Within a decade, the market has seen a gigantic shift from human agents to futuristic digitalization that has resulted in the expansion of AI in every field. The market has seen unprecedented use of mobile devices and the highest escalation in the number of online users and shoppers. Cross-border commerce, borderless business, and national & international online retail have seen significant growth, thus making eCommerce a vital part of the industry. So much so that it’s hard to imagine retail without e-commerce, even for day-to-day activities. Amazon, Flipkart, and Nykaa are some to count. Since the market is swarming with eCommerce stores, there is an estimate of 12– 24 million eCommerce sites across the entire globe to target a huge market of 100 billion U.S. dollars for 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars approximate worldwide retail e-commerce sales. That's not all; the size of the chatbot market is predicted to be around 1.25 billion U.S. dollars by 2025. When any two of them are clubbed, the market size and revenue both see a steady increase. Close to 80% of websites are mobile-friendly, thus reshaping the shopping experience. The advent of coronavirus has a mushrooming effect on e-commerce and online shopping. Engagement and Delivery Services are the bedrock of Ecommerce Business. The more you care for your customers and their experience, the better they will treat your brand.

What is Conversational AI?

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI), as the name suggests, refers to technologies that can talk to users, like chatbots or voice assistants or interactive voice recognition systems or virtual agents. In order to imitate written text inputs, recognize speech, initiate or imitate human interaction or translate messages or meaning, Machine learning or Natural language Processing or NLP can be used. It helps customers through spoken or typed interfaces.

What are ML and NLP?

Machine Learning: A broad field of computer science that caters to building software with algorithms that improve automatically upon repeated use. Natural Language Processing: NLP is a field of machine learning that pays attention to modelling and interpreting language to improve human engagement. E-Commerce platforms need conversational AI to engage with their customers more often. They can indulge in QA or conduct surveys, MCQs or quizzes, sending reminders, offers, and discounts to keep their customers hooked.

Understanding the Working of Conversational AI

Using Conversational AI, chatbots can understand the requirement, intention, and context of the conversation based on demographics, interests, and psycho-graphics. Since chatbots are evolving at a quick pace, their use cases are growing as well. The majority of Chatbots are outperforming in sales, market research, and customer engagement. The implementation of NLP makes it easy to involve in contextual dialogue and complementary algorithms using Conversational AI. As long as the data of user inputs keep growing, AI masters the art of recognizing patterns to make predictions. Conversational AI takes these steps to engage with customers. Step 1: Input Generation –> Input Analysis -> Dialogue Management -> Reinforcement Learning Step 2: Input Generation - An Input can be generated by a user either through voice or text through a website or an app. Step 3: Input Analysis – Input can be either text-based or search-based. For text-based inputs, NLU, i.e., natural language understanding helps in pulling out the meaning. For speech-based input, ASR automatic speech recognition technology is used. Step 4: Dialogue Management - Natural Language Generation articulates a response. Step 5: Reinforcement Learning - After a thorough analysis of user inputs, machine learning algorithms refine replies over time for better responses.

How is Conversational AI helping e-Commerce Brands?

For an eCommerce company or a brand, continuous interaction is the key to maintaining healthy cliental. Simplify Journey Users love to get guided as they may find it difficult to find their way through. With chatbots as a guide, users can easily navigate through the site to find desirable services. Target specific navigation to retain more and more customers during their journey. Offer them personalized shopping advice. Such management will eventually boost conversion and revenue. Improve Customer Experience Having someone to cater to all the client needs, queries and requests are great for your business. Be with your clients throughout the process of making a conversion-centric move. Keep them updated about the product, shipping and other hook points. Personalized Interaction When in-store, users can go through everything on their own, but when online, they need to know the store to make a purchase. The fact that every site has a different interface and navigation menu is true to some point, and this may confuse the visitors. These conversational chatbots assist the visitors to collect and analyze the information and can shape their behaviour to make them win customized offers. Converting Possible Leads into Customers Conversational AI promotes businesses that demand automated communication at considerable cost with 24/7 availability. Using these bots, you can run campaigns, including referrals, coupons, discounts, and rewards for loyal customers and boost companies’ loyalty programs. Standalone apps and websites can deploy these conversational chatbots for sales, market research, and customer engagement. Pairing the popular messaging platforms - Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Google RCS with conversational AIs - will not only improve your retention rate but will also improve your customer engagement, ROI and have the widest real-world implementations. Online shopping is still a one-way experience, but to make it two-way, you can add add-ons like conversational AI or similar technology. At Assert IT Solutions, we are known for implementing such advanced technologies. Experts at Assert IT are endowed with top-notch skills and potential that help them deliver the best possible results in no time.