Billions of people around the world actively use messaging applications, such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Messenger (Statista 2022), revealing how the future of marketing and e-commerce develops within conversations, through these channels.
Estimates indicate that global spending on conversational commerce channels in 2021 was $41 billion. That figure is projected to increase nearly seven-fold by 2025, to a total of about $290 billion.
Interactions through social and instant messaging channels can be enhanced by conversational AI, in support of an omni-channel strategy, that facilitate access to information in an automated way, on the one hand, and involve customers in interactive conversations, on the other.
However, as highlighted in PWC’s “Experience is everything” research, multi-channel is not enough to gain consumer trust.
Conversational AI will allow you to follow customers in real time and to
hyper-personalize their purchasing choices.
The watchword is “customer experience”
But what makes the experience truly “good”?
According to PWC research, an optimal user experience must be: fast, convenient, consistent, friendly and “human-like”.
This means that technology supporting UX has to be able to understand the needs of consumers and to return a fast and punctual service without generating frustrations.
Also, technology automation has to favour human relationships and quality of service, by reducing the workload of micro-tasking activities, that impact sales staff daily job.
The competitive advantage in the e-commerce field focuses on two macro-areas: personalized interactions, on one hand, speed and availability of the service, on the other.
Artificial intelligence is the technology that combines the two areas and allows you to maximize results, in terms of customer experience, to help companies improve the customer shopping experience and gain a competitive advantage on the market.
Chat commerce best practice
Customers today expect punctual responses, personalized proposals, speed of resolution and 24/7 availability.
According to McKinsey data, 30% of customers are willing to pay more for personalized service.
The virtual assistants used in chat commerce improve the customer experience by providing consumers with a personalized, fast and convenient shopping experience, which translates into:
- User-friendly shopping experience
- Support in the purchase and payment process
- Use of customer data for personalized offers
- Efficient customer service available 24/7
PERSONALIZING THE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE WITH EMOTION AI
Conversational AI provides analytics from conversations’ data to build personalized offers based on customers’ buying interests, purchase history and products’ feedback.
But today we can do more, thanks to Emotion AI and specifically to the psychometric profiling solution PortrAIt by athics.
PortrAIt is a psychometric profiling technology, that results from the research work by MIT in Boston and the Bruno Kessler foundation in Trento.
PortrAIt is based on the analysis of function words used in a short message. The technology makes it possible to detect the interlocutor’s main character traits, such as, for example, the “propensity to churn” or the sensitivity towards a “logical” or “emotional” communication style.
Unlike sentiment analysis, which captures the snapshot of the moment or content analysis, which is based on the contents of the communication, the result of psychometric profiling is in real time and free of bias.
PortrAIt detects more than 80 character traits with a profiling reliability of 72%, which translates into greater opportunities for conversion rates, personalized engagement and brand loyalty development.
ConclusionS
According to Casaleggio Associati’s 2023 research, e-commerce operators in Italy believe that AI will have a significant impact on online sales within three years.
Virtual assistants play an increasingly central role in the purchasing process.
We are witnessing a new level of online sales experience, where you just need to interact with Alexa or Google Assistant to order dinner at home or get shopping suggestions.
On the other hand, Generative Commerce will be the new frontier for product customization, which will be possible to create from scratch with the help of an “artificial stylist”.
In fact, artificial intelligence is changing and will change the e-commerce business model.
https://www.ecommerceitalia.info/focus/rapporto-e-commerce-in-italia-2023/
