Level Up Your B2B eCommerce: How Chatbots Streamline Complex Customer Journeys

Assisting your customers with adequate and timely online support defines the trust of your eCommerce platform. With stiff competition raging, you can’t afford the slightest lacuna in supporting your clients online. 

Your existing and potential customers look forward to benefit from a fast, accurate, and practical response from your end whenever they reach out to you. This explains why your customer support desk must be well-equipped to assist them with a flawless response.

As a business owner, you must have noticed that forward-thinking companies are heavily investing in chatbots for supporting customers on their eCommerce websites. Automated chatbots can chip in with a robust support mechanism for your customer support team. These sophisticated tools can significantly leverage your business with precision and performance.

Now, if you are yet to integrate a chatbot into your eCommerce platform for customer support, here are some practical reasons why you should proceed with this technology. We have discussed the prime perks of using a chatbot for your eCommerce platform.

1.       Make your customer support efforts cost-effective

Sophisticated technologies come with an inherent cost. However, that isn’t necessarily the case with AI-backed chatbots. While you consider chatbot integration into your platform to be an investment, you can reap the benefits of cost-effectiveness in the long run. Chatbots minimize human intervention, thereby cutting down the required man-hours at your customer support desk. These bots can perform repetitive activities, thereby cutting labor costs.

Coming to the figures, you can afford the basic chatbot at prices ranging between $50 to $100 a month. On the other hand, you need to pay at least $25 an hour to hire a human agent. This means that you would be shelling out around $3,500 on a monthly basis to each agent, considering that he or she would be working 7 hours a day.

At the same time, you need to have a workstation, along with proper connectivity and hardware for each agent. So, you need to count in the associated internet and electricity bills.

Even after all this, you would repent human errors that your agents are susceptible to making.

2.       24/7 support

Human agents, on average, work for 7 to 8 hours a day. This implies, you need to hire 3 agents if you want to ensure 24/7 support available to your customer. Have you considered the associated employment costs when you follow the traditional path?

With chatbots remaining active 24/7, you can answer the queries of your clients even after the office hours. In the digital age, customers expect instant replies from your support agents, regardless of the time of the day. An AI-powered chatbot can engage your clients before a human agent takes the case on.

For customers, receiving late replies happens to be the most disappointing experience. So, make sure to integrate a powerful bot and be available round the clock to answer the queries of your customers. This way, you can limit the number of human agents and thereby curtail cost.

3.       Respond immediately to your clients

More than half your customers are likely to abandon interaction with your company in case you keep them waiting more than a minute. With human agents, the time requirements would be higher since they need to research and find out relevant information to furnish. This delay can lead to the loss of business, as you would lose potential clients. With chatbots on your eCommerce platform, you can address this challenge.

On average, customers can wait up to 30 seconds after they send an inquiry. While the bot engages the customer and keeps the conversation going, your human agents can intervene and complement the client with adequate support. This way, a chatbot can foster better engagement with your clients.

Intelligent chatbots are capable of providing personalized support to each customer. This ensures that your clients would feel valued with the essence of individuality they enjoy. This goes a long way in winning the trust of your customers.

Automated AI bots happen to be the answer to all your customer support requirements. This way, your business can gain a positive reputation and confidence among the customers. Timeliness and quick response are crucial for retaining your existing customers as well.

4.       Engage your customers

The tone of human responses is the key reason for which many customers prefer human agents over chatbots. To address this issue, reputed developers have come up with AI-based chatbots. These bots are capable of imitating the human way of speaking. As a result, the conversations are more empathetic, which can engage your customers. Sophisticated chatbots on your eCommerce platform can even generate more engagement compared to humans.

In some instances, AI bots customize deals and discounts based on the preferences of customers and project them for sale. Before recommending these deals, the AI-powered technology researches the past purchases and history of each profile. While a human agent takes a relatively long time to evaluate the purchase trends and preferences, a chatbot can perform the task in seconds.

Moreover, chatbots are designed to store information of previous purchases. So, when an existing customer reaches out to you, your bot can bank on the data and offer a more customized approach. Chatbots are capable of remembering past purchase records and utilizing important information to engage customers.

5.       Make communications technology-oriented

Currently, millennials constitute the majority of customers at eCommerce stores. People aged between 25 and 34 account for 37% of your shoppers. Over 60% of these clients are willing to communicate with chatbots rather than human agents. The future of the eCommerce industry largely lies on the tastes of millennials. So, it makes sense to organize your business based on their preference. Currently, many customers are unhappy with the slowness of human agents and abandon conversations. Therefore, making your communications technology-oriented holds the secret to better conversions.

Currently, as much as 67% of online portals have automated their support system considering these advantages. In case you are yet to deploy sophisticated chatbots, it’s time to reach out to switch to AI-powered chatbots for better reach and reduce response time.