Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being applied in almost all industries under the sun, and eCommerce is no exception. Many retailers are turning to AI for things such as customer service and enhancing software. In some cases, it is also being used to create new channels of revenue. Regardless of how it is being used, the point is that online retailers are using AI in numerous forms in an effort to better understand their customers, generate new leads and provide an enhanced customer experience.
Another way AI is used is to identify exceptional prospects worth targeting. This is a big time-saver for sales teams that could use help in lead generation. It is also possible to integrate AI into CRM to create a more efficient sales process. This allows the CRM systems to answer customer queries, solve their problems and even identify new opportunities for the sales teams to jump on. Some AI-driven CRM systems can multitask to handle all these functions and even more. It may sound a little crazy at first, but these systems enable natural language learning and voice input, similar to Siri and Alexa.
AI also helps create new levels of personalization across multiple devices. Thanks to the ever-increasing advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies, new deep levels of personalization have started to penetrate the fast-growing e-commerce world. In a nutshell, AI engines continuously monitor all connected devices and channels to create a universal customer view. This unified customer view thereby enables e-commerce retailers to deliver a seamless customer experience across all platforms and touchpoints. What does this mean? Well if a customer was browsing leather jackets on your site from their their desktop and later their smartphone, you would be able to send them a push notification informing them of a flash sale on all leather jackets.
Chatbots are another popular form of AI being used in eCommerce. They can be used for processing inquiries, to customer service, to serving as a digital personal shopping assistant. One of the main reasons chatbots are so popular is because they stemmed from messaging services, which quickly became a natural form of communication for users in recent years. Chatbots are impacting the way customers purchase, and provide a creative opportunity for eCommerce retailers to take advantage of.
In the most simplest form, AI is used to improve recommendations for customers. These recommendations can be made based on previous purchases, items in the cart/wishlist, pages previously viewed, and more. This is a form of AI which continues to develop, as it is an important focus in ‘hyper personalization’, which could only be facilitated by learning genuine consumer behavior and making predictions with gargantuan amounts of data that is collected from user activities on smartphones, tablets and desktops.