Chatbots have become an increasingly common experience for ecommerce shoppers and, according to a Research and Markets report, are expected to grow at a CAGR of 24.43% over the next four years.
Chatbots are perfect for situations where a quick response to customers is crucial or for answering questions come up frequently. However, despite their usefulness, chatbots have not yet become ubiquitous, and much of that is due to a lack of awareness and standardization across platforms.
For industries such as, banking, financial services, insurance, retail, travel and hospitality and government, there will be two major drivers of the growth in chatbots. Much of it will come from the increased cost savings of using an automated service to streamline customer service. By some estimates, AI tech will become advanced enough to boost the productivity of responding to customers by 40% by 2035, freeing up humans to tackle more difficult customer service questions.
The other driver will be a growing demand by customers for self-service experiences and live chats. Customers are increasingly expecting a customer service experience that is both instant and easily fits into their current habits. 65% of global consumers want to use messaging apps as a way of interacting with organizations, but only 43% of those surveyed by Opinium Research reported as having interacted with an organization’s chatbot in the past year. As banking and retail lead the charge in web-based self-service investment and companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google expand how businesses can utilize chatbots, there’s little doubt they will continue to gain traction with both brand and customer alike.
For ecommerce businesses looking to capitalize on more wins via conversational commerce, there are parallels to be drawn between chatbots and that success as the technology continues to evolve and gain additional functionality and intelligence.
It would be prudent to consider implementing a chatbot of your own to ease the resources that go into providing answers for customers’ most frequently asked.
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