AI In E-Commerce: More Sales Through Better Customer Experiences?

Shopping has to be easy, quick, and convenient. Especially online. However, shopping is still a must for a not inconsiderable proportion of consumers. The majority of Germans are already satisfied when the products they have ordered arrive at home. Only around 17 percent expect a satisfactory or pleasant shopping experience from online shops.

The problem here is that the image of an online shop conveyed by advertising does not always correspond to reality. Chic surfaces from e-commerce providers are often deceptive and lead to around 52 percent of consumers being disappointed with the actual service of the shops. E-commerce providers should see this dissatisfaction as an opportunity to exceed their customers’ expectations with manageable measures.

Artificial intelligence can help here to improve shopping experiences in e-commerce and boost sales. But how exactly?

AI Can Improve Customer Experiences

Artificial intelligence can directly influence the customer experience. This applies in particular to communication and interaction with customers. The application areas below show how AI and machine learning can ensure greater customer satisfaction when shopping online.

AI Chatbots

A successful chatbot AI can help to personalise customer communication and improve interaction with bots. In addition, different companies can use artificial intelligence and the automated analysis of the answers given to gain insight into customers’ behaviour and preferences and thus better respond to customer preferences. As a result, customers can feel better understood, avoiding customer frustration and offence.

Now at the latest would be an opportune time to use chatbots for targeted customer communication. At the beginning of the Corona crisis, several companies and organisations were suddenly faced with a new situation: customer service, advice, and information by telephone were not possible in many places due to overloaded hotlines. In addition, the service from the home office presented many employees with new challenges.

AI Support In Voice Chats

A variation of text-based chatbots is AI audio systems that allow dialogues with spoken language. These systems can map conventional call centres better, faster, and more efficiently and give callers more friendly and personalised advice.

They are significantly more powerful and clever than previous audio menus, which are only equipped with speech recognition. They answer large parts of the classic standard inquiries independently and can forward users to call centre agents if they cannot process the request well.

Sustainable AI solutions can also extract the content of a conversation and prepare it for further processing by various service staff. As a result, customers do not have to tell the same story several times, and they also feel that they are experiencing high-speed service.

AI Assistants For Shopping Advice

Systems capable of learning can also enable individual advice and support for customers. The fashion industry is leading the way: many online boutiques have integrated photo-based product recommendations into their apps.

It works like this: The online shoppers take a picture of a pair of pants or a shirt that they like and see somewhere, for example, in a shop window or a fashion magazine. The AI ​​algorithm then identifies a specific type, cut, pattern, and colour of the garment. The app then shows either the product the online shopper is looking for or a characteristic, AI-based selection of similar outfits.