The E-commerce business has been booming in the past few years, and it’s only bound to continue to do so as more and more shoppers turn to the internet and new technologies to find what they’re looking for.
Luckily, today it’s easier than ever to have an e-commerce business thanks to the wonders of new technology, primarily artificial intelligence, that’s enabled us to automate the majority of those time-consuming and mundane tasks.
Many large e-commerce businesses are using AI. From utilizing a shopping bot to battling fake reviews, personalizing marketing strategies, customizing recommendations, and more, large businesses are relying on AI to help them with countless tasks that would’ve been either very difficult or completely impossible without this technology.
Let’s take a closer look at e-commerce, how businesses are utilizing AI, and what benefits they’re getting from it.
E-commerce and AI
AI solutions are growing in popularity in every business, especially in e-commerce, as it’s making every task easier to handle. Some of the top companies that heavily rely on AI are Amazon, Alibaba, and eBay.
Amazon
Alexa is one of the most popular Amazon’s AI products, and they’ve sold over 100 million Alexa devices so far. However, Alexa is not useful only to the consumers, it’s extremely beneficial to Amazon itself.
AI allows Amazon to develop a highly efficient targeted marketing strategy and provide customized recommendations to customers based on their previous searches.
AI-driven algorithms consider where certain packages are going, how quickly they have to arrive, and which other orders are going in that same general direction, then they choose the most efficient route to reach their destination.
Amazon’s taken automation to the next level, and incorporated AI technology in almost every aspect of their organization, allowing them to increase their revenue, decrease the efforts, and provide an excellent customer experience.
Alibaba
Alibaba is another industry giant that’s successfully incorporated AI into their business. In a very similar fashion to Amazon, they rely on AI to optimize delivery routes, claiming to have reduced vehicle use by 10% and travel distances by 30%.
They also use AI chatbots to improve their customer service, managing to make the best use of AI with a chatbot that processes 95% of spoken and written customer inquiries.
eBay
eBay uses a shopping bot to help its customers easily find the products they’re interested in buying. This AI chatbot relies on NLP technology.
NLP, or Natural Language Processing, allows the bot to hold human-like conversations and understand context well. Currently, eBay’s shopping bot allows customers to communicate with it via text messages, voice, and even by using pictures they’ve taken with their smartphones.
The machine learning technologies that this bot uses allow it to learn from previous conversations, understand its past mistakes, and improve over time, providing better customer service than ever before.
E-commerce and AI – The Benefits
With such huge companies relying on AI to improve their businesses, you shouldn’t even be wondering if there are any benefits of AI – there are plenty.
So, let’s take a look at some of the best advantages that AI in e-commerce brings.
Automation
Robotic Process Automation, RPA, allows you to automate the most tedious of tasks. It is a software solution that helps you deal with administrative work.
You can incorporate RPA into your existing systems and have it handle all repetitive, time-consuming tasks so that your workload is streamlined.
One of the key benefits of RPA is that it eliminates the factor of human error. All tasks are finished in the same manner every time, so you’ll know the quality of the work is always the same. It also finishes every task in just a fraction of the time that it would take a human employee to finish.
Customized Service
AI helps you gather valuable data from your customers, and offers them suggestions based on their personal preferences, purchase history, third-party data, and their general online behavior.
You can use this data to create customized targeted marketing campaigns, provide discounts and special offers that will attract your target audience.
Personalization
Incorporating a shopping bot is the best way to personalize each customer’s experience and increase your revenue.
The best AI chatbots offer you omnichannel presence. This means that your business can be available on all platforms, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, and more. This will allow you to reach a wider client base and generate more leads.
Chatbots with the best AI can accurately answer all questions and give all the relevant information. They don’t have working hours, so you’ll know your customers can reach you anytime, anywhere and get the best customer service available.
Creating a shopping bot is easier than it sounds, with platforms like SnatchBot.me giving you the opportunity to create a chatbot for free whether you have previous programming experience or not.
From creating a shopping bot to automating tedious tasks and offering customized services, there’s nothing an e-commerce business cannot do with AI. More and more e-commerce businesses are relying on AI to help them handle everyday tasks, and the automation trends will only continue growing.
