An eCommerce chatbot is a chatbot created to ensure an excellent online shopping experience within an eCommerce platform. Businesses use artificial intelligence to provide human-like answers to customers’ questions, 24/7 support, personalized recommendations, and all the necessary information. SendPulse empowers you with all the necessary tools to build eCommerce chatbots for Facebook Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Telegram.

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In this article, we’ll explain why you should create chatbots for eCommerce and how to achieve success with them. We’ll also unveil where you can effectively use chatbots and provide some excellent examples.

Why should you create chatbots for eCommerce?

According to statistics, businesses using chatbots for communication with customers have an open rate of 85% and a click-through rate of 40%. You and your clients reap the benefits by building a chatbot and incorporating it into your eCommerce company. With its help, you can improve customer retention, provide personalized recommendations, come up with instant answers, and increase customer satisfaction.

Chatbots bring many advantages to eCommerce companies. Let’s discover the most important of them:

  • 24/7 support;
  • higher customer engagement;
  • personalized recommendations;
  • instant answers;
  • cost-effectiveness;
  • integration with the most popular messengers and social media.

Now that you know the pros of having a chatbot for your eCommerce business, it’s time to find out how to power your success with chatbots.

How to power your success with chatbots?

Chatbots can become a powerful additional tool to your marketing strategy. With their help, you can manage several aspects of your business on autopilot, improving customer support and satisfaction. Let’s uncover several ways to power your success with chatbots.

  • Appointment scheduling. Using chatbots for appointment scheduling is a practical way of reducing your managers' workload. You can set up your chatbot and launch the booking process. Chatbots will automatically send messages and help your customers make reservations for your services. Chatbot enables you to use a conversational flow to guide clients and integrate with your calendar system.
  • Answering FAQs. With chatbots, you can provide instant answers to customers’ common questions. By assigning this task to your chatbot, you prevent your customer support agents from answering repetitive questions and let them focus on more urgent issues. The answers are quick, accurate, concise, and consistent. If you implement Natural Language Processing, your chatbot will be able to use natural language to respond. After training, your bot will understand variations of the same query.
  • Post-sale support. After a purchase, the chatbot provides essential support by swiftly resolving post-sale concerns. Businesses enable customers to conveniently track their orders by entering order numbers or relevant details. The chatbot delivers instant updates on order status, allowing clients to stay informed about shipping and delivery details. Moreover, it assists in managing returns, refunds, product support, and troubleshooting.
  • Automating sales. You can use chatbots to sell your products or services on autopilot. After training your bot to sell goods, you can integrate payment systems and add payment buttons to your chatbot flow. No sales manager involvement is required because customers can place orders by themselves.
  • Offering personalized recommendations. By utilizing chatbots, you can provide your prospects with personalized offers. Chatbot can collect user preferences and behavior data to ensure a personalized experience for customers. After gathering information about each customer and lead, the bot can send offers and products clients are interested in. This way, the possibility of customers making a purchase is increasing.
  • Feedback collection. The bot can become a perfect tool for collecting information about customer experience, products, and customer service. It’s your way of gaining insights into the performance of your business, customer support team, and product quality.
  • Lead generation. Chatbot is a great solution for lead generation. You can add a bot to your website, interact with potential clients, and collect their contact data. This will help you save time and focus on tasks that require human intervention. Besides, a chatbot will help you qualify leads based on your criteria before delivering them to your sales reps. It will result in more quality prospects.
  • 24/7 support. Since chatbots can function on their own, it means that no human help is needed. With artificial intelligence, you can provide 24/7 support. Prospects can ask questions at any time and receive instant responses. It will make customers happy with your brand.
  • Marketing and promotions. Chatbots are your perfect promoters. After incorporating these tools, you’ll be able to send interactive marketing campaigns, quizzes, and surveys to customers. You can set up your chatbot to deliver promotional messages and discounts on a specific day and time.
  • eCommerce assistance. Chatbots can help your clients with product selection. They can serve as virtual assistants that provide your customers with the products they are looking for. Consumers can set their criteria and receive all your brand's items for the requirements provided.

Now that you know how to power your success with chatbots, it’s time to find out where exactly you can use chatbots and benefit from them.

Where can you use chatbots?

Chatbots can be used across multiple social media channels and messengers. In this section, we’ll unveil all the channels and their usefulness for your business.

  • Facebook Messenger. Since Facebook has 3.03 billion monthly active users, there’s a point in adding a chatbot for your business. It allows you to reach a large audience with many potential customers. All people who see your brand on Facebook and wonder about the pricing, features, and product catalog will be able to instantly receive all the information. By using a Facebook Messenger chatbot, you ensure constant availability to answer inquiries, regardless of the time. This guarantees seamless interactions with prospects and customers, enhancing their overall experience and improving your customer support.
  • Instagram. Since Instagram DM is a well-known communication channel, it’s essential to take care of it. Many online stores sell online, and it would be more convenient for them to integrate a chatbot. When customers text in DM, the chatbot can answer all the common questions. Customer support agents won’t need to answer the same questions all the time, and customers won’t need to wait for hours to get a response. Instagram chatbot is especially useful for eCommerce companies. It can serve as a channel for product discovery and new releases. Instagram chatbot is also good for frequently asked questions, order updates, basic troubleshooting, appointment scheduling, etc.
  • Live chat. A live chat carries several benefits, including better customer experience, conversion rates, and higher customer satisfaction. However, these aren’t the only reasons. With a live chat, customers get instant and real-time customer support. They can receive both automated messages and help from customer support agents. Clients can reach out to an agent whenever they need. Live chat has a proactive engagement feature. It means that your chatbot can start engaging with users based on their behavior. You can use live chat for lead generation. By interacting with prospects, the chatbot can sort them out and identify qualified leads. The bot helps you receive contact data of your potential customers and use it for further interactions.
  • WhatsApp. WhatsApp chatbot is a multipurpose solution suitable for appointment scheduling. It’s always convenient for customers to open WhatsApp and book a spot for a specific service. Businesses in healthcare, beauty, and services can benefit from utilizing chatbots. Users need to open the messenger and choose the appropriate service, date, and time. The bot will reserve spots for users on autopilot.
    Telegram. Telegram chatbot brings the same benefits as WhatsApp chatbot. It helps with appointment booking, 24/7 customer support, media sharing, etc. The chatbot enables you to automate routine tasks, like collecting user preferences, sending updates, and working with simple queries.

Now that you know where to use a chatbot, it’s time to proceed to the next section. We’ll explain how to set up an eCommerce chatbot with SendPulse.

How to create an eCommerce chatbot with SendPulse?

This section delves into the comprehensive process of creating an eCommerce chatbot using SendPulse. Below, discover a step-by-step guide specifically tailored for setting up booking appointments via Facebook Messenger.

Step 1. Connect your Facebook Messenger to the bot

Log in to your SendPulse account or register. Then, go to the “Chatbots” tab and click “Manage bots.” After, select a channel you want to connect your bot to. Log in to your Facebook account and follow the instructions provided.

If you want to add a chatbot to other messengers, social media, or websites, choose the required channel on the “Manage bots” page.

Step 2. Create a trigger

After integrating your bot with Facebook Messenger, you should select the bot on the left panel. Click the “Create a new trigger” button. Add all the possible words that might trigger this chatbot flow.

Step 3. Develop the flow

Add all the necessary messages and buttons to create a perfect flow. You can set the time when the messages will appear and add links with pricing, available services, website, etc.

Now that you know how to set up a chatbot for Facebook Messenger in SendPulse, let’s explore the 10 tips for effective eCommerce chatbots.

10 Tips for Effective eCommerce Chatbots

If you want to successfully incorporate a chatbot into your business, you need to consider several steps. We’ll cover the most important ones to ensure the effectiveness of your bot.

  1. Utilize personalization. With chatbots, you can incorporate personalization and provide customers with relevant interactions. The bot can gather and analyze customer data to send special offers, discounts, and items based on clients’ interests. Consider using names to address customers, past purchase history to recommend products, and pay attention to customer needs and preferences to ensure a seamless shopping experience.
  2. Provide shopping assistance. Make your chatbot a shopping assistant. You should train your chatbot to answer questions about products, sizes, colors, and other details related to your products. Consider creating sizing guides and product specifications within your bot.
  3. Pay attention to customer feedback. After customers make purchases, you need to continue interacting with them. Consider sending surveys asking about their satisfaction with your chatbot. Their feedback will help you identify the gaps and eliminate them. You’ll also need to add more functions to your chatbot to assist your buyers more.
  4. Ensure secure transactions. Since chatbots can serve as places for customers to checkout, you need to ensure secure transactions. Provide the security of transactions by using encryption and secure payment gateways. This way, you’ll be sure that your client’s data is protected.
  5. Integrate the chatbot with your CRM. Integrating your bot with the CRM allows you to add prospects' contact data into the system automatically. It’s convenient and secure. Your team won’t need to transfer all the information manually. Customer names, email addresses, and other details are securely stored within the CRM. SendPulse empowers you to set up chatbots for various messengers and connect them to its CRM, ensuring the seamless transfer of customer data.
  6. Add clear CTAs. Incorporate distinct CTAs to seamlessly direct users within your chatbot, leading them to essential information. Ensure your call-to-action buttons are clear and intuitive, enabling customers to easily access the product catalog, pricing details, make purchases, inquire about order status, or connect with your customer support agent.
  7. Enable human handover feature. When chatbots don’t cover customers' queries, they need customer support agents. For such a scenario, add a button that allows clients to connect with a human agent. Ensure the button is visible so clients can instantly find it and contact your agent.
  8. Set up a chatbot for multiple channels. Customers can use various channels to connect with your company. That’s why you need to develop chatbots for several communication channels. Consider conducting a short research to identify the most used channels by your audience. Choose several channels and set up a chatbot for them so that customers can instantly reach you.
  9. Incorporate the chatbot for post-purchase engagement. Communication with customers continues after the purchase. If you want to have returning customers, you need to ensure post-purchase support. Chatbot can help you with this task. With its help, clients can solve problems with products quickly and increase satisfaction with your brand. You can also use this chatbot to ask for feedback and comments regarding the quality of your bot.
  10. Enable cart management. Allow clients to manage their carts through the chatbot. You should ensure that buyers can add, remove, or modify products in their shopping carts within the chatbot.

Now that you know the best practices, it’s time to grab some inspiration from the examples below.

Top eCommerce Chatbots

Businesses widely use chatbots for multiple channels nowadays. Many famous brands demonstrate excellent customer support after implementing these tools. We’ll review three successful chatbots that work. So let’s dive in.

AsosHelper Bot

Asos, the famous online fashion retailer, has a huge number of customers not only in Britain but all around the world. Chatbots support their customer service. One of them is available on Telegram. Since the number of customers is instantly rising, it becomes impossible for agents to answer all common questions on pricing, product catalog, and other details. That’s why the well-known brand has bots to do it. AsosHelper Bot is designed to help customers make faster and data-driven purchasing decisions. The bot allows clients to compare product prices on Asos’ sites and choose the lowest price.

Wingstop

Wingstop is a fast food restaurant that uses a chatbot on Facebook Messenger to accept orders. After creating a new order or re-ordering the same items, customers can set up the delivery. Besides, clients can find the nearest restaurant and connect with the agent through the chatbot.

Turkish Airlines

One of the most trusted mainline carriers, Turkish Airlines, uses live chat to manage various customer queries and support clients worldwide. The chatbot serves as a source of answers to FAQs. Customers can find information about baggage allowance, lost baggage handling, miles and miles, and more.

Congrats, now you know what an eCommerce chatbot is and why it’s crucial for businesses. Hope that our tips and examples will be useful once you decide to set up the bot for your company.

References:

  1. This article defines the term and unveils five ways of how an eCommerce chatbot can improve your website.
  2. In this article, you’ll find the benefits of eCommerce chatbots.

Last Updated: 20.11.2023

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