With the rise of e-commerce titans like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, the retail industry has witnessed a rapid digital transformation over the past few years. Moreover, the outbreak of pandemic earlier this year has accelerated the growth of the online channels for retailers on a massive scale as more and more consumers turn to online purchases. Consumers now have a new set of behaviors and expectations when it comes to online shopping. In such a competitive landscape where Amazon has come up with on-demand services like next-day delivery with a prime membership, consumers have higher expectations than before. They prefer 24/7 personalized services over products. Also, peer recommendations and online research are driving their purchasing decisions.
High operational costs, inventory overcapacity are some pressing issues physical and digital retailers are struggling to contend with. It’s high time retailers need to rethink their strategy to make all their channels work together to improve profitability. They need to plan ahead of their customers’ expectations to lead in the race over their peers.
Conversational AI will be playing a pivotal role in the next retail paradigm shift by converging physical and digital purchases into an integrated channel. Leading retail enterprises are leveraging AI-powered data analytics to optimize their CX, both online and offline.
Let’s take a look at the key benefits of Implementing Conversational AI in Retail:
1. 24/7 Accessibility
Consumers today expect to engage with a brand 24/7. They don’t like to wait for responses. To bridge the gap across time zones and provide answers 24/7 to customers, retailers need to adopt round-the-clock self-service tools such as AI-powered chatbots and voice bots to handle customer queries in real-time. These sophisticated bots are so advanced that they will send prompt responses to product or service-related queries by fetching the already fed data without an agent being involved.
The above study builds a strong point for retailers on why to implement Conversational AI solutions.
2. Gain Actionable Insights with AI Data-Mining
Retail is one of those sectors which witness gigantic traffic regularly. Now you can fairly get an idea of how much data is accumulated in minutes following each inquiry, service request or purchase, etc. Deploying AI-powered assistants will help compile, analyze, and derive valuable insights on consumer behavior based on past interactions utilizing the application’s smart intent analysis technique. These insights will provide a unified view of future market trends, which can be leveraged further to formulate the right business strategies.
3. Merging Online & Physical Retail
Let’s take an example of popular Sports brand Decathlon, the revenue of which currently stands at $12.80 billion. When the world had to move into a ‘shelter-in-place’ situation, consumers were looking to order gym equipment at home. Decathlon revamped its selling strategy in real-time and offered online purchases with a home delivery option. They also provided the option of buying online and self pick up from nearest stores.
A post-pandemic report by CBRE states that retailers having only online services account for 10% of transactions, physical store sales account for around 50% of transactions. Consumers prefer checking the items in stores physically before they buy.
Therefore, both online and offline channels will be critical for retail in the coming time. Conversational AI will help your brand deliver an integrated shopping experience over both offline and online channels.
AI bots will engage customers by walking them through inventories, discount coupons, promotional deals, seasonal collections, etc driving them to hit the store.
4. Interactive Content Consumption
One of the recent developments that has taken place in the retail sector is utilizing content in driving profitability. Retailers are taking advantage of the steadily growing mobile internet traffic to promote their products on digital platforms and various social engagement channels. For example, Google has initiated testing retail features on YouTube to display product prices, recommendations below the video so that the user is able to make a purchase directly through the link.
Conversational AI in retail comes into the picture here as it will guide the user throughout the purchase process, providing all information they are looking for. Chatbots and voice bots will help to launch video-driven retail successfully.
Enterprise Bot’s AI-powered Virtual Assistants Will Help You with Profitability
- Enterprise Bot’s AI-powered virtual assistants are configured in a way that it understands complex customer queries in seconds, identifies the intent, analyzes behavioral patterns, and improves the shopping experience continuously by sending personalized alerts and offers.
- Our application easily integrates into your existing systems and customer support channels and provides the best user assistance.
- Users often find traditional contact forms too sales-oriented and frame negative purview on the brand. Our NLP-powered chatbots and voice bots create engaging experiences for users and gather data in a natural interactive manner.
- We unify disparate systems and apps into an integrated platform to streamline digital workflows. It helps businesses with performing automated tasks, receiving relevant updates, and generating customized on-demand reports.
