Understanding Customer Preferences

AI-driven analytics provide retailers with deep insights into customer behavior and preferences. By analyzing data from various sources such as purchase history, browsing behavior, and social media activity, AI can create detailed customer profiles. These profiles enable retailers to understand what products customers are interested in, their purchasing patterns, and even their preferred shopping times.

For instance, a clothing retailer might use AI to analyze the buying habits of their customers and discover that a particular group prefers shopping for casual wear on weekends. With this information, the retailer can tailor their marketing strategies, stock the preferred products, and even send personalized promotions to these customers, enhancing their shopping experience.

Real-Time Personalization

One of the most significant advantages of AI in retail is its ability to provide real-time personalization. In-store AI systems can offer personalized recommendations to customers as they shop. For example, smart mirrors in fitting rooms can suggest accessories or complementary items based on the customer’s selections. Similarly, mobile apps integrated with AI can send personalized offers and product suggestions as customers move through the store.

This level of personalization not only makes the shopping experience more enjoyable but also increases the likelihood of additional purchases. Customers feel valued when they receive relevant suggestions, which can lead to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Enhancing Customer Service

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are becoming commonplace in retail environments, providing instant customer service and support. These AI systems can answer questions, help locate products, and even assist with checkout processes. By integrating natural language processing (NLP), these assistants can understand and respond to customer inquiries in a conversational manner.

For instance, an AI chatbot in a grocery store can help customers find specific items, provide information about product availability, and suggest recipes based on the items in their shopping cart. This immediate assistance improves the shopping experience by making it more efficient and enjoyable.

Optimizing Inventory Management

Inventory management is a critical aspect of retail operations, and AI plays a crucial role in optimizing it. AI systems can predict demand more accurately, ensuring that popular items are always in stock while minimizing excess inventory. This optimization reduces costs and ensures that customers can find the products they want when they want them.

For example, an AI system might analyze sales data and seasonal trends to predict a surge in demand for sunscreen during the summer months. The retailer can then adjust their inventory accordingly, ensuring they have enough stock to meet customer demand without overstocking.

Streamlining Operations

AI helps streamline various operational aspects of retail, from supply chain management to staffing. Predictive analytics can forecast peak shopping times, allowing retailers to schedule staff more effectively and ensure that there are enough employees to assist customers during busy periods. Additionally, AI can optimize supply chain processes by predicting delays and recommending alternative routes or suppliers.

By improving operational efficiency, AI allows retailers to focus more on enhancing the customer experience. For example, by automating routine tasks such as inventory checks and reordering, store employees can spend more time assisting customers and providing personalized service.

Case Study: A Major Retailer

A major international retailer implemented AI-driven solutions to personalize their in-store shopping experience. By analyzing customer data, the retailer developed a comprehensive understanding of their customers’ preferences and behaviors. They used this information to personalize marketing campaigns, optimize product placement, and provide real-time recommendations through in-store kiosks.

As a result, the retailer saw a significant increase in customer engagement and sales. Personalized promotions led to higher conversion rates, and the efficient inventory management system ensured that popular products were always available. The AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants improved customer service, reducing wait times and enhancing the overall shopping experience.

Future Prospects

The future of AI in retail looks promising, with continuous advancements expected to further enhance personalization and operational efficiency. Future developments may include more sophisticated AI algorithms that provide even deeper insights into customer preferences, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) integrations for immersive shopping experiences, and enhanced AI-driven customer service solutions.

As AI technology evolves, its applications in retail will become more refined, offering retailers new opportunities to connect with customers and improve their shopping experiences. Retailers that embrace these advancements will be well-positioned to stay competitive in an increasingly digital marketplace.

For retailers looking to implement AI solutions, Certainly offers a range of advanced tools tailored to enhance in-store shopping experiences. To learn more about their pricing and services, visit Certainly’s pricing page.

The post AI in Retail: Personalizing Shopping Experiences In-Store appeared first on Certainly.

1. Certainly: Where advanced automation meets customer experience awesomeness!

Hold onto your hats, folks, because Certainly is about to blow your mind with its mind-boggling customer experience automation. No need to be a coding wizard here – Certainly’s no-code platform and intuitive conversation builder make creating advanced conversation flows a piece of cake. Say goodbye to slow support and hello to lightning-fast, joy-inducing customer service.

Our chatbot is like a ninja that seamlessly integrates into your existing tech stack, just hanging out with your human agents. They’re best buds with all the leading commerce platforms like Shopify, Magento, and Centra and CRMs like Gorgias, Zendesk, and Salesforce. We’re the only platform on this list with a Shopify App. Plus, we offer custom API integrations to make your backend systems sing and dance with automation. Repetitive tasks? Certainly’s got you covered. The Platform’s got everything under control, from answering customer questions across all digital channels and social media platforms to giving you mind-blowing analytics and multilingual reporting.

Oh, and here’s the cherry on top – Certainly AI technology lets you whip up a custom-built AI model using your historical support data. It’s like having a bot that speaks your language (literally, with our new multi-language feature), understands your quirks, and knows your business inside out. And fear not, data warriors, because Certainly is GDPR compliant, keeping your precious information safe and sound.

So, buckle up, my friends, because Certainly is here to take your customer support game to new heights!

2. Answer Bot: Guiding customers to knowledge base bliss

Zendesk’s Answer Bot is here to level up your customer experience. This out-of-the-box, no-code solution is perfect for Zendesk users looking to enhance their support game. While it may not handle complex business cases, Answer Bot makes our list of best chatbots by speaking 18 languages and working like a charm across email, chat, and messaging apps.

3. Netomi: Conversational delight for voice bots

Netomi‘s AI chatbot takes the art of conversation to new heights. Powered by NLU and trained on past messages, it can effortlessly handle customer questions across chat, email, voice, and social platforms. With out-of-the-box integrations and support for over 100 languages, Netomi makes global customer service a breeze.

4. Freddy AI: The fresh face of simple automation

Freshworks’ Freddy AI specializes in automating common queries in 54 languages. Learning from your knowledge base and FAQs, Freddy adapts and improves over time. Its no-code decision tree bot builder is user-friendly, making automation a snap.

5. Zowie: The retailer’s dream bot

Zowie is a chatbot designed for ecommerce brands. Leveraging existing support data, Zowie automates repetitive customer questions effortlessly. Zowie supports a whopping 48 languages and maximizes personalized customer care while boosting sales.

6. Ada: Proactive support made easy

Ada‘s AI chatbot is all about proactive customer service. Designed to create personalized experiences at scale, Ada cuts waiting times and speaks over 100 languages. It’s a true powerhouse with an intuitive, no-code bot builder and integrations galore.

7. Einstein: Salesforce’s AI superstar

Einstein, Salesforce’s AI chatbot, is a force to be reckoned with. Not only does it deliver personalized chat support, but it also streamlines workflows and drives sales. If you’re already using Salesforce, Einstein is an excellent add-on. Just remember that it requires some internal resources and time to get up and running.

8. IBM Watson Assistant: The best chatbot for multinationals

When it comes to multinational companies, IBM’s chatbot Watson Assistant is one of the best. This low-code platform ensures no data is left behind by seamlessly integrating with your CRM and backend systems. With pre-built templates and extensive integrations, Watson Assistant is ready to roll across digital and legacy channels.

9. Boost.ai: The conversational maestro

Boost.ai is a conversational AI platform that automates support for customer service teams. Whether it’s customer-facing chatbots or internal voice assistants for IT or HR departments, Boost.ai has got you covered. With easy integrations and support for multiple apps, it’s all about empowering your team.

10. Zoom Virtual Assistant: The English bot extraordinaire!

With a customizable UI and major CRM integrations, Zoom’s Virtual Assistant is best at providing personalized experiences and fast, accurate support across channels. Zoom Virtual Assistant’s over a hundred pre-built intents and NLP-powered learning allow for easy setup and maintenance with minimal friction.

Mie Elmkvist Schneider wrote this article. The visuals were by Vital Sinkevich, and it was edited by Fergus Doyle.

The post Best AI chatbots for customer service: Ten superb platforms to enhance your support with a dash of AI magic appeared first on Certainly.

There is not, of course, a single silver bullet solution to improving your company’s efficiency. This blog post will focus primarily on reducing returns through product recommendation AI. It will also consider how these technologies fit into a broader tech stack.

How much are returns impacting your business?

In some ways, returns are unavoidable when running an ecommerce business. Items will get damaged, won’t always look or fit as imagined, won’t always be the gift the recipient was expecting. That doesn’t mean merchants shouldn’t be doing everything they can to reduce the rate as much as possible. The National Retail Federation reported that $212 billion worth of goods purchased online were returned in 2022. Each returned item cost the brand (roughly) 66% of its initial value after taking into account the logistics of the return and the potential for marking down the price of a returned item. As such, if brands want to increase their efficiencies, dealing with all but the most unavoidable returns is a must.

This importance of reducing returns has become more evident in recent years. Even as recently as 2021, McKinsey reported that 33% of retailers didn’t see reducing returns as among their top five priorities. However, an IMRG report from earlier this year found that that number had halved to 17%. The need to increase efficiencies for digital commerce brands has been made more evident by the reopening of physical stores after the end of the lockdowns and the squeeze on consumer budgets caused by rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis in the UK.

Why use product recommendation AI?

The best way to ensure that customers don’t return products is by making sure they purchase the right product. The first place to start is with a product recommendation AI. This will help guide your potential customer to an item they will want to keep. Product recommendation systems utilize sophisticated algorithms which use vast amounts of your store’s customer data, such as purchase history, preferences, and search behavior.

Product recommendation AIs thrive in collaboration with Conversational UX solutions. By introducing a conversational UX element to your recommendation system – for example, an AI chatbot that can respond to customer requests and queries – you can improve the accessibility of this feature to customers. This improved ease of use will make it easier for your website visitors to navigate to the item they’re looking for, answer any questions they have, and assist with sizing.  

Effective product recommendation and personalization don’t just affect the pre-sales section of the customer journey. McKinsey reports that 71% of customers expect the personalized shopping experience that a recommendation AI can provide. Furthermore, 78% are more likely to return to a brand that offers that experience. The more that these customers return to your store, the better you get to know their buying habits. This is done by analyzing their purchases or collecting zero-party data through chatbot conversations about their preferences. This makes it easier to serve them, ensuring that they buy the correct item and remain a loyal customer.

Beyond product recommendation AI

As mentioned earlier in this post, there is a healthy level of returns to expect while running an ecommerce business that tools like recommendation AI aren’t going to get around.

There are also minor adaptations you can make to your website, for instance, making product information like color, fit, material, and sizing clearer. This can be enhanced with a chatbot to present the information quickly and clearly, in a conversational style.

These tools can also complement a wider tech stack, especially streamlined logistical technology, and customer service automation. According to a 2020 study by Doddle, 84% of consumers said they’d be more likely to return to a brand if they had a positive return experience with them. As such, making return information easily accessible, either through FAQs on your website or with a chatbot, and making the process to return as smooth as possible is essential for boosting customer lifetime value.

Fergus Doyle wrote this article with visuals by Vital Sinkevich.

The post How recommendation AI could help boost your webshop’s efficiency appeared first on Certainly.

Interest in these technologies is growing. For instance, Statista predicts that the chatbot market will reach $1.25 billion (€1.1 billion) in the next five years, up from $190 million (€168 million) in 2016. Customer trends reflect this; a recent report by Zendesk has found that ticket reporting is rising across all channels, with three-quarters of customers expecting instantaneous responses.

Building a chatbot, however, is a daunting prospect. Regardless of size, you probably don’t have the resources to build chat functionality from scratch. But if you’re using a platform with premade content and an easy-to-use builder, like Certainly, your job will become 100x easier.

What is Conversational UX?

Conversational UX (not to be confused with conversational UI) encapsulates the user’s experience as they interact with your website. The ultimate goal of good conversational UX is to enable your customer to complete their interaction without resorting to any means other than the conversation and with as little friction as possible. A Certainly chatbot, for example, can inform the user of a product, help them find the right fit or color, add it to the cart, and support their checkout, all from the chat window.

Beyond this, the more human-like your bot is, the better your conversational UX. This is all very well, but people have been working for over 50 years to make human-like chatbots, so let’s look at some ways you can develop this element of Conversational UX without building a sentient AI.

Several things will make your customer relate to your chatbot more early on. One that a lot of our customers do is name their chatbot. A great example of this is Feastables’ FeastyBot; a brand mascot that speaks in the brand’s voice. This creates a connection between customer and chatbot, making them feel as if they are speaking to an actual person, even if it first says, “I’m a chatbot” (more on that later).

Similarly, you don’t have to make your chatbot speak like a robot; write its script as if it was a human agent! Have it speak in the first person, use a bit of slang, or give them emotive responses. For instance, instead of saying, “This belt will match these jeans,” have the script say, “Oh, do you know what? I think this belt will go GREAT with those jeans!”. Same meaning, but much more personal.

AI-powered chatbots

These linguistic tricks are just the start. Firstly, creating a “contextual chatbot” is one of the best ways to humanize engagement. This is a bot that is aware of what has already been said in the chat and uses this information to produce a smoother user experience.

Suppose the chatbot cannot remember a customer request from a few messages ago, let alone the last time they visited your webshop. In that case, the interaction will frustrate the customer, and they might even abandon their purchase. The chatbot will also be unable to cross-sell, given that it won’t be able to connect what the customer might want with what they’ve already purchased. 

Secondly, a must-have is a chatbot built with NLU/NLP (Natural-Language Understanding/Processing). NLU is the ability of your bot to understand and respond to natural (human) language using context, pre-built dictionaries, and learned responses.

Instead of guessing which specific words your users might use and populating individual responses to each word or phrase, a chatbot with NLU capabilities can respond to groups of terms based on tone or theme. This will save you time and resources and reduce the risk of dead ends in the conversation or the chatbot misunderstanding the user.

This may seem a bit complicated, but some of the more user-friendly builders have these functions out of the box, trained on ecommerce with pre-built intents.

Things to avoid for Conversational UX

This is not to say you’re trying to pass the Turing Test. In fact, there are plenty of things you should avoid doing when making your customer service chatbot.

For instance, it’s crucial to inform the user early on that they’re talking to a chatbot. It establishes the conversation’s parameters and helps build trust with the customer. If they think they’re speaking to a human operator and, suddenly, the chatbot can’t deal with their request and offers a handover, the customer will potentially lose trust or get frustrated.

Another thing to avoid is trying to make the scope of your chatbot too broad. For example, suppose your bot is intended as a customer support rep. In that case, it only needs to be able to respond to customer service-related queries. It shouldn’t be making small talk or dealing with irrelevant questions. The main reason is that it streamlines the process as much as possible, both development and user experience.

Having some non-utilitarian options for the customer is fine, of course. For example, Siksilk’s chatbot, Melo, will tell a fun story about how it used to be a voice haunting their Scarborough office until they hired it. The crucial part is to give the customer what they ask for.

In the same way that not being able to grasp the context of the conversation will lead to friction in the interaction, as will the chatbot interrupting the flow to tell a joke or make small talk. 

A delicate balance

Conversational UX is a tricky balance of human-like habits and automated responses. Ultimately, you want to create a friendly chatbot that users can engage with and which creates value by helping users navigate product selection or helping businesses decrease cart abandonment.

Fergus Doyle wrote this article with visuals by Vital Sinkevich.

The post Conversational UX for ecommerce: how human is too human? appeared first on Certainly.

Hidden costs of returns 

One key aspect of returns that is often overlooked is the cost involved. Sophie notes that “it’s very hard for brands to put a number on the cost of returns.” This is because it includes not only shipping and logistics costs but also hard-to-quantify elements. For instance, how much time does customer service spend handling a return? And then can you restock that item, or is it already out of hype, and then you can’t sell it anymore?”

Furthermore, issues in the supply chain have exacerbated these problems. Edited notes that YoY delivery times have dropped. This will have a knock-on effect on your ability to resell a returned item. If, as with one of yayloh’s customers, you sell something with a short selling window like swimwear, an item will spend all its time in transit and then the warehouse, making it almost impossible to resell during the same season.  

In terms of pure cost, Gulnaz estimates, “it’s around 20% of the item’s price on average that brands will lose. And of course, some items will be much higher, especially if you sell items in the lower price range because just for shipping, you will probably spend the fixed cost of €10 to €15 or so. And if you sell a t-shirt for €25, half of that amount is already gone because you need to pay those costs.” 

Another less-discussed cost of returns is the environmental aspect. Gulnaz notes something that has also been picked up by outlets like NPR and the BBC: that huge amounts of returned items go straight to landfill with no hopes of being resold. She tells us this is “either because it costs them more to process it, to clean it up, to repackage and put it back on the website, or because they can only sell it at a discount.”  

Reduce returns by learning from your customers 

Using customer data can be a powerful tool for reducing returns in your business. Although it may seem obvious, a key factor in limiting returns is discovering exactly why your customers are returning items. As Gulnaz puts it, returns are “an indicator that the experience is not quite hitting the mark.”  

As Sophie pointed out, brands need to capture qualitative feedback, particularly regarding fit issues. This can help them to make necessary adjustments to future products. For example, she told us about a brand that was getting a lot of returns on a pair of pants. Once they started collecting more data on the reason for returning – beyond simply that they didn’t fit – they discovered that the leg measurement was too long, which was fed back to the production team for the next season. 

As such, you need to collect more involved customer data than simply “it didn’t fit” or “it’s defective.” Finding out exactly why a customer returns can save you from sizing and fitting issues. It can also prevent defective products from being restocked, resold, and re-returned.  

Educating customers to reduce returns 

Once you’ve collected this data, you can use it to inform your customers to pre-empt further returns. It can be fed back into the website experience as well as product development. If customers are unclear on sizing and fit, you can provide images of a wider variety of models. Gulnaz mentions a cosmetics brand, Glossier, which has “maybe 15 shades of blushes, and they show how differently the same shade will look depending on your skin tone.” This helps customers make informed decisions. 

By providing this information, you can alleviate one of the most significant issues in ecommerce right now: bracketing. Briefly, bracketing is when customers buy several of one item to ensure they get the right size, color, or fit. But despite 63% of shoppers reporting having done it at least once, Sophie doesn’t believe it’s inevitable. In fact, as she said, “everyone hates it. Brands hate it, but I think also consumers hate it… most customers just want to find the right product.” This information can be provided in various ways. You can have multiple models with different body types or use a tool like Easysize to provide more comprehensive sizing.

And don’t be shy in providing this kind of information across the customer journey. Although the checkout can seem sacred, Gulnaz points out it’s a great place to see if customers are bracketing and inform them of their options. You could, for instance, have a chatbot prompt the customer, asking them “whether they need some help with sizes and help them to go through the process.”  

The same can be said of the climate cost of returns. Recent data from Captera found that consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products and options. However, it may be that they don’t realize quite how impactful their return can be. So, informing the customer of the cost of their return can encourage them to do the research to make the correct purchase.  

Change your mindset

The most important elements of the discussion can be summed up by a quote from each of our guests. Sophie encouraged everyone to “change how you look and act on returns.” Remember that your customer wants to buy the correct product for them. As such, your customer journey should be engineered to ensure they find the right item as painlessly as possible.

Gulnaz said to “use the data, collect the data, analyze the data, make sure you can put it into action… Don’t let the data disappear.” That way, finding the pain points where your customers are returning – either unintentionally due to production errors or intentionally because they’re bracketing – becomes much easier. 

If you want to hear more of Gulnaz & Sophie’s wisdom, check out the episode of Ecommerce Corner they joined us on! 

Fergus Doyle wrote this article with visuals by George Radu.

The post Everything you wanted to know about returns (but were too afraid to ask) appeared first on Certainly.

Well, we’re eager to answer those questions. So, in October 2022, we invited Luke Jonas, CCO of Nest Commerce, to chat with us about the dos and don’ts of performance marketing for our Ecommerce Corner webinar. In this post, we’ve boiled down his wisdom to help you decide whether TikTok is right for you.  

How TikTok differs from other kinds of marketing 

Luke highlighted two key differences between running ads on Meta and TikTok. These were the relationship between paid and organic, and working out strategies for measuring performance. 

Unlike Meta, Luke says that brands can run successful TikTok campaigns without investing in organic. “The correlation between organic and paid is interesting. Organic and paid are inextricably linked in Meta, on Instagram specifically. I’m sure lots of people would disagree with me, but on TikTok, it seems to be less linked. I know brands that spend large amounts of money on TikTok daily and do zero organic. So, it’s less about followers and organic.”  

With regard to metrics, Luke notes the difficulty of measuring success with such a new platform. Meta has tried-and-true strategies, but for TikTok, brands are still working it out: “because it’s new, it’s harder to establish what’s working and what isn’t. And you might need to look at slightly different metrics or use attribution software. We’ve seen some brands using self-reported attribution, effectively just asking their customers where and how they found them, and TikTok comes up a lot.”   

Should your company be thinking about TikTok marketing? 

First, Luke tells us you need to ensure TikTok will fit into your existing marketing strategy. “If your Meta’s a mess and you need to fix that, why on Earth are you testing TikTok? You need Meta; you’ll get higher scale, higher ROI. You go to TikTok when you’re getting good results from Meta, and you can’t do anything more to it to fix it. Then you would go to TikTok.” 

One concern you might have is whether TikTok is the right platform for your target demographic. Luke warns against worrying about the stereotype that TikTok only has young users: “Right now, it has about a billion monthly active users. A billion monthly active users can’t all be just children because, just, the simple economics of that number.”  

And he’s right; according to Statista, around 50% of TikTok’s users in the US are over 30. In Luke’s experience, brands targeting this kind of consumer worked very well with TikTok. “Low AOV businesses targeting sub-30-year-old. Beauty or health, that worked pretty well. Not as scalable as Meta, but you could get it moving with the right creative strategy. But now, it’s really interesting, and what makes me really enthusiastic is that we’ve got fashion businesses targeting females aged 30 to 45 with AOV to £200 hitting their CPA targets on TikTok.” 

What to do if you think TikTok marketing is right for you 

If you think TikTok advertising is the right move for your marketing team, you can’t just go in blind. “The first thing you need is a hypothesis to prove, you need some metrics to judge it against, and you need to get internal buy-in, whether you’re a business owner or you work for a business. Then, if it passes this validation process, what happens? Can I get the budget, am I going to invest more budget into it?”  

But as Luke tells us, you need to execute your test quickly. “At the moment, there’s a big cost opportunity to be experimenting in TikTok. I don’t think I’ll be saying the same thing in a year’s time because I predict it to become a significant proportion of people’s advertising budgets in ecommerce.” Indeed, Nest Commerce’s own research has found that 85% of ecommerce companies plan to increase their TikTok spending in 2023. In comparison, most brands anticipate that they’ll either decrease their Meta spend or keep it the same.  

You also need to clarify what consists of a successful test: “you need to frame it and work out what pass or fail looks like, using metrics that you have access to, which could be further up the funnel.” As mentioned above, it can be harder to find performance metrics within TikTok. You’ll need to supplement it with self-attributed reporting.  

Next, you need to prepare the creative; “the creative itself needs to be TikTok style, like lo-fi creative. So, you can’t just port your Meta creative onto TikTok and expect it to work.” You also need to be ready to make more content, as TikTok “eats creative at twice the speed as Meta.” So, when you’re just starting out and finding your feet, you can start by making organic content before going into paid. “Organic with TikTok is a good way to test what’s actually going to work in paid, because paid TikTok ads often look like organic anyway. So, you could de-risk your production cost by doing organic posts, understanding what works, and then running them as a paid post as well.” 

Strategy is everything! 

Luke left us with the critical point: “You’ve got to have considered creative strategy for TikTok… the broad advice would be: if you’re within marketing, don’t do anything unless it has intention. And that intention should fit into your broader strategy. So, for example, if you’re considering testing TikTok, why, why are you doing that? And if you are doing it, what is the intention? What are you trying to achieve?” 

But if your company isn’t ready to embrace TikTok, it doesn’t mean you should cut back on your marketing budget. As Luke says: “If you play it really cautious and pull back on all of your advertising, your competitors that aren’t being cautious during this period, they’re going to steal your market share, and you’re going to come out the other end of the recession with a smaller business and competitively less strong to your competition.” 

This article was written by Fergus Doyle. The visuals were by Vital Sinkevich, and it was edited by Cassie Powell.

The post Should you embrace TikTok marketing? appeared first on Certainly.

Writing Effective Chatbot Copy 

So you’ve been tasked with writing the content for, or the “voice of,” a chatbot. Lucky you- it’s a fun project, combining conversational writing skills with effective customer support copy. But where do you start? How do you ensure that the conversational flows match the company’s needs? How do you make sure you’re effectively engaging with the end user?  

Step 1: Learn the Brand 

In order to build a chatbot that represents a brand’s customer support team, you’ll need to become familiar with their commonly-asked questions, automated responses, and overall brand voice. Check in with the CS team to request access to whatever platform they use (Kustomer, Gorgias, Zendesk, etc.) and poke around in their shortcut response database to get a feel for the types of conversations they’re having with customers. Ask the marketing team for any brand materials that will help you get to know their brand voice.  

Using the marketing materials you’re given, try to get the clearest possible picture of the end user so that you can write for that person. As a copywriter, you’re probably familiar with writing for a specific audience. Gen Z gamer types? Pepper in some internet slang. Hyper-feminine beauty brand? A flower emoji goes a long way.  

Step 2: Get to Know the Provider 

Set up a time to talk with the brand and their bot platform (Certainly, for instance) rep to get familiar with the canvas and learn how to input your content. That way, you can edit and update the chatbot without needing to go through anyone else. 

Step 3: Familiarize Yourself With the Flows 

Once the brand’s working “sandbox” chatbot has been built, you can go in and begin editing copy. LucidChart is an excellent third-party platform you and your team can use to map out conversational flows before adding them to your bot.  

Step 4: Give the Bot a Personality 

This one’s easy, especially if you already nailed the brand’s voice in step 1. For some companies, giving the chatbot a name and an avatar can help boost engagement and improve the user’s experience. Try making the bot’s greeting something that feels personal and fun. Here’s a great example from RoadRunner Scooters chatbot, Scooter:  

If your client is up for it, you can start having fun with the bot once you’ve built the critical pieces. For example, FeastyBot, Feastables‘ bot, offers a “Secret Door” option. This leads to fun facts about the brand, a link to the company’s social media channels, and even a few jokes.    

Step 5: Post-launch Maintenance 

Before you launch the bot, make sure to set up a plan about maintaining it with your team or client. Certainly does a fantastic job of following up after launch to provide insight into how the bot is performing, which sometimes creates the need for new content. Expect to be available for content edits and additions for at least a month after the bot goes live.  

Writing a chatbot is a great way to flex your customer-facing creative writing chops while significantly impacting your client’s customer support capabilities. Have fun!

If you’re interested in finding out more about writing the best chatbot copy. In that case, you should check out these blog posts on the ten user experience mistakes to avoid and the reasons why a conversational UI is perfect for ecommerce. 

This article was written by Lucy Samuel with visuals by George Radu. It was edited by Fergus Doyle.

The post A Handy Guide to Writing Effective Chatbot Copy  appeared first on Certainly.

What’s your strategy for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2022? In all likelihood, you’re going to see your website traffic double (exciting), conversion rates go up (hooray), and nearly a third of your customers return their purchases (scary).  

The peak season will add extra stress on your employees and, if not correctly dealt with, may reduce customer loyalty and lifetime value; even with regards to returns, 92% of customers who make returns will come back to your webshop if the process is straightforward and smooth. 

We know that growing an ecommerce business is hard, now more than ever. Without the correct preparation, Black Friday and Cyber Monday can make it even tougher; so, we’ve put together a few insights and strategies! 

AI chatbot adoption insights

• Depending on the time of year, WISMO (where is my order) inquiries can amount to 40% of all customer inquiries. This can become a sunk cost for brands.
• Visma relies on an AI chatbot for 87% of all inquiries
• During Black Friday, the Fragrance Shop’s artificial intelligence chatbot handled 10000 orders

AI-enhanced Chat Bots work for your business 24/7/365, delivering qualified responses and resolving customer issues as quickly as possible. Building a bot that can generate leads right away and then automate the next steps based on customers’ needs is worth it. More and more brands realize that customized chatbot solutions speed up customer acquisition and retention and often turn website visitors into repeat and loyal customers. 

In 2020 and 2021, over 40% of physical sales in shops were lost as a result of the pandemic. Despite the decline in offline sales, online sales surpassed $100 billion for the first time during the Thanksgiving season. This record is in part due to the increasing use of mobile devices by shoppers. Chats and text messages have over 98% open rates and provide the highest level of engagement. How cool is that?

Why does AI-driven chatbot marketing work?

Using AI-driven human-like chatbots, customized to your brand’s specific needs, can provide great on-demand customer service to your clients. It can be also an excellent way to build and enhance customer relationships. 

Communication that involves both parties is a great way to keep your customers engaged. Prospective customers ask questions about your services all the time. In addition, they also expect to receive immediate assistance. Brands gain people’s trust when they deliver a quick response to their inquiries. Increased customer satisfaction will cause loyalty and happy clients will return again and again.

Thinking about implementing a brand interaction platform that automatically adapts to customer needs, while still preserving human agents for more complex interactions? We can help. Certainly’s AI-driven platform is especially powerful when used in e-commerce.

Second, in today’s on-demand economy, retail and e-commerce must embrace change. Email and phone channels are dying out as methods of customer communication because they’re slow and inconvenient. In the age of mobile experiences, consumers expect brands to provide on-demand content. Chatbots are here to meet that demand.

If you want to create your own Conversational AI Assistant and deliver frictionless e-commerce, you are in the right place. We automated millions of customer interactions last year and helped retailers gain insights and prepare for this holiday season. Check out these key takeaways.

Chatbot usage statistics and trends:

• In the next two years, chatbots will save businesses about 8.4 billion hours and $8 billion in costs. Source: Juniper Research
• E-commerce transactions generated by chatbots are expected to reach $100 billion by 2023. Source: Juniper Research
• Currently, 23% of companies use AI chatbots for customer service. Source: Salesforce
• A chatbot has been used by 80% of people at some point. Source: Userlike
• According to this year’s Chatbot Marketing revenue report, $83.4 million was generated globally. Source: Statista
• Around 69% of the time, chatbots can handle full conversations. Source: Comm100
• Chatbots are mostly used to answer customer questions quickly. Source: Drift
• Digitally advanced brands are using chatbots more than any other communication channel. Source: Drift
• Chatbots are more popular in Europe than in the US and Japan. Source: Drift
• A whopping 40% of consumers don’t care if it’s a human or a chatbot. Source: HubSpot
• Chatbot adoption rates are highest in online retail stores. Source: Invesp
• Chatbots generate in 90% of the cases positive or neutral user experiences. Source: Drift
• Chatbots can lower customer service costs by up to 30%. Source: IBM
• The chatbot Market is expected to reach $14.9 billions by 2027 Source: AllTheResearch

What brands need to consider before Black Friday

First, delivering a positive customer experience is a great way to excite customers about a brand without relying solely on discounts. E-commerce companies need to evolve to the extent when they connect emotionally with consumers to turn prospects into satisfied customers. Relevant and satisfying on-demand communication can make a difference.

Second, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to establish rapport, earn new business, and represent the brand. Currently, industry leaders should seek scalable approaches to having more interaction with customers at every point of the customer journey and empower their customer experience teams to become proactive, personalized brand ambassadors instead of passive support agents. Making sure that your email marketing journeys are completely set up and optimized well in advance of BFCM, as Hustler Marketing outlines here, will go a long way in establishing that connection with the customers and make sure no gaps are left from turning site visitors into first-time customers and them into repeat buyers 

And last, the AI SaaS solution from Certainty helps e-commerce companies support their customers quickly and easily via chat and self-service. AI-powered chatbots transform customer experiences. Today, bots handle 80% of all support inquiries. Transform your customer journey into a human-like experience. A measurable, AI-based chatbot solution can increase sales and improve customer service.  

There are many reasons why innovative brands use AI chatbots to lower operating costs while increasing efficiency and customer satisfaction. By choosing conversational platforms, they prioritize personalization and scalability of operations and as a result, reap significant results not only for the brand but also for the customers.

If you are not sure why you should upgrade your e-commerce website, here’s a list of 10 reasons why you need a conversational user interface to stay ahead of the curve.

For more information about our ai chatbot solutions, feel free to visit our website, check our blog, download our latest ebook, schedule a demo or start a free trial and enjoy Certainty’s easy-to-use and affordable chatbot builder with pre-made templates and integrations.

For more news, product updates, and industry insights, follow us on social media: YouTube | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter

Author Anastacia Balova

Designer George Radu

The post What’s your strategy for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2022? appeared first on Certainly.

The power of the Internet allows you to tap into a global community, expanding into a market you may have never considered before. So now, companies that have customers in different countries with different languages can create multilingual funnels using localization and globalization strategy. Moreover, research by Common Sense Advisory has found that 76% of consumers prefer purchasing products when there’s information available in their own language – that’s a lot of potential customers! 

Using our localization expertise at Crowdin, this article will outline the benefits of a multilingual chatbot for your online business and some tips on making it truly engaging. 

Make Your Product Multilingual  

Making your product multilingual is a significant step towards gaining global customers. The statistics show that over half of the most visited websites worldwide are in English, despite being the native language of only 16% of the population. However, there are varying amounts of information available in many other languages. Other top languages are Spanish, Turkish, Persian, French, German, and Japanese.  

And their percentage usage is rising every year. Why?  

Nowadays, more and more businesses realize that going global means more customers, which means more revenue and profit. Besides this, proper internationalization of your product ensures that you will: 

• Enter new markets 
• Receive an appreciation of users from different cultures 
• Gain competitive advantage 

What Are the Benefits of Multilingual Support, and Chatbots in Particular 

Suppose you want to know more about the services you plan to buy, have trouble using your mobile app, or have decided to upgrade your account. Would you actually call customer service for assistance, search for their email address and contact form or just use a bot that suggests you an answer to your exact request and is available on the website page? Probably, the latter. Well, your customers do the same. 

The benefits of creating a chatbot and making it available on your website include: 

• Improved customer service 
• Available anytime (even more important when you’ve got customers across time zones) 
• Capture the interest of a buyer while they’re on your site 
• Generate more leads 
• Eliminate the need for a live representative 
• Build trust and loyalty with your brand 
• Keep visitors engaged and entertained 

Making your chatbot multilingual increases the list of advantages and ensures: 

• Personalized the customer experience  
• Eliminate the need for a live representative speaking several languages 
• Smoothen communication 
• Integrating self-service support increases CSAT 

Advice for Creating a Multilingual Chatbot  

Many of the world’s largest brands use AI-powered chatbots and provide users with quick, easy, and intelligent support on websites and mobile apps. Sometimes they are even available in different languages, but at the same time, they are not always effective. 

A fully powerful multilingual chatbot needs to be able to: 

• Detect customer’s native language 
• Understand exactly what the user wants 
• Respond naturally 

Detecting Language  

Part of what makes chatbots so great for multilingual support is the ability to detect a language. The most common methods are:  

1. IP-based: set up the chatbot to determine a visitor’s location and native language based on their device’s IP address. 

2. Customer selection – effective, but not always available. The goal is to allow customers to choose their preferred language before an interaction begins. 

3. Web browser settings – detect the language setting of the visitor’s web browser and default to the same language. 

Understanding Clients 

Multilingual chatbots do not only need to have responses translated by a human ahead of time but also to understand the client’s request properly and thus provide the correct answers that will assist the users and guide them to the next step of their journey.   

Does your chatbot need questions asked in a particular way to return the correct response? Do your customers have to guess the correct keywords to enter or know specific terminology to locate the right information?  

Does your chatbot repeatedly tell users to try rephrasing an input that doesn’t have a direct match in the system? 

If you encounter or are concerned about these types of problems with your multilingual chatbot, your best option is to train the chatbot with actual chat data and machine learning.  

Making the Language More Conversational 

To avoid the situation when your chatbot is providing a frustrating, negative self-service experience, follow simple rules: 

Create a conversational tone  

Just because users understand they are not talking to a real person doesn’t mean that your chatbot’s responses can sound monotonous and stiff. Write the bot’s responses using a conversational tone that reflects your brand and has the same type of language you use on your website and customer communications.  

Add personalization  

More like a bonus, not a necessity. Integrate your chatbot with backend systems so that it can provide customized responses based on that customer’s current account, funnel stage, or subscriptions. This will help you create a seamless and more personal conversation.  

Multilingual Chatbots: Takeaways 

If your business sells a product or service online, most likely your customers come from more countries than just the one you’re based in. And even If your chatbot speaks “global language” English, you could be cutting off entire prospect segments or reducing their likelihood of making a purchase. 

Even those who speak English as a second language will still always feel most comfortable conversing in their first. This is especially true when there’s a purchase. If you want to make your business more accessible and welcoming to new markets around the world, a multilingual chatbot is a highly effective solution. 

Take a look at the guide on how to build a bot that will understand your customer’s needs, mood, and context of the conversation. 

This article was written by Diana Voroniak, Product Marketing Manager at Crowdin, with visuals by George Radu. It was edited by Fergus Doyle. 

The post Multilingual Chatbot: Learn How to Speak Your Customer’s Language  appeared first on Certainly.

With the increasing instances of data and privacy breaches, today’s consumers are becoming much more privacy-conscious. In turn, these concerns surrounding the use of personal data by corporations and businesses, both big and small, have led to the introduction of new privacy laws—most notable being the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the U.S. 

Consequently, there has been a significant shift in how companies collect data, with many moving toward more privacy-centric methods. Current trends, such as Google’s planned elimination of third-party cookies and Apple’s iOS 14.5 update, have made it even more difficult for businesses to collect consumer data. 

Now, marketers who used to rely on third-party data must scramble for new methods of collecting the information they need to run campaigns. 

If you’re currently struggling with the same issues, don’t worry. There are still plenty of ways to gather customer data, even in a privacy-first world.  

If anything, the confluence of privacy updates has forced many in the industry to get creative with data-gathering — a topic we’re covering in full in this post. 

First-Party vs. Zero-Party Data 

One of the most important things to understand when collecting data is the difference between first-party and zero-party data. 

First-party data means you collect it yourself, typically during interactions with your customers or website visitors. This includes information gathered through:

• Online forms 
• Surveys 
• Customer service interactions 
• Your CRM (customer relationship management) 
• Newsletter subscriptions 
• Social media 
• Analytics from your ecommerce site or app 

Zero-party data, on the other hand, is data your customers voluntarily share with you. This is often collected through loyalty programs or other customer-initiated interactions. 

Typically, the best way you can collect zero-party data is by asking people for their information in return for an incentive (think rewards points, free downloadables, eBooks, discount vouchers to your ecommerce site, etc.). 

Whether first-party or zero-party, your customer data can include the following details: 

• Demographic information (age, gender, location) 
• Purchase history 
• Preferences 
• Habits 
• Interests 
• Beliefs 
• Behaviors 
• And more 

Many ecommerce sites and businesses prioritize first-party data marketing because it provides the most accurate information. It’s also more reliable than third-party data, which can often be inaccurate and outdated. 

That said, first-party data can be difficult to amass in large enough quantities to be useful for marketing purposes.  

This is where gathering a combination of both first- and zero-party data proves valuable. Zero-party data can supplement first-party, provide insights into customer behavior, and help complete the customer picture. 

How to Collect First-Party Data in 2022 

The data privacy landscape is constantly evolving, so it’s up to us as marketers to stay on top of trends and ensure that our brands’ marketing strategy remains relevant. 

This guide will walk you through some practical tips for obtaining first-party data to help you build a strategy for your ecommerce site. Most are from our experience working with ecommerce clients at Inflow, but all of them can be applied to any business type. 

We’ll also briefly touch on some zero-party data collection options to help you form as complete a picture of your customers as possible. 

1. Build an extensive email list. 

Email lists are a fantastic way to acquire first-party data. They allow you to reach out to your customers and website visitors directly. You can also use them to promote new products, send out coupon codes, or announce sales and events. 

Whether you’re researching a topic or launching an ecommerce store, personalized email subscriptions are an excellent method to discover new information and get initial data from your audience. They also help you track users across your site and gain more insights into their activities. 

In addition, email lists are ideal for data targeting and retargeting purposes. Through segmenting, you can send targeted messages to specific groups of people based on their interests, location, purchase history, or any other data point you’ve gathered. 

The best way to grow your list is to offer something valuable in return for an email address. Most customers won’t willingly sign up unless they’re really interested in your brand or content. You can incentivize signups by offering a one-time promo code or special discount. A loyalty program is a great idea as well, which we’ll talk more about later on. 

Other ways you can build your email list: 

• Include an email sign-up form on your website or blog. 
• Ask customers to join your email list at the point of purchase. 
• Run a contest or giveaway that requires an email address for entry. 

2. Prompt your customers to create accounts. 

While letting customers check out as guests can boost conversion rates, they’re not ideal from a data-gathering perspective. For this reason, ecommerce sites should always encourage customers to create an account during the checkout process. 

Account registration forms are a great way to collect first-party data. By requiring customers to create an account, you can obtain their name, email address, shipping information, and payment details. You may then use this data to segment your customer base, send targeted messages, and improve customer experience. 

To increase the likelihood of customers creating accounts: 

• Reduce the number of form fields: Make the registration process as easy and streamlined as possible. Fewer form fields encourage more signups. 
• Incentivize account creation: Offer a discount, promo code, or loyalty points to entice them to complete the registration process. 
• Provide an option to save data for future transactions: If you don’t want to obligate your customers, just add a tick box below all the mandatory checkout fields. This gives them the choice to save their data for succeeding purchases. 

3. Use personalized chatbot strategies. 

Chatbots are an excellent way for ecommerce businesses to collect zero-party data. By engaging with customers in real-time, chatbots can acquire data such as preferences, needs, and wants. 

Ecommerce chatbot builders like Certainly.io offer a wide range of features that can help you personalize your chatbot strategy. Not only are you gathering zero-party data, but you’re also ensuring prompt customer support. 

What is Conversational Commerce? | AI Chatbot Building Platform for Ecommerce 

Furthermore, chatbots can be used to offer personalized content and recommendations. This is a valuable marketing strategy for sending targeted messages to your audience. 

To personalize your chatbot strategy: 

• Gather data on customers’ preferences: Use chatbots to ask customers about their preferred colors, styles, sizes, etc. You can then use this data to send personalized recommendations. 
• Build a profile for each customer: Based on the data you’ve collected, you can create customer profiles to segment your customer base and send targeted messages. 
• Recommend products and services: Once you know your customers’ interests, your chatbots can recommend products and services they might like. 

4. Add progressive form fields to your site. 

Progressive form fields are effective in obtaining data without interrupting the user experience.  

The same fields in standard form tend to appear for every user. The progressive versions can be customized according to each user’s interactions with your site. 

For example, the field for “Country” in the standard form would have a drop-down menu with all the countries in the world. With progressive form fields, you can instead display a menu with selected countries relevant to the user. 

This is an efficient way to collect data because it allows you to gather only the necessary information. It also ensures that your forms are as concise as possible, improving conversion rates. 

Over time, you will gain a deeper understanding of your customers without having to ask them the same questions repeatedly or requesting too much information right off the bat. 

Customers are more likely to fill out relevant forms, so progressive form fields improve the customer experience while also helping gather valuable data. 

5. Implement a loyalty program. 

Loyalty programs encourage customers to keep coming back to your ecommerce store. By offering rewards for repeat purchases, you incentivize them to buy from you frequently. 

This tactic can also be used to acquire customer data. You will learn more about a shopper’s preferences and purchasing habits as they interact with your loyalty program. 

Using this data, you can improve the customer experience and make targeted marketing decisions. Statistics show that existing customers have a 60% to 70% chance of repurchasing, compared to new customers at 5% to 20%. Furthermore, it costs five times more to gain new customers than it does to retain existing ones. 

For these reasons, loyalty programs can be extremely valuable for ecommerce businesses. Not only do they encourage repeat purchases, but they also provide valuable data for enhancing the customer experience. 

Create Your First-Party Data Strategy Now 

Having a solid first-party data strategy is crucial, especially now that Google’s third-party cookies are going away. There are various ways to collect this data, but the five methods listed above can be some of the most effective for online businesses. 

By implementing these strategies, you can start accumulating valuable data that can be used to advance your ecommerce business. We recommend testing out a few of these strategies to see which ones work best for you. 

The sooner you start gathering first-party data, the better position you’ll be in to compete in the post-cookie world. 

Entrepreneur and digital marketer Mike Belasco has been the founder and CEO of eommerce digital marketing agency Inflow since 2007. His background as a web developer and SEO expert built an agency that has worked with major brands like Amazon, Overstock.com, Dish Network, and many more. Today, Mike leads a team of more than 25 PPC, SEO, and conversion optimization specialists as a boutique, fully remote ecommerce marketing agency. 

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