Artificial intelligence is pretty much embedded in every aspect of not only our business affairs but also our lives. From the most advanced airport security checks to the increasing number of cash registers with self-checkout features, it is all around us.
AI is on its way to becoming omnipresent, with new AI initiatives on the way. In the case of online businesses, AI has easily become one of the main tools for running e-commerce with success.
It helps online businesses understand their customers, create meaningful relationships with them, and provide the most amazing customer experience that is one of the main necessities for being successful.
According to the most recent study, it’s expected that more than 80% of customer interactions will be handled utilizing AI-driven solutions rather than human efforts.
AI is becoming a force to be reckoned with in the world of online shopping. With that in mind, here are some of the most practical ways to utilize AI as an online business and drive success.
1. Customer-centric search engines
Online shoppers depend on search engines to find e-commerce businesses. They are far more likely to abandon e-commerce experiences if all they get are irrelevant results. Through utilizing AI with natural language processing and machine learning, it’s possible to significantly improve, contextualize, and narrow customer searches to display only the most relevant results.
By building different models, online businesses can train and teach AI to automatically understand any concept, whether it’s an aesthetic, product, logo or anything else and automatically point to their websites whenever a particular keyword is typed in the search bar.
AI visually searches media assets for any content by labeling any available features. This is what gives online businesses a competitive edge. AI can help any online shopper find products they need in e-commerce stores quickly and easily.
2. Improve the efficiency of a sales process
A wide variety of social media channels and other forms of media are now influencing the customer’s decision-making process.
There’s an opportunity here as online businesses can use different media as viable marketing and sales tools to create new business opportunities. In this digital age, every internet user is a potential consumer if the approach is right.
Tailoring a sales process according to what customers want sends a strong brand message across preferred social media channels. This helps online businesses reach wider audiences. By integrating AI into a CRM, it’s possible to create new business opportunities, efficiently solve customer problems, and provide answers to their queries on demand.
More importantly, customers get only those services and products they want to see. By improving customer interactions, online businesses get a chance to improve the efficiency of sales processes and enhance the customer experience at the same time.
3. E-commerce personalization
E-commerce has been revolving around personalization for quite some time now and just as the e-commerce industry is rapidly evolving, personalization is evolving with it. Thanks to the latest advances in machine learning and AI technologies, online businesses can develop entirely new levels of personalization to create deep connections with customers.
Since almost all online consumers are mobile and present on various social media channels, e-commerce personalization based on AI is a multi-channel approach that includes the use of the most innovative AI engines to cover all customer touchpoints.
This gives online businesses valuable insight into customers’ online behavior through the channels they prefer. Whether it is an email campaign, a website, a mobile application, or a social media channel, the AI engine is always watching.
The insight that online businesses get from this continuous monitoring helps them provide a more personalized, seamless customer experience across multiple channels of interaction. This helps create a relationship with customers and keeps them in the loop with new products and services on a regular basis.
4. Chatbots as the ultimate solution
While website chatbots aren’t anything new in online retail, it’s practically impossible to run an online business without them. Virtually any e-commerce website has a chatbot today.
E-commerce has long surpassed the point of just selling products and meeting customer expectations. Nowadays, it’s about building personalized experiences for each customer.
With the ever-increasing and changing customer demands, online businesses find it hard to keep up. That’s where chatbots with the best AI kick in. They help online retailers become sophisticated using AI potential to approach target audiences, capture attention, and convert them into loyal consumers.
Website chatbots are the bringers of a new era of conversational commerce. This is where predictive, written, vocal, and visual capabilities meet to help businesses cope with the ever-evolving customer needs.
Online businesses can build their own industry-specific chatbots using the most intuitive bot-building platform like SnatchBot and program them according to their needs. These chatbots excel at:
- Executing and automating tasks for marketing and operations
- Automating order processes
- Providing the ultimate customer service at a low cost
- Generating leads from multiple social media channels
- Increasing conversion rates
- Providing an exquisite personalized customer experience
- Being available 24/7/365
- Reducing general business costs
- Providing instant online support
By integrating the best AI chatbots into every customer touchpoint, an online business has all aspects of e-commerce retail covered, from the first interaction to closing the deal.
AI isn’t here to replace the human counterparts, on the contrary. It’s here to help online businesses analyze all data online users generate to identify target audiences, sell their products and services and grow their businesses while providing the ultimate level of customer experience that makes a difference.