Compared to brick-and-mortar stores, ecommerce can showcase the widest variety of catalogs without requiring investment in an ample physical space. By capitalizing on the latest technologies like AR (Augmented Reality), buyers no longer feel the need to see, touch, and feel something before buying.

But there is a crucial experience that's lacking while buying online, and it's costing ecommerce businesses a lot.

Imagine the times when we walk into a physical store thinking about buying only one thing but come out with a dozen because the salesperson helps us realize we need them all.
Or when we go in with the idea of getting a specific brand but end up buying a different one because the salesperson educated us about how it's better while being cheaper.

These are the advantages of having someone by our side for instant clarifications, product recommendations, getting us special discounts, providing personalized service experience, and more.

This disadvantage inherent to ecommerce can be bridged by introducing chatbots to your websites. How do you use chatbots for ecommerce? The chatbots will be your trusted sales assistants who'll take care of your visitors by engaging them in real-time conversational commerce. Chatbots also carry the additional perks of being affordable, scalable, and available 24/7. Let's dive into everything you need to know about ecommerce chatbots.

What is an ecommerce chatbot?

An ecommerce chatbot is a virtual assistant powered by ML (Machine Learning) and NLP (Natural Language Processing) hosted on websites that understands visitors' queries, provides answers from your available knowledge resource, and guides them through their buying journey. With AI technology introduced in this mix, chatbots are a lot more powerful and capable to simulate a human salesperson for providing a personalized, memorable, and time-saving buying experience.

Types of ecommerce chatbots

There are three different types of ecommerce chatbots, each with advantages and limitations. Based on how your business operates and the use cases, you can select the type of ecommerce chatbot you want.

Rule-based chatbots for ecommerce

Rule-based chatbots are the traditional form of chatbots. They are just pre-defined questions, so they can't provide a personalized experience. Rule-based chatbots can be used by businesses looking to collect visitors' information and provide a basic level of resolution. Based on the keywords in the queries, the bot will share the relevant resources with them.

Smart conversational chatbots / AI chatbots

Smart conversational chatbots, also known as AI chatbots, are constantly trained models. Unlike rule-based chatbots, they aren't limited in their scope. With NLU (Natural Language Understanding) and NLG (Natural Language Generation), AI chatbots can understand the query and provide a personalized, engaging experience to visitors. Even complex queries can be handled by AI chatbots as they can learn from the available resources, saving human operators' time and energy.

AI chatbots can be helpful on ecommerce websites where the users would expect someone to be by their side the whole time and require assistance. Though they're best in conversations, they can't be used to create a flow of conversation or guide them through a buying journey like rule-based chatbots.

Hybrid chatbots

To nullify the limitations of rule-based and AI chatbots, hybrid chatbots for ecommerce combine the advantages of these two. Businesses can configure hybrid chatbots to collect information, take visitors through a guided buying journey, and provide resolution for even complex queries.

There are a plethora of ecommerce chatbots available in the market. Which is the best one, and which type of chatbot should you choose for your business?

Zoho SalesIQ, the best AI chatbot for ecommerce

Zoho SalesIQ, the Engagement Intelligence, is an industry-agnostic chatbot solution for your marketing, sales, and customer service departments.

Without a doubt, it's the best for ecommerce as you get access to all three types of chatbots:

SalesIQ has a simple codeless bot platform that allows even non-coders to build powerful bots that suit their business needs.
Feeling left out because you're a pro coder looking to build custom chatbots? SalesIQ has you covered with its scripting platform.
SalesIQ's Answer Bot, powered by Zoho's NLP, Zia, is a powerful AI chatbot that can help businesses make smart conversations and answer customer queries for instant response and faster resolution.
With the Answer Bot Card, you can combine the codeless and Answer Bots to function like a hybrid bot.
In addition, SalesIQ can be integrated with OpenAI's ChatGPT if businesses want to expand their service capabilities. With ChatGPT Assistant, SalesIQ will answer customer questions by scouring your website even if the information is unavailable in your resources.

Now that we've covered which chatbot to get, what are the benefits and use cases of using such AI assistants?

How to use ecommerce AI chatbots: Benefits and use cases

Not all ecommerce visitors are the same. Some could be a cold visitor, a warm prospect, or even an existing customer. An experienced salesperson at a physical store will be able to identify where they fall and provide personalized service. Likewise, ecommerce chatbots can be configured to identify who they are and give them a customized flow.

We'll discuss the benefits and use cases of ecommerce AI chatbots from three perspectives: For customers, prospects, and retention (and other benefits). Before we get into the depth of benefits and use cases, here's a sample of what an ecommerce AI chatbot looks like in action:

Benefits of ecommerce AI chatbots: For customers

If they're an existing customer, they'd visit your website to track their order, return/replace the order, buy again, or check with your customer service regarding any questions they have. SalesIQ's chatbots can be configured to achieve all the above use cases.

Track order

Return order

Replace order

Cancel order

Talk to customer support

Upsell / Cross-sell

While customers come for assistance, chatbots can also be configured to nudge them for upsell or cross-sell based on their conversation, or to inform them about the special offers you offer.

Benefits of ecommerce AI chatbots: For prospects

Collect prospect information

Chatbots can be used to collect the prospect's information and what they're looking for. This information can be used for future campaigns.

Share personalized offers and promotions

Based on the pages they visit and the interaction with the ecommerce website, chatbots can be configured to share personalized offers and promotions that'd help conversion.

Facilitate self-service

If visitors have a query about your product/service, AI chatbots can help resolve their queries. It can also recommend products in your catalog based on the queries they ask.

Connect to a human operator if needed

If the prospects still want to talk to an agent about an issue that's not resolved by chatbots, the latter can connect them to an available human operator.

Collecting payments

Once they decide on what to buy, instead of taking them to a different page to complete payments, chatbots can collect payment then and there, which decreases the number of cart abandonments/cancellations.

Nudge prospects to initiate conversation

Not every prospect will initiate a conversation to understand more about offerings, even if they're interested. To nudge those prospects to interact, chatbots can be triggered with a personalized message based on the prospect's activity.

Benefits of ecommerce AI chatbots: Retention and other benefits

Along with the above, using chatbots for ecommerce also has other benefits. In a consumer world, especially among ecommerce competitors, instant engagement and resolution are needed at every touchpoint. Businesses can provide this with chatbots. It'll help them deliver the best engaging experience, which in turn will help customers develop trust in your business.

With established trust, a customer will become your spokesperson, which will help you reach your Total Addressable Market (TAM) with minimal marketing spend and will directly impact your sales and revenue. In the long run, this'll help retain customers, increasing Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).

Chatbots for an Instant Messaging/social media-based ecommerce business

Businesses nowadays are taking advantage of Instant Messaging platforms like WhatsApp, WeChat, and Line, as well as social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook. More than any other industry, these platforms suit ecommerce the most. Many ecommerce businesses run solely via IM/SM.

If you're such a business, Zoho SalesIQ allows you to deploy chatbots to these channels and reap the same benefits we discussed above.

Use Zoho SalesIQ to build your custom ecommerce chatbot

nterested to set up Zoho SalesIQ on your ecommerce website? Here's an exclusive webinar on how to build a chatbot for your ecommerce. You can also check out our guide on 5 powerful ways to boost e-commerce customer engagement with Zobot.

Ecommerce chatbots: Types, use cases, and benefits