Chatbots are offering a lot of advantages as the new age AI-based customer support weapon for modern brands. It has proven its efficacy in the form of better outreach at the right time with the right customers, and round the clock accessibility.
Here are some reasons why the retail sector can find chatbots to be a capable customer support executive during the holiday season:
1. Better gifting recommendations
A significant portion of retail shopping is taken up by users who want to gift something to their near and dear ones. Here, they find it difficult to get a right fit gift. With chatbots, however, narrowing down to the right gift and saving time in the process becomes easy. With an interactive line of questioning like ‘who is the gift for?’, the chatbot can get maximum information about the persona of the recipient and accurately suggest recommendations for gifting.
2. Better wish lists
Chatbots can prod the shoppers to build a wish list well ahead of the season where availability is not a problem. If they do this successfully, the buyer can be prompted to pick multiple items from the assortment for gifting family members, friends, or clients. With proper call to actions, redirects, and sharp images, this pointer can be driven for successful outcomes.
3. Better open rates
As compared to a measly 5-10% open rates for emails, the story is quite encouraging for Facebook messenger based bots. These command a staggering 75% open rates. This means that chatbots are a proven marketing enabler for your brand. It helps improve your outreach efforts with phenomenal efficacy in local marketing endeavours. A chatbot can intelligently sense past behaviour on the site that didn’t lead to conversion. It can push for a 5% – 10% discount to sweeten the deal and make the prospect to convert faster.
4. Shipping intelligence
Shipping has an unfortunate relationship with the holiday seasons. With no proper information presented, the buyers may remain in the dark about crucial details. Here a chatbot can step in and help out with various factors like express deliveries, same day deliveries (for last minute orders), limited deliveries to particular zip codes, expected delivery timelines, and charges (if any). It can go one step ahead and share the order tracking process for the buyer’s peace of mind. They can also come to know about the product return policies and steps in case they want to return the same.
5. Post holiday marketing boost
It is interesting to note that your chatbot can deliver value even after the holiday season is over. Unused inventory can be sold easily with personalised notifications to past buyers based on their shopping history. This way you can give a fillip to post-holiday sales and marketing for your online retail brand.
Chatbots are a great way to enable online retail traction during and after the peak period. These tactics will come in handy when you need to go that extra mile to entice customers to buy from your brand in the upcoming holiday seasons.
