AI tools have skyrocketed over the past few years, and we are now seeing this technology rapidly evolve to fit myriad business needs, including elevating the customer experience. Increasingly popular language models like ChatGPT or longer existing GPT-3 have been some of the most helpful resources for businesses, especially when it comes to customer service.
For retailers and ecommerce brands, interacting with customers and leaving a good impression is not only a never-ending task, but incredibly important for sustained growth. This is why brands should make it a priority to take advantage of automated tools that save time, reduce the need for customer service agents and provide a consistently seamless shopping experience.
Taking the Leap
While conversational AI tools have grown exponentially in popularity and competence over the past few months, this technology has been around for decades. The first chatbot, in fact, was introduced in the early 1990s. The technology is now more advanced and reliable than ever, making it easy to put the trust of your customers’ questions into the “hands” of these customizable language models.
The latest innovation in conversational AI, ChatGPT or GPT-4, can add great value to your ecommerce platform. This advanced software has the ability to be trained specifically on a single brand’s messaging. It’s further refined with company and shopper data to provide a unique experience for each customer.
These tools go beyond the typical chatbot use cases we’ve seen brands implement for some time now, like product recommendations and FAQs. They can be especially useful in serving an overlooked element of the shopping journey – the post-purchase experience.
Automation Fills the Gaps
Every retailer often sees a similar pattern of customer frustration, especially post purchase. These issues can often be solved through quicker, more accurate communication. Below are just a few examples of where AI, specifically language models, can fulfill customer needs that would otherwise take days with a customer service representative.
- Order inquiries: Some of the most common inquiries are WISMO related. This is where customers can become easily frustrated, especially if they’ve had no communication about a delayed shipment. It’s common to leave these updates up to the carrier. You can take back control of this information, making it immediately available to customers. By simply providing a chatbot with an order number, a common customer inquiry can be quickly solved.
- Returns: A whopping 62% of consumers are unlikely to shop with a retailer that provides a poor returns experience. With personalized, conversational AI tools, returns can be made painless. Customers can easily get information like a list of nearby dropoff locations, opt for in-store credit for faster return processing, or track their refund once the items have been dropped off.
- Predictive forecasting: Each purchase and recorded chatbot conversation provides new data to leverage and analyze. One benefit to this abundance of data is using it to analyze trends, predict outcomes and forecast future behavior.
Be Prepared Every Step of the Way
With conversational AI tools, you can provide shoppers with an experience that’s always tailored to them and efficient for you.
It’s still essential to have a team of customer service experts to ensure the chatbots are continuously being refined through data and customer trends, accurately answering inquiries and representing your brand messaging.
As conversational AI continues to grow as a customer service method, you need to stay at the forefront of this implementation. In an increasingly crowded marketplace, the margin for error in customer satisfaction and retention is shrinking. Taking advantage of instant automated tools can be a valuable method for optimizing the customer service process and resolving common paint points.
Julian Krenge is CTO of parcelLab