chatbot in e-commerce

Chatbots play a vital role in converting website visitors into potential customers. A chatbot in e-commerce changes the strategy by increasing customer satisfaction in a conversational way.

An e-commerce chatbot is essential to enhance the customer journey with the latest technologies. This blog post analyzes the functionalities of AI chatbots, Live Chat, and Rule-based chatbots to help you understand the best one for your e-commerce site.

Overview of the Content

What is the Role of Chatbot in the E-commerce Industry?

What are the types of Chatbots?Chatbot in E-commerce

What is an AI chatbot? 

What is a Rule-Based Chatbot?

What is a Live Chat?

How to Enhance Customer Service with an AI Chatbot in E-commerce?

AI Chatbot > Rule-based Chatbot

AI Chatbot > Live Chat

What is the Role of Chatbot in the E-commerce Industry?

SHOPIFY CHATBOT

A chatbot’s role in the e-commerce industry is extensive. Business owners will assume that chatbots can only respond to customer questions quickly when they hear chatbots are beneficial to their e-commerce site. However, chatbots have more benefits besides availability.

Chatbots also integrate on different e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento. A Shopify chatbot will help you automate customer support by conversing with them and doing multiple tasks such as order tracking, product recommendation, and easing the website navigation. If you are a Shopify store owner, you will gain more valuable customer insights with the Shopify chatbot.

What are the types of Chatbots? – Chatbot in E-commerce

Chatbots come in two types: Rule-based chatbots and AI chatbots, so not every chatbot is an AI-powered chatbot. The rule-based chatbots work without artificial intelligence and machine learning technology.

An e-commerce site owner can improve customer engagement by implementing chatbots on their e-commerce website, and understanding the differences between these bots will help you understand which is the right one for your business.

What is an AI chatbot? 

A chatbot with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing technology is an AI chatbot. An AI-powered chatbot will help you converse with your customers like a human agent, but unlike them, AI chatbots provide answers to customers’ questions immediately without making them wait. The advanced version of the AI chatbot is conversational AI that replicates human conversation.

An AI chatbot is similar to customer service agents in a physical store. They will recommend relevant products, direct you to the product page and provide product highlights such as ‘Best Selling’ and ‘Discounts.’

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AI bots with machine learning technology will learn from past conversations between them and customers to identify similar patterns of potential customers. Artificial intelligence-powered chatbots hold basic conversations based on the conversation pattern.

What is a Rule-Based Chatbot?

RULE BASED CHATBOT

Rule-based chatbots are the basic version that doesn’t have AI technology behind them. A rule-based chatbot will provide a set of predefined questions that will help customers choose from them to potentially solve their issues.

Rule-based chatbots, or flow chatbots, will provide a tree-like flow. The predefined rules in this type of chatbot are based on the commonly asked questions by the customers. Rule-based bots will immediately respond to the questions with the relevant answers. If an e-commerce site owner wants this type of bot, then they should train the rule-based chatbot with the predefined data set.

What is a Live Chat?

LIVE CHAT

Many e-commerce site owners get confused between Live Chat and Chatbots. Chatbots technology automates customer conversations and analyzes customer data with the conversation pattern.

Conversely, human agents are behind live chat conversations. The online shoppers can speak with customer representatives with live chat support and get real-time solutions. The live chat agents will respond to customer questions immediately since they can view the conversations as they are typing in the chat window.

How to Enhance Customer Service with an AI Chatbot in E-commerce?

One of the common fears of an e-commerce site owner is not providing the best customer service to every user. An online store may have a sales rep to answer customer questions and clear their doubts regarding products, and when it comes to an online store, chatbots play a vital role as a sales rep.

Online business owners can implement artificial intelligence-powered chatbots to enhance customer journeys on an e-commerce site, however, many users may have confusion when choosing between rule-based and AI bots, so it’s best to understand which is the best one for your store.

AI Chatbot > Rule-based Chatbot

An AI chatbot is better than a rule-based chatbot to solve customer questions because it can function like a real-life agent. An artificial intelligence-powered chatbot will engage with customers like human agents, and not all chatbots have artificial intelligence technology to help in the decision-making and replicate human conversations. An AI chatbot has another name of a conversational bot that is beneficial for both lead generation and enhancing customer experience. It’s also vital to understand the significant functionalities of an AI chatbot that outpaces rule-based chatbots.

Constantly Learns and Improves

AI chatbots understand customer conversations and patterns. When an AI-powered chatbot converses with customers, it collects the conversation data and identifies the commonly asked questions.

The natural language processing technology in the AI chatbot helps the bot talk like a real person. An AI chatbot constantly learns from the conversation pattern and provides instant replies to customers.

A rule-based chatbot, or a decision tree bot, has predefined rules. If a customer asks different questions, a rule-based chatbot cannot answer them instantly and gives repetitive answers. Rule-based chatbots don’t learn constantly and improve from the customer answers, making them less effective in the long term.

Understands User Intent

An artificial intelligence-powered chatbot will understand user intent in the conversation pattern. If a customer is conversing with purchase intent, an AI chatbot will convert them into potential buyers by recommending relevant products and discounts.

AI-powered chatbots can also create new questions and intent and duplicating intents is also possible with chatbots with AI technology. Creating intent is one of the most time-consuming and challenging tasks for online business owners. However, AI-powered chatbots will reduce the time-consuming task for e-commerce site owners. Additionally, global intents in chatbots will help you jump from one conversation to another.

Rule-based chatbots cannot understand the user intent apart from the predefined rules. This is why rule-based chatbots provide a mechanical response to customer questions.

Decision-Making Skills

A chatbot will allow customers to find what they are looking for in a website, as artificial intelligence technology in chatbots will help in the decision-making. If a customer cannot find their desired products on the website, then an AI-powered chatbot will recommend other related products to them with upselling and cross-selling strategies.

There is a chance of making customers purchase relevant products with the above strategies. A chatbot without AI technology cannot recommend products without upselling and cross-selling strategies.

Replicates a Human Agent with NLP

Natural Language Processing(NLP) technology in AI-based chatbots will help bots understand human language. When you talk with an AI chatbot that has NLP technology, you will feel like talking to a sales rep in the physical store.

Machine learning algorithms and natural language processing technology improve conversational interfaces in AI chatbots, whereas a rule-based chatbot cannot converse like a human agent but only answers the questions in the decision tree.

Not Robotic

AI chatbots are not robotic as machine learning, NLP, and artificial intelligence technology in AI chatbots allow bots to converse like customer service agents.

Online business owners are reluctant to implement a chatbot on the website because of their mechanical responses and repetitive answers. Rule-based chatbots will provide robotic and repetitive answers when customers ask them multiple questions.

However, an AI-powered chatbot doesn’t provide a mechanical response to the customers. AI chatbots in e-commerce engage with customers and develop an interactive conversation. There are no complicated rules for AI chatbot development and there are no limited responses to customers’ questions, so an AI chatbot can develop an interactive conversation with multiple customers.

Can’t Type 

One of the main advantages of using an AI chatbot is that it can capture typos and errors and conversation. If a customer types a question with errors, AI-powered chatbots will identify the errors and answer the questions relevantly.

Conversely,, rule-based chatbots cannot identify and rectify errors while typing them. Even if there is a typo in users’ questions, chatbots with artificial intelligence technology will understand them and are less likely to frustrate customers with irrelevant answers. In a nutshell, an AI chatbot easily finds collisions with the improved keyword search by listeners.

Read More: Rule-Based Chatbots vs Conversational AI – Ochatbot

AI Chatbot > Live Chat

Live chat is another software with human agents behind it. Website visitors to an e-commerce site will engage with human agents in real-time to solve their doubts about products and services. However, between live chat and AI chatbots, AI chatbot is superior with their advanced features and enhanced functionality. This might sound impossible, but there are examples of these instances with their features that make it possible.

Enhanced Customer Support

An AI chatbot will enhance customer support by answering complex questions and scheduling meetings. When an e-commerce site owner implements a live chat on their website, they can converse with customers within a set period, and customers may receive a form to submit their responses.

Conversely, an AI chatbot is available 24/7 and provides a human touch in the conversation. If your customer wants to talk with a live chat agent, an AI chatbot connects them to a live agent. An e-commerce site owner can enhance customer service on their website with AI chatbots as they are cost efficient compared to live chat agents.

Immediate Solutions with Direct answers

AI chatbots with machine learning technology help you answer questions instantly. Online shoppers will get immediate solutions with direct answers. In an e-commerce site, a customer might ask repetitive questions to a live chat agent. When there is a human agent behind live chat, it is frustrating to answer all the repetitive questions.

An AI chatbot resolves customers’ queries with direct answers. Even if customers ask repetitive questions, an AI chatbot can handle and resolve them.

Cost-effective

An AI chatbot is cost-effective and reduces the support ticket cost. Chatbots with artificial intelligence technology do important tasks like directing customers to their desired products, recommending relevant products, improving website navigation, and tracking order details.

Online business owners can reduce multiple tasks by implementing an AI chatbot on their website. Chatbots on the landing pages will pop up and ask customers about what they wish to purchase. While compared with live chat, AI chatbots do multiple tasks with AI, ML, NLP, and sentiment analysis technologies while maintaining availability and accessibility to the customers.

Customer Insights

An AI chatbot collects customer data through conversation. When a customer makes a purchase, chatbots identify the patterns in their conversation. By collecting conversation data, an AI chatbot will provide valuable insights to online business owners.

When website visitor talks with chatbots, they look for the pattern and understand their purchase intent. Unlike live chat, a chatbot can provide valuable insights of customers to online business owners to give an e-commerce site owner a clear understanding of their customer base. E-commerce site owners can also integrate chatbots on messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger. By integrating chatbots into social messaging apps, an online business owner will reach their target audience quickly.

Simultaneous handling of any number of Questions

An e-commerce site will have several website visitors in a day, so you might wonder how to handle multiple questions at a time. When you implement live chat on your website, the human agents can only handle a limited number of questions. However, chatbots are more efficient than live chat when it comes to answering questions.

Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbots can answer questions of multiple customers instantly and chatbots with AI technology handle multiple questions without any frustration.

Read More: Chatbot vs Live Chat: What is the difference?

Bottom Line

Many e-commerce website owners don’t know the difference between rule-based chatbots and Artificial Intelligence-powered chatbots.

If you want your customers to have a seamless journey on your e-commerce website, you should look into the functionalities of AI chatbots and add the best to your online stores. A chatbot in your e-commerce store should eliminate exhausting tasks and help you generate more revenue.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What chatbot does Amazon use?

Amazon has a virtual assistant ‘Alexa’ to guide you through the products and solve customer service questions.

What is the difference between chatbots and conversational AI?

Conversational AI has advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Sentiment Analysis to mimic the natural conversation of humans. On the other hand, chatbots don’t use AI every time, rule-based chatbots work without AI technology.

Why do Chatbots use Natural Language Processing(NLP)?

Chatbots use Natural Language Processing(NLP) technology to understand human language. NLP technology helps you analyze textual data and interpret the meaning.

Greg Ahern
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