So the thing about chatbots is they are still a little in the gray area. Not because the notion behind the tech is shaky, but perhaps because the tech has not fully matured; or to put it better still, mature models have not been adopted by all chatbot tool providers.

Nevertheless, a good chatbot solution offers umpteen benefits to the average business, and even more so to those businesses that thrive on eCommerce. One particular aspect of business chatbots have a high impact on is customer service

Customer service is considered one of the most important factors, which decides if the business floats or sinks. Therefore, employing the right chatbot solution to provide excellent customer service and extraordinary customer experiences, could mean gold for the business.

But what exactly can the perfect chatbot solution help achieve?

Here’s a list of KPIs for the eCommerce business that chatbots positively impact:

On the top of the list is this high impact factor: ease and speed of finding what a customer is looking for. In a high intensity industry like eCommerce, it is extremely important that we provide customers with the answers they are looking for ASAP. Lest, we lose the customer to the competition. It is as fickle as that. Giants in the industry know that having customers stay on your site, and looking at only the products you offer is key to business success. After all, you can’t lose to the competition just because they poached your customers on something as simple as not being able to find what they are looking for.

Experts in the field, and some business analysts even, vouch for a CX intensive approach that does not show the catalogue until the end of the customer lifecycle on the site, and instead recommends an intelligent wizard like experience, powered by a chatbot, with intuitive recommendations, wherever applicable. Radical as it may seem, it might very well be the future, what with AI being a force to reckon with in the arena of tech that is shifting how the world works.

The very idea of customers having to exhaustively search catalogue lists in order to find what they are looking for, seems like such a buzzkill. And since we are working with a customer base that has an attention span that has considerably shrunk over the years, it seems prudent to look at solutions that might keep your customers interested. Or, better still, provide the exact solution they are looking for, before they lose interest. Deploying a chatbot is one of the foremost solutions that experts in the field are talking about.

Much like what Bill Gates said about businesses, “If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business,” it seems like eCommerce businesses would soon be out of business, if they don’t look at employing a robust chatbot solution to work on the customer experience KPI.

On top of providing great customer experiences, chatbots can also work to provide answers to customer queries, be it novel clarifications or frequently asked questions. Apart from feeding FAQs and algorithms to help the chatbot lead the customer through the process, we could leverage AI and machine learning to offer better experiences for the customer even in a drab section like the FAQs. This way, chatbots can learn from past experiences and keep evolving, providing quicker and more efficient responses, and better yet, solutions, in the FAQ section.

Dealing with irate customers who are looking for some sort of post-purchase customer service is one of the trickier KPIs, which has a direct impact on customer service efficiency. Customers might come in with issues such as payment failure, or might need assistance with returns and refunds. All of these are scenarios that demand immediate attention, and most importantly, the quickest resolutions and TAT.

With a robust chatbot solution embedded in your eCommerce site, your problem resolution workflow is simplified. Chatbots of high calibre are able to offer real-time solution to customers for common issues, such as product returns or refunds. But of course, there would need to strict constructs and predefined guidelines fed into the chatbot system to facilitate this. Such a solution also ensures customers can get resolutions on specific deliverables such as payment receipt, billing, order confirmation, shipping information, etc., quickly and efficiently.

Here too, with the advent of AI and ML technologies, we could deploy chatbots to handle even the most complex customer queries. Chatbots, with embedded AI, would be able to respond in the best way possible to human emotions as well. With natural Language processing, it might even be possible to respond to customers chatting in text speak, in kind. But, experts suggest it would still be prudent to have an option where the chatbot graciously hands it over to a human agent, as not all customers might be amused with the chatbot’s conversation. So although this does not spell the end of the customer service representative, it greatly enhances and diversifies the role.

Customer Service interactions feed the sales funnel. Don’t believe me – ask the giants of eCommerce, and they’d tell you stories upon stories. Customer service interactions on your chatbot opens doors to some interesting conversations on what the customer is looking to achieve, and not just what they are looking to buy. This is a major are for upselling or cross-selling. Given your chatbot is intelligent enough, it can lead the customer into conversations of buying other items, or more items, ultimately impacting your sales funnel. Didn’t think your chatbot could be your inside sales and sales team wrapped into one? Well, think again.

You could build dynamic workflows and decision trees for your chatbot to make intelligent decisions and provide great customer service, converting customer service tickets into sales leads. With AI, you can even have your chatbot pick up on vague clues to understand customer intent, or feed into search history to provide intelligent suggestions to customers.

An efficient chatbot, front-ending the customer service process could help relieve a lot of stress from the customer facing workforce. With lightning quick responses on repetitive questions and clarifications through the chatbot, the need for customer service representatives to spend time on these questions is completely eliminated. This workload pressure off their shoulders, CSRs can focus on more priority tasks and issues that may come into the system, which ultimately affects the company’s bottom-line.

So, deploying the perfect chatbot solution for your eCommerce business is not so bad at all. You just need to know who to talk to, though.