Chatbot use cases in eCommerce are all about marketing in 2022. Why? Because the real impact of chatbots for eCommerce lies in more sales, better conversation rates from social, and higher reachability than email to increase customer lifetime value.
This can be achieved by having interactive, two-way conversations that allow you to gather data on customer preferences and personalize experiences in real-time.
Below we collected enterprise examples for chatbot use cases that brought great results for our eCommerce customers. Read on and see why marketing use cases are the future of chatbot technology in eCommerce!
Top Chatbot Use Cases in eCommerce
There are many ways to use a marketing bot in eCommerce, but this article will cover the top most effective chatbot use cases and why they work so well:
- Customer education
- FAQ automation
- Product recommendations
- Recurring notifications
Customer education
Over the past few years, consumers have become more comfortable with online shopping, and now they increasingly use online channels to discover, research, and purchase new products.
So, it’s time for brands to adapt their messaging accordingly. You need to offer the same experience customers have visiting your physical stores. But that experience has to be online. This includes thorough customer education about products, especially if you’re selling high-value items, such as vehicles. Here’s a summary of how you can use automotive chatbots to bring the car dealership experience online.
Conversational chatbots are one of the best channels for this, allowing prospects to interact with brands with the help of human-like digital assistants.
Finding the right shoes online is overwhelming with often too many options available. That was the challenge Deichmann faced with the size of its product catalog and 183 million pairs sold in 2019 alone. They needed a conversational assistant that educates customers about shoes and helps them find the perfect pair. The solution was an eCommerce chatbot on Facebook Messenger that informed customers about store locations, availability of shoes in different stores, and personalized shoe recommendations for shoppers. Read the whole story here and see what Deichmann achieved using the shoe finder bot!
Deichmann knew it was vital to make sure customers are aware of the possibility to chat with their business.
This is where entry points came into the picture. They chose to promote their chatbot via a Click to Messenger advertisement.
Entry points are various online and offline ways for customers to start a conversation with your chatbot. They are the perfect way to promote and drive prospects into your chatbot. You can, for example, insert a link to your bot into a social post, Instagram story, newsletter, or website widget. You can also use QR codes to send people into your chatbot. Just a few examples of entry points that can help you reach more people on the most popular messaging channels, like Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
FAQ automation
Online shopping gives the freedom of choosing from often thousands of different items. This, however, creates doubt and questions, which can easily lead to abandoned carts. Unless you provide customers with all the answers they need. When they need them. This is where a conversational chatbot can help.
When shopping, customers will always have questions they want to ask about your products. At the same time, they might be looking at your competitors’ offerings as well. That’s why it’s vital you answer their questions at the right time. Which is definitely sooner than later.
A conversational chatbot enables you to completely automate your FAQs to educate customers about products and services. This is how you can guarantee 24/7 availability to your customers, as opposed to 85% of brands that do not respond to requests in 5 minutes.
Automated FAQs also create sales opportunities. Answering pre-purchase questions quickly in their moment of need not only gives customers a positive brand experience but also the information they need in order to go from consideration to purchase.
Omio, the travel industry giant, wanted to help its customers find an answer to their questions as fast as possible. They launched an automated chatbot experience that helped travelers get answers to frequently asked questions instantly, right in Messenger. This relied on Spectrm’s natural language processing technologies and quick replies to guide conversations in Messenger.
Did the chatbot work out for Omio? Well, the numbers speak for themselves. Read the full story here!
Personalized Product Recommendations
Being old school is fun, but not in digital marketing. So stop blasting a single promo message out with your conversational chatbot. Why would you deliver a one-way promotional update on channels that are built for two-way communication?
Instead of one way promotion, create an automated interactive conversation via your chatbot. Offer a more personalized experience and give your customers a reason to stay connected with you. Personalized offers and exclusive deals will be the perfect reason.
Daniel Wellington wanted to try messaging to grow their audience on Messenger, improve their customer experience, and increase sales.
A conversational chatbot on Messenger optimized for guided selling did just that. Based on customer responses, the bot recommended relevant products, drove sales, and increased the company’s messaging audience.
Recurring Notifications
Hanging onto your current customers should always be a primary goal. Promoting to your existing customers is more effective and less expensive than trying to find new ones. Especially, now, in uncertain times of recession.
But be careful when you retarget your audience. Customers these days expect personalized offers. That’s why it’s crucial to know them and send them messages about the topics they’re interested in.
Chatbot conversations are a golden opportunity to collect and act on zero party data. This is the data customers voluntarily share with you in a private conversation. These insights can give you an overview of customer preferences and enable you to send relevant messages. Relevant topics and offers will encourage your customers to opt in for recurring notifications, giving you a direct channel to reengage them.
With recurring notifications, you can send ongoing updates to customers about seasonal promotions, special discounts, loyalty program updates, and so on.
How does it work in e-commerce? Our customer, a major fashion retailer, gave out vouchers to customers, who sent the word ‘chance’ to the company’s Instagram direct message inbox. The message triggered an automated chatbot conversation with additional deals and the option to sign up for ongoing updates.
60k vouchers were sent out in only 48 hours – of which almost 22k were redeemed with an overall order volume of 1.5 million EUR. Additionally, several thousands of customers opted in for recurring notifications.
The Takeaway
Chatbot use cases that actually work are all about marketing. You can use a conversational chatbot to:
- Educate customers
- Automate your FAQs
- Promote personalized offers and special deals
- Send recurring notifications
Once you have your chatbot up and running, it’s vital to let customers know they can chat with your business. Use the wide range of online and offline entry points on various messaging channels to direct more prospects into your bot. Send them personalized offers based on their preferences and encourage them to opt in for regular updates. This is how you turn one time customers into brand advocates.
