7 Reasons Why Chatbots Fail

Do you want to implement chatbots in your e-commerce store? Before integrating chatbots into your website, you should understand why chatbots fail sometimes in the e-commerce industry.

Behind a live chat system, e-commerce store owners have human agents to communicate with customers. Even if customers don’t ask predefined questions, then human agents will communicate with them in real time. However, rule-based chatbots cannot understand human emotions and might give inappropriate answers to customers’ questions.

Chatbots without proper training and human intervention will not understand questions properly because their responses are blunt and mechanical.

An online shopper will leave your website if there is no proper response in an e-commerce store. This article discusses seven crucial reasons why a chatbot fails in an e-commerce store.

Overview of the Content

Mechanical Response

No Human Intervention

No Live Chat Support

Rude Responses

No Proper Testing

Poor Decision Making

No Multiple Channels Support

Which Chatbot Should You Choose

What are Chatbots with Proper Training?

Chatbots without proper training and human intervention will not understand questions properly because their responses are blunt and mechanical. Chatbots with proper training is the human in the loop technology behind them.

Generally, an AI chatbot has a natural language understanding and processing technology that help them talk with customers like humans. Hence, chatbots with proper training are a human-like persona in the conversation.

Customers Will Leave If There Is No Proper Response!

An online shopper will leave your website if there is no proper response in an e-commerce store. This article discusses seven crucial reasons why a chatbot fails in an e-commerce store.

Chatbots play a crucial role in enhancing the customer journey in an online store. However, when an online business owner integrates a chatbot that gives a mechanical response, this might increase the number of visitors that abandon the store.

There are two types of chatbots that online business owners implement on their websites: Rule-based chatbots and AI chatbots. These are the common chatbots that an e-commerce store owner implements on their website.

The rule-based chatbot has defined rules and provides instant answers to frequently asked questions. Rule-based chatbots, or flow bots, provide branching questions to customers and allow them to choose from the questions. There are a few reasons why rule-based chatbots fail in e-commerce stores.

Related Read: Rule-based Chatbots vs Conversational AI

Why Customer Experience Is Crucial In E-commerce

Customer experience in the e-commerce store is crucial because you will create a loyal customer base. When you meet your customer’s expectations in the online store, you will gain their trust and increase your credibility.

Meeting the customers’ expectations must be consistent. Human intervention with machine intelligence will enhance customer experience and help you meet customer expectations.

Why Do Chatbots Fail?

1. Mechanical Response

When online shoppers visit an e-commerce store, they need customer support to resolve their doubts. Chatbots will pop up and give them a set of questions to choose from. If a customer chooses a question from options, then chatbots provide the right answers.

If a customer asks questions different from the predefined questions, rule-based chatbots struggle to provide a relevant answer. The chatbots provide a mechanical response to customers and this leads customers to abandon the website to check other online stores.

2. No Human Intervention

Apart from chatbots, an online store uses live chats on their websites. Human agents will communicate with customers and answer their questions. However, human agents will not answer questions 24/7, which will lead to time zone issues and customer support unavailability.

On the other hand, chatbots are available 24/7 and help e-commerce store owners enhance the functionality of their stores. E-commerce store owners should understand that chatbots might provide irrelevant answers in a conversation.

If there is human-in-the-loop technology, which is where human agents will train, tune, and test algorithms to rectify errors. Your chatbot will not provide irrelevant answers to customers with human intervention.

Generative and Scripted AI to engage shoppers in conversational eCommerce. Create happy customers while growing your business!

5% to 35% Increase in AOV*
20% to 40% Increase in Revenue*
25% to 45% Reduction in Support Tickets

WE GUARANTEE RESULTS!

Learn More

*When shoppers engage with Ochatbot®

3. No Live Chat Support

Not every website visitor is comfortable conversing with a bot. Sometimes, customers prefer to talk with a human agent. A chatbot should connect customers to a live chat agent if they ask.

On some websites, a lack of human agents and no live chat support will disappoint customers. This is where a chatbot fails in the e-commerce industry. If you are implementing a chatbot on your website, you should also make sure that it connects to live chat. Customer satisfaction is significant to enhancing the functionality of a store.

4. Rude Responses

Do you remember how the Tay bot by Microsoft gave a racist comment to people? This example shows that without proper training and human intervention, a chatbot can hamper your business image.

A chatbot should have the proper training to provide a proper response to customers. If your customers don’t have a proper response and have an unpleasant conversation, it damages your brand image.

5. No Proper Testing

Training is not only efficient in making chatbots provide relevant answers to customers. A chatbot should go through proper training and testing sessions to enhance customer support in an online store.

After training a chatbot, an online business owner should test chatbots and implement them to know how they work. Without proper testing before deployment, a chatbot will fail in an online store.

6. Poor Decision Making

Rule-based chatbots don’t have Artificial Intelligence technology behind them so they will not have good decision-making abilities like human agents.

If a customer cannot find the desired product on the website, rule-based chatbots will not show them relevant products to add to their cart. Lack of efficiency and poor decision-making skills will reduce the functionality of your online stores.

7. No Multiple Channels Support

Chatbots should not provide support to only one social platform. When you integrate chatbots only on one e-commerce platform, they should also work when you plan to migrate.

For instance, Ochatbot works on several e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce. In this case, if an online business owner plans to migrate from one e-commerce platform to another, a chatbot will integrate well on various platforms. Online business owners should also integrate chatbots on social platforms such as Facebook Messenger.

When you choose a chatbot to implement on your online store, you should check whether it is an omnichannel chatbot for more effectiveness.

Which Chatbot Should You Choose?

Artificial Intelligence induced chatbots are more efficient than rule-based chatbots, especially since rule-based chatbots can fail. Hence, AI chatbots with natural language processing and machine learning technology are the best option for an e-commerce store.

Artificial Intelligence technology will enhance decision-making skills in a chatbot and help you provide effective customer support in your online store. Ochatbot will also connect customers to a live chat agent if they want to talk with humans. In a nutshell, if you want your chatbots to do multiple tasks and provide good customer support, you should choose an AI chatbot.

Final Word

E-commerce companies should stand out from the crowd with innovative and effective strategies. If you want more customers to find your website, you should solve their doubts instantly.

Providing the best customer support will make your online store unique and enhance customer satisfaction. In this article, we have listed seven crucial reasons why chatbots fail in the e-commerce industry. When you are implementing chatbots on your website, you should check the efficiency and choose the best AI chatbot.

Recent Posts

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why Amazon’s Alexa is famous?

Voice search in Amazon’s Alexa made the bot famous in the e-commerce industry. Alexa is also a humanized bot and provides information about weather, sports, movies, etc.

2. What are the best AI chatbots in the e-commerce industry?

Ochatbot, Tidio, and Bostify are the top three AI chatbots that do multiple tasks on a website.

3. What are the important benefits of AI chatbots in e-commerce?

Automating multiple tasks, instant response, relevant product recommendations, and understanding customer conversation patterns are the important benefits of AI chatbots in e-commerce.

4. Why do chatbots fail?

In most cases, chatbots fail in the e-commerce store because of no proper training. Some online business owners also don’t have human intervention while they implement AI chatbots in the e-commerce store. This might lead to machine errors.

5. Are all chatbots effective?

Ochatbot, Tidio, Botsify, and Chat Fuel are the best AI chatbots for e-commerce stores.

Author
Recent Posts

Follow Me

Greg Ahern

Greg Ahern Founder and CEO of Ometrics® and Ochatbot® is a fanatic about artificial intelligence, machine learning, AI chatbots, conversational ecommerce, lead generation and conversion rate optimization. Greg has been a successful Internet entrepreneur since 1994. He speaks at conferences and webinars and has built a number of internet businesses. You can follow Greg on Twitter @gregahern, Linkedin, and join his CRO Hacks Groups on Slack. https://www.ometrics.com/cro-growth-hacks/