Thursday 1 March 2018

How Chatbots are Playing a Crucial role in Conversational Commerce?

With the advancement in technology such as artificial intelligence, we have witnessed a paradigm shift in the way businesses do business. Don’t you think there has been a major shift in e-commerce space since the rise of AI-enabled chatbots? In this post I would like to discuss about the evolution of chatbots and the role it is playing in conversational commerce.

Today brands are communicating more effectively with their customers and engaging them with an omni-channel presence, thanks to the convergence of advances in AI and mobile messaging apps! They can implement chatbots at reduced costs, however, scenarios wherein customers want to interact with human reps then this idea is not workable. Then, why are companies investing in chatbot development?
This is because the advances in AI, machine learning - a subset of AI, and natural language processing are enabling businesses to overcome chatbot personalization issues. Nowadays, chatbots are not only offering sales and customer support but also playing various interesting roles which I will discuss in later in this blog. Before we dive into that, let’s take a look at how chatbots have evolved.

Evolution of chatbots

For the ease of understanding the evolution of bots we can categorize the types of chatbots into 3 generations:
1st Generation of Bots: These bots were based on simple programs and could answer the frequently asked questions by customers.
2nd Generation of Bots: These bots are trained how to talk with the customer with label conversation data; thus they are based on supervised machine learning and require a lot of labeled data for getting trained.
3rd Generation of Bots: These are the sophisticated bots enabled by AI and they can handle more complex conversations. Moreover, they have the ability to learn from unlabeled data too.

Role of chatbots in conversational commerce

Let me tell the new readers about conversational commerce a bit. So, what is conversational commerce? The term ‘conversational commerce’ was coined by Uber’s Chris Messina in 2015, referring to the trend of interacting with businesses via messaging and chat apps like WeChat, Facebook Messenger, and others.
Today an increasing number of businesses are considering collaboration with a chatbot development company to ensure customer retention and better engagement. AI-enabled chatbots have already begun to deliver personalized shopping experiences. Even shoppers are enjoying their interaction with chatbots as it can effectively address their queries and also make recommendations.

Examples of chatbots and their interesting roles

Your shopping partner – Chatshopper: This is a Facebook messenger bot and it plays the role of an e-commerce fashion and shopping assistant. It would ask about your fashion preference and reply with relevant product suggestions.
The talkative night owl – Insomno bot: If you have trouble sleeping and there is no one around then this bot is just right for you. It will give you company and prevent boredom with some amazing replies.
The weather expert – Poncho: In case you are anticipating rain then you can ask this bot, “should I take an umbrella today?” It can wittily reply to such questions and would also send you alerts provided you give your consent.
Your financial assistant – Eno: It is a text-based chatbot which can help you to manage your money. Not only it can check your account balance and recent transactions but can also review your transactions and analyze your spending habits.
Your flight booker – Instalocate: If you are a frequent traveler then this bot can come handy for you. This AI-powered bot can track your flight details using your flight number and then notify you about delays. It can also track your journey, predict potential problems and solve them automatically.

Wrapping up

By now you might have understood that how chatbots are playing significant role in making conversational commerce a success for businesses. Are you an e-commerce business owner? Do you want to integrate a chatbot on your site to better engage and deliver personalized shopping experience?
Please let me know by leaving your comments below and you must also consider collaborating with a software development company. I would also love to hear from you any blog-related suggestions!
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1 comment:

  1. Chatbots provide personalized customer support an omnichannel experience, and thereby improve customer satisfaction. Grow with Engati http://s.engati.com/1cg

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