E-commerce will have grown 5% by 2021, meaning it will soon make up 17.5% of total global retail sales. Perhaps the single most powerful driving force behind the industry’s growth so far has been technology. From rapid improvement in smartphones to new software that creates immersive and frictionless customer experiences, advancements in tech are paving the way for the future of e-commerce.

Technology is often viewed as impersonal, something that provides a uniform experience to every user, no matter who they are. But in fact, many advances in e-commerce technology are focused on exactly the opposite: providing personalized, one-on-one interactions between brands and individual shoppers, but at scale. One size no longer fits all in the world of sales and marketing, and tech now gives retailers a feasible way to adjust their strategies accordingly.

Chatbots are a prime example of this type of tech. Bots are simply pieces of software that can converse with your prospects and customers directly, on their devices, in real time. Industry colleague Nick Julia, Marketing Evangelist at Chatfuel, recently made a very important point about bots that should not be forgotten: “Chatbots are not designed to completely replace human agents. They simply offer customers a new way to interact with a brand, and help retailers streamline tasks and processes and sell more.”

Working together with our friends at Chatfuel, a no-code platform for building bots, we’ve put together five reasons you should consider using a chatbot to help grow your online business.

1. Chatbots can improve the customer experience

Retail bots are available to assist users 24/7, and they’ll always represent your brand well by providing friendly, helpful service. Chatting with a bot is easy, pleasant, and doesn’t involve any waiting like most traditional support channels. This constant availability and consistency show customers that your brand prioritizes their convenience and their experience.

Depending on how you design your bot, it can answer questions, offer product recommendations, and provide support — at any time of day or night. You can build a chatbot to answer most customer inquiries, but there may be times when a user prefers to speak with a human agent. In those cases, your bot can easily hand off the conversation.

2. Chatbots can help increase sales

The great service a bot offers can turn users into repeat customers. Not only can a chatbot answer questions in an engaging way, but it can also be set up to provide a fully personalized shopping experience.

In fact, chatbots for retail businesses are perfect for offering customized product recommendations. You can design one to ask a few questions about the user’s needs or preferences, then have it show a selection of specific products that they might like. From there, customers can click through to your store and make a purchase.

You can also use a bot to bring back shoppers who added items to their cart, but left without buying. Abandoned-cart reminders from a chatbot are helpful, engaging, and effective. They have 80% open rates compared to email’s 25%, plus 10x higher click-through rates. That means your bot can help you recover up to seven times more abandoned-cart revenue, and all on autopilot.

3. Chatbots can save you time and money

Chatbots follow a question-and-answer pattern that mimics the back-and-forth of real human conversation. You can also integrate artificial intelligence into your bot so it can handle even more topics. Either way, bots are perfect for answering frequently asked questions from your prospects and customers. Whether it’s inquiries about product features, shipping costs, returns, or order tracking, bots can be equipped to provide helpful information in a conversational style.

As a result, your human agents will have more time and energy to focus on complex inquiries, rather than wasting time repeating the same answers to FAQs. You may end up saving on staffing costs this way, too. Just remember that chatbots aren’t designed to replace your entire staff. You should still offer users the option to request a chat with a human agent instead of your bot at any time.

4. Chatbots can help set you apart from competitors

Although there are some major retailers using chatbots, they’re still a relatively new technology in the e-commerce industry. That’s why adopting one now will put you ahead of the pack. Bots can provide helpful, fun, and unique experiences for users throughout the entire customer journey. A bot will streamline their experience with your brand and make it memorable, so they’ll be more likely to choose you over a competitor in the future.

5. Chatbots can be customized for your business

Bots are an extremely versatile technology. With the right tools, they can be customized to ideally fit the needs of your specific retail business, your niche, and your particular audience. You can design your bot to support multiple languages, integrate directly into your website, and lots more. There are plenty of options that allow you to customize a chatbot to suit your brand, and to make it highly effective for your customers and your bottom line.

Summary

Chatbots are an efficient way to take advantage of the increasingly powerful possibilities of AI for e-commerce sales and customer service. With the right approach and implementation, a chatbot can improve the shopper’s experience and boost revenue, all while saving your business time and money.