may not keep their emotions in check. They can get irritated with repeated or rude customers but a chatbot won't.

They could even escalate a customer to human interaction when a specialized intervention is needed.

2. Make Chatbot a Part of Your Sales Team 

Just like how a salesperson at your store would guide customers on product comparisons, additional products, deals and bundled offers - the chatbot does the same for your site.

It can offer upselling options when they browse through products and provide cross-selling options for related products – increasing the Average Order Value (AOV).

It could interact with the user and understand their requirements to easily provide suggestions based on their preferences.

Likewise, some customers don't purchase at the last minute. An abandoned cart is a huge issue in e-commerce. According to Forrester Research, e-commerce businesses tend to lose over $18 billion in yearly sales revenue because of abandoned carts.

Often, cart abandonment happens due to unforeseen things at checkout such as postage shipping costs. Prevent this by alerting customers about shipping charges early in the checkout process and also by partnering with carrier partners that offer better shipping rates.

Chatbots can help by prompting messages and reminders to return to their cart while they are on your website. They can provide discount options to nudge customers for purchases. Chatbots solve this problem and increase revenue by 7-25%.

Chatbots act as your direct sales representative by providing qualified lead information. Symphony Limited, a leading electronics company generated 50,000 MQLs after using a chatbot. And this number increases each year as they add more digital buyers coming to their website.

In general, businesses that use chatbots can generate more than 55% more high-quality leads! Chatbots can be a valuable asset to your sales team's arsenal when used the right way.

3. Combine Chatbot with User Behavior Analytics for a Refined Experience 

Analyzing and understanding how consumers are interacting with your website is important to assess behavior and make informed actions. Customize the chatbot based on details such as time spent on different pages, sections clicked on the most and least, actions before abandoning the cart, queries, and more.

Looking at heatmap and chatbot entries, you can analyze consumer interaction and leverage it for more sales.

For example, during checkout, prompt messages will help sales. During the customer's journey on the site, provide the information they look for such as delivery timelines, bundled discounts, etc.

Another added advantage is data.

How much information can your customer executives and sales team remember when they interact with the customer?

They can be prone to forgetting some details, but chatbots won't. You can analyze the data, make decisions based on the requirement and increase your business strategies.

4. Build Reliability, Branding, and Trust with Loyal Customers

Optimizing the chatbot doesn't end with asking customers for their first names. The personalization has to come from your end too. Make sure the theme and mascot of the chatbot are related to your brand. 

Customize the chatbot to match the way your customers talk. Are you targeting the GenZ or millennials? Use lingo that is relatable to them. Likewise, make the tone formal, casual, or witty based on your brand.

“For Millennials, chatbots are a natural extension of texting. Millennials, having grown up with the Internet and responsive on-demand services, often cite calls as being overly intrusive, even presumptuous — thus their preference for texting” - Joseph Vincze (Library Hi Tech News)

Customers want order details in as much depth as possible. Chatbots can provide immediate information on shipping and tracking details. They can help them address concerns of exchange, returns, and cancellations.

Seamless experience during such interactions is essential to building brand reliability and it is what brings the customers back ensuring customer retention. 

Conclusion 

E-commerce sale interactions need to be quick and immediately fulfilling considering the stiff competition. Chatbots can represent you with immediate attention when your employees can’t.

Chatbots that are curated for e-commerce use cases can make the process even easier for you. Moreover, the average satisfaction rate for chatbots is 87.58%. So you will know your business is in good hands.

Chatbots are indeed smart, however, they can't do anything without your creativity, wit, and empathy. Customize the bot to represent you as humanly as possible – because you might leverage a bot for sales but your end customers are human after all.

Master this, and it is only a matter of time before you reach 10X sales!