Hey Siri, can you open my email with the title Document? Sounds familiar?

People, especially millennials, love the concept of virtual assistance because it is less invading and does what it is meant for.

AI chatbots like Siri can solve unlimited everyday queries. It is a virtual assistant for a customer and a lead converter for an online retailer. 

Chatbots for business is one of the smartest technologies that is revolutionizing the way online retail business used to be!

From selecting a specific product to receiving customers’ reviews to receiving orders from the customers, a retail chatbot has it all. It is a boon for online retailers. 

Isn’t it impressive? 

We find it a fantastic tool as it can transform your business quite well. So before commencing further, we would like to give you a quick brief about what is a chatbot, what are the different types of chatbots for business, a few tips if you are building chatbots for retail and eCommerce for the first time, and features followed by basic steps to build a chatbot!

Let us make the definition simple for you.

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is an artificial intelligence (AI) software that can trigger a natural language conversation (or chat) with a human user via messaging apps, mobile apps, websites, or even the telephone. As the name suggests, they guide the human and give them the desired results with minimum hard work for the end-user.

Now that we know what a chatbot is. Let us find out their different types to identify the best chatbot platform for your retail store. 

Types of E-Commerce Chatbots  

• Scripted Bots

This is the most basic and popular type of e-commerce chatbot. These bots run on pre-programmed commands or scripts. They have been programmed to recognize certain words and respond to simple questions. They are, however, not quite adaptable and are being used by some online stores to make consumer experiences more natural.

• Smart bots

Driven by Artificial Intelligence, these ai chatbots have a better impact on user experience. They interact with users in a human-like manner. However, their work isn’t entirely automated, and they need human interaction to respond to specific customer queries.

• Intelligent Agent

Retail chatbots of this kind are the most advanced. They merge artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to become fully self-sufficient. Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, IBM Watson, are excellent examples of retail conversational ai chatbots.

We suggest using script chatbots for our clients. They are useful in almost any situation, from product reviews to customer service. Also, they are less expensive than AI-powered chatbots. However, the decision is yours to make based on your company requirements.

Features

Since there are multiple options available. You will need to decide what your future chatbot’s services and function will be. Chatbot applications could perform things like:

• Personal shopping assistant
• Product finder
• Order status tracker
• Notification 
• Customer service provider

Also, have a look at the most popular tasks performed by a chatbot on e-commerce websites. 

• Gather customer data and user feedback
• Advertise
• Manage online transactions
• Send notifications & reminders
• Provide Information Access
• Upsell products
• Conduct market research via quiz
• Provide personalized recommendations
• Provide customers support
• Automate business process

Tips for building your first chatbot

If you’re a go-getter and want to make your chatbot, keep reading for expert tips on creating a retail chatbot, as well as setbacks and triumphs they had during the process! 

1. Make sure your chatbot does not sound robotic

Though your chatbot is a robot, it should not seem like one. Use natural language processing to provide your bot with a natural conversation flow that makes it human-like & simple to understand is important for building up customer interactions with your retail bot.

1. Remember these four steps: Build. Train. Deploy. Track.

For the non-tech-savvy, remember these four steps when creating your retail chatbot: build, train, deploy, & track. 

• Build: Once you decide your bot usage, how intelligent you want it to be, and where it will be hosted; you are ready to train it to have human-facing interactions.
• Train: Training your chatbot is a relatively simple process. But incredibly repetitive. Depending on how intelligent you want your bot to be, you can have it react to FAQs and scripted inquiries on a basic level, or you can have it understand human language by feeding it sample interactions to improve its natural language abilities.
• Deploy: Once users know your bot is live, they’ll know to use it as a knowledge source for finding information as well as asking questions about your company, products, & everything else the bot has been programmed to react.
• Track: This final step is one far too many people skip over. Track the success of your chatbot to see how efficient adding the best retail chatbot for your company.

1. Pre-Plan the time-consuming processes

When creating a chatbot, you need to inspect multiple aspects. 

To begin, make a list of all the tasks your chatbot will be responsible for. Then, create a diagram and analyze the conversation flow with your chatbot.

• Budget wisely, especially when using advanced features

The only real barrier in setting up is chatbot price. The learning curve isn’t steep, but it is time-taking. 

• Prepare for limitations

The time it takes to build a chatbot relies on its complexity. If you are going to do a simple lead generation bot that sends the customer a resource or coupon after they submit their info, this can take less than an hour. However, if you want to do a calculator or quiz where there is a score or multiple outcomes based on your answers, it can take several days to test and work properly.

How to Develop a Chatbot online: a Step-by-Step Guide

Welcome to the most awaited part of the article, which takes you one step closer to transforming your online store customer experience.

The steps for developing a chatbot for retail and eCommerce are outlined below. 

• Backend

The backend of the chatbot allows it to handle messages from multiple channels and process them using natural language processing. The backend of a chatbot interacts with conversational intelligence and the online shop system to make the conversation happen.

• Channels

Identify where your future chatbot to interact with your customers. It could be your eStore, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, etc. Selecting an appropriate channel is critical. Otherwise, you might detach and disappoint your customers, who are expecting certain features.

Developers build modules to integrate a chatbot’s backend with each of the channels you have chosen. After the developer has decided on the channels to use, the next move is to decide on the UI components.

• Natural Language Processing

Your e-commerce chatbot will send and receive messages once the development team has finished with the backend and the channels have been defined. The next move is to incorporate NLP services into your chatbot to allow it to retrieve entities and intents from customer messages. Most NLP services allow users to manually enter entities and values into the UI.

The e-commerce team maps entities to specific objects that already exist in your e-commerce systems, such as Contacts, Catalogs, Products, etc. On top of the extracted data, the development team applies certain business logic validation rules.

• Conversational Intelligence

Conversational Intelligence is a map of the consumer journey built on NLP entities and intents. Developers build the algorithm for each conversation, as well as basic navigation. In some instances, they build clear decision state workflow, trees, and slot-based chats. When clients need a more advanced approach, they use a deep learning algorithm to handle the communication.

• Conversational UI

As previously discussed, the conversational interface is concerned with your eStore customer’s chatbot conversation. It should be close to a normal human conversation, easy, and have intuitive interfaces to provide a good user experience. For this, chatbot creators consider the conversation flow and how it solves users’ issues.

Are you ready to board the chatbot train?

Sometimes, it is also better to defy trends and do your own thing. This isn’t one of those occurrences. Consider adding an AI chatbot to your website to ensure you are on board with the forward progress of human-bot interaction!

However, if you still face problems in finding a feasible chatbot solution for your eStore. Then, hiring the best chatbot development company is a better way to stop further delays. The chatbot company will give you perfect chatbot solutions and will only provide top retail chatbots for you.

• What is a retail chatbot?

Retail bots scan the website pages around the globe for the exact second an item/product goes on sale. It alerts their owners so they can beat the crowd.

• What are the benefits of chatbots in the retail industry?
• Sales boost and conversion rate
• You are available 24*7
• They are the cornerstones of your conversational marketing strategy.
• Learn about your customer’s behavior.
• What are the best shopping chatbots for an eCommerce store?

WeChat, Shopify Messenger, LetsClap, KikBotShop, yellow Messenger, etc., are examples of the chatbot for retail stores.

For all your queries pertaining to chatbots and understanding how can AI and ML help you leverage your business enterprise with the right technology, For further information please reach us at  cawimarketing@msystechnologies.com