Artificial intelligence (AI) is beginning to entrench itself into nearly every aspect of our lives. We are already using artificial intelligence and machine learning even without realizing it.
From personalized product recommendations to a seamless user experience, AI is almost everywhere. A study conducted by Business Insider suggests that around 85% of customer interactions will be managed by chatbots by 2020. When emails, conversations, messages and comments can all be responded immediately and more efficiently by an automated system without any human involvement.
The impact of AI in ecommerce business industry is also increasing. Ecommerce giants such as Amazon, Walmart and eBay have already started using AI for years, now ecommerce businesses, website design agencies, branding agencies, SaaS startups and retail brands are doing the same.
Artificial intelligence and algorithmic technology can be extremely helpful tools to generate more revenue and optimize business processes of ecommerce brands. In short, artificial intelligence is transforming the way ecommerce businesses serve their customers.
Let’s explore how AI is innovating the way ecommerce businesses perform.
Creating a Seamless User Experience
Though the word artificial tends to suggest something nonhuman, robotic or fake, Artificial Intelligence actually allows sales and marketing team to offer a more personalized and seamless user experience for their customers.
AI can analyze big data more effectively than humans. It clearly suggests that artificial intelligence has a great ability to recognize clusters and patterns in the big data sets like similarities between customers, customers’ purchasing history, credit checks and other important information. Hundreds of thousands of transactions can easily be analyzed to create more targeted offers for customers.
By using sales intelligence, ecommerce businesses have an easy access to valuable data and insights related to customers behavior before, during and after a purchase. This helps businesses to create a more personalized experience and build smart customer engagement at every point of contact.
Solve Business Challenges
AI technologies are helping ecommerce businesses by providing timely intelligence to help brands to solve many challenges. Using artificial intelligence, your marketing and sales team can easily identify who is your target audience based on previous purchase history, demographics, interests and pain areas.
This way, when businesses have a conversation with a prospective buyer, they know what the user wants from their brand, and thus, successfully convert a lead into a paying customer. AI solutions enable online retailers and ecommerce brands to engage their customers in a real and meaningful way.
Sales and marketing team can now use big data sources and analytics like never before. Businesses can identify their target prospects using intelligence and generate more leads. They are now able to personalize the sales cycle by using AI applications that help brands to engage the right audience with the right message at the right time.
Retarget Prospects
It’s very disappointing to know that at least one third of marketing leads fail to be converted by sales team. It shows that pre-qualified potential customers that are profoundly interested in your services or products go unnoticed.
Using customer data can dramatically improve your sales cycle. But unfortunately, there are many businesses that overlook the importance of customer data and don’t utilize it for improving their marketing and sales efforts.
Let’s take an example of artificial intelligence in retail industry. Retailers are increasingly using facial recognition to track customers. Facial recognition software can scan customer images on CCTV cameras and can capture customers’ in-store dwell times. In addition, the facial recognition platform can identify shoplifters and help retailers to figure out which displays are working best, and where the customer is paying more attention.
As artificial intelligence advances and develops further, customers could even start seeing specialized offers on their laptops and mobiles based on the in-store dwell time. That means, omnichannel retailers are making progress on remarketing their products to potential customers. The future of sales is transforming by responding to the customers desires and impulses.
Highly Advanced Sales Process
Gone are the days of old sales techniques like cold calling clients or knocking their doors and sell products they don’t want. Thankfully, sales techniques have move on beyond these time-consuming and ineffective tactics.
Consumers are now influenced by social media, TV commercials and other types of media. So, integrate artificial intelligence into your CRM if you want to create a sales message that reaches your target customers at the right time on the right platform.
If your AI platform allows natural language learning and voice assistants like Siri or Alexa, your CRM will answer customer queries, solve their problems and even determine new opportunities for sales. An effective AI driven CRM platform can handle multiple functions more efficiently.
Let’s take an example of North Face that offer athletes gear is using AI technology to know their customers by offering customized solutions. The goal of this company is to help online customers find the best jacket with the help of IBM’s Watson.
They ask customers different questions by using a voice input AI platform, such as in which weather conditions or occasions they will be using the product. Watson scans through product selection and find the product that best fits the situation based on customer data and its own research.
To Sum All Things Up
Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly transforming the way ecommerce businesses work by offering tailored solutions, personalized customer experience, evolving the sales process smartly to convert leads into paying customers.
It is making incredible changes to the way retailers and ecommerce brands deal with their customers, getting an easy access to big data and harnessing their marketing and sales team skills for business growth.