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5 Benefits of Adding an E-commerce Chatbot to Your Store

5 minutes

It is expected that 95% of purchases will be done online by 2040. And with this rapid e-commerce growth comes the difficulty in attracting customers and getting the spotlight on your business. So how do you attract and keep customers engaged while outperforming your competitors? It’s quite simple. You need to know the best practice for increasing sales and engaging customers. Here is where an e-commerce chatbot can be useful.

E-commerce chatbots have made it easy for shoppers to ask questions or file complaints online. By giving customers the option to communicate in real-time, you make it possible to turn prospects into happy customers.

What is an E-commerce Chatbot?

An e-commerce chatbot is a pop-up on your e-commerce store that lets shoppers communicate instantly with a business. Many businesses choose to use a chatbot to answer simple, frequent customer inquiries, while also offering a live chat (usually through the chatbot) so that customers can communicate directly with a service rep.

Compared to chatbots, live chat for e-commerce services are controlled by humans. It lets customers chat with sales or service reps in real-time without leaving your site.

Why Does Your Brand Need to Add a Chatbot?

Brands across all industries can benefit from adding a chatbot or live chat service to their online store. Customers prefer chat over email when they want to contact you or ask questions because it is 1-on-1, more personal than email, easier than making a phone call, and is an extremely effective way of resolving issues quickly.

You might think that live chat is exclusive to big-name retailers, but it’s not. Live chat’s affordability and availability make it beneficial to smaller retailers as well. Besides, live chat is easy to set up and usually integrates seamlessly with your website.

5 Benefits of Adding a Chatbot to Your E-Commerce Store

As indicated in this article, customers prefer live chat much more than other customer service channels. But irrespective of customer preferences, many e-commerce stores don’t offer live chat services.

If you’re one of them, here are the five main benefits of live chat for e-commerce and reasons why you should add this feature to your store.

#1 Build better relationships with your customers

As a retailer, if you don’t put customers first, you’re hurting your store’s chances of success. Consider live chat as a tool for understanding shoppers and the reason behind their behaviors, preferences, or actions.

Real-time dialogues with prospects and long-term customers give brands a unique opportunity to learn more about their target market. It’s also an opportunity to build good relationships in ways that support tickets, landing page forms, or email can’t.

Grow your sales with high-performing deals.

#2 Get valuable feedback on your store's shopping experience/products

With live chat, you can get valuable feedback through live chat transcripts (a copy of a live chat conversation between a customer and service agent). These transcripts can help analyze consumer behavior and understand their likes or dislikes, as well as questions your customers frequently ask.

Once you have enough data, you can address the questions that come up the most often on your FAQ page, making it even easier for your shoppers to find the information they need.

Also, chat transcripts help you know what products to recommend to a consumer based on previous purchases. Live chat for e-commerce can also assist you in identifying business gaps, customer pain points, and opinions.

#3 Live chat reduces repetition

Shoppers don’t like it when they explain their concerns many times. In fact, 72% of shoppers consider it poor customer service. Trust us; customers don’t appreciate repeating themselves as they get transferred from one operator to another. But with live chat for e-commerce, you can prevent this.

Once a customer explains an issue via your live chat service, multiple service reps can read the transcript to understand the customer’s issue. This means that even if your customer is transferred to another department, they won’t need to repeat their issue to multiple service reps.

After that, customer reps communicate internally to resolve the issue and provide a solution faster. This helps customers avoid repeating an inquiry during a live chat, reducing frustration and improving their overall experience of your store and brand.

#4 Live chat can reduce cart abandonment

By offering instant support throughout the day, your consumers will have no reasons to complain about not receiving assistance in real-time. Often, if a customer has a specific question about a product they are interested in, they won’t purchase the product until they can find the answer. Questions your customers have may relate to product sizing, specific features, or whether multiple products are compatible.

If these details aren’t available on the product description page, your customer may hesitate to make the purchase, resulting in cart abandonment. However, if your store offers a live chat function, customers can easily have their questions answered in real-time, and will feel more comfortable about making a purchase. This reduces cart abandonment and increases your conversions.

#5 Live chat for e-commerce boosts sales

Even with a well-planned marketing campaign and sales funnel, you can still lose visitors who don’t buy. Live chat software for e-commerce lets you track website visitors while they browse. They also work nicely with Google Analytics to help you assess traffic patterns.

Over 30% of shoppers buy after communicating live with a customer representative, who helps them decide if they need your service. Think of live chat as an assistant at the grocery store who helps you determine what to buy and where to buy them.

Which Chatbot is Best for Your E-commerce Store?

The easiest way to add live chat to your e-commerce store is by using a third-party app, available from the Shopify app store. By visiting the app store and searching for a live chat app, you will see plenty of options to choose from. Make sure you carefully read the features (and reviews!) of each app to find the best possible fit for your store.

Create a Personalized Shopping Experience with Live Chat and PickyStory

As we have described above, one of the major advantages of adding a live chat to your e-commerce store is that it can simplify things for your customers. It also allows you to offer a more personalized shopping experience, and help your customers feel as though they are shopping in a real-life store.

A Segment survey revealed that 44% of consumers would likely shop from a store repeatedly if they received a personalized experience. In essence, personalization is what will turn visitors into repeat shoppers. Just as live chat offers a personalized experience, PickyStory also offers product deals to help customers find what they need faster.

Product deals can be used to create product “packs” so that customers aren’t confused by which products go together, as well as personalized offers and deals that can be displayed on specific product pages (or elsewhere throughout your store). Offering targeted, personalized deals based on the specific products your customers are browsing is a great tactic for increasing your average order value (AOV) and conversions.

Together with a live chat for e-commerce, PickyStory can help you create a personalized, memorable shopping experience that your customers will keep coming back for.