Adding a chatbot to a company’s website can help shorten the distance between them and their customers. It can also help you boost your order conversion rate and take your business to a higher level. Even so, chatbots are only useful if web browsers and potential customers are encouraged to use them. As a retailer or e-commerce business, how can you use this “conversational marketing” tool to grow your online store’s order conversion rate? This article will show you 5 ways to help you build customer relationships and expand your business!
Chatbots have been used by a large number of enterprises for a long time. They are now easily visible in the shadows of major communication and social platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook. Chatbots can help companies reduce the cost of human customer service as well as get more precise potential customers. Furthermore, they aid in the formation of customer relationships, thereby increasing shop credibility and sales. If merchants can effectively use chatbots, they can be valuable assets in their businesses.
Further reading: Digital Transformation: The Key to Scaling Customer Experience
5 Ways to Engage Customers Using Chatbots
To increase effectiveness, you must encourage your customers to fully utilize existing powerful tools. You must promote further and offer incentives if you want them to use chatbots. Here are five ways to introduce and recommend conversation robots to your customers:
[1] Add chatbot avatars to all web pages and encourage clicking.
Visitors don’t always require a conversation robot feature. However, if customers are unable to find them when they need assistance, you risk losing an opportunity to increase orders. Merchants can include chatbot avatars on all web pages so that visitors can click to expand their queries as needed.
The clicked avatar can be a brand logo or a real person avatar, depending on the chatbot settings. You can also employ a greeting as an opening remark to give the impression that you’re ready to engage in conversation with customers and entice them to click.
[2] Choose the best time for chatbots to appear.
When creating a chatbot, you can choose when the chatbot appears on the page. Many “chat automation” programs exist that allow your chatbot to open chat boxes for visitors. You can prepare some conversation topics ahead of time, such as self-introduction, business FAQs, and hobbies. Merchants can send messages to visitors as they browse the page, encouraging them to interact with the chatbot.
More suitable time for chatbots to appear:
- Appears after the user clicks
- After a visitor views a fixed scale page
- Once a visitor scrolls or stays on the page for a few seconds
Further reading: Increase your turnover! 2 Benefits of Interactive Marketing for E-commerce
[3] Design the chatbot to be like a real conversation.
Conversation robots have been actively developed by technology leaders such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft in recent years. Humanization will be the future trend of chatbots, based on the premise of near-human dialogue. Therefore, when designing your responses, you may want to include more personalized and humanized elements such as:
- Add user name customization to get closer to customers.
- Example: Hi {#firstname} I’m Vimos’ little helper! How can I assist you?
- Recommend appropriate products or services based on visitor demands.
- Take the initiative to ask questions that the other party may be interested in, considering the page visitor status.
- Example: Do you want to know more about XX products? Type in your question now and we’ll answer it right away.
- Take the initiative to ask questions that the other party may be interested in, considering the page visitor status.
[4] Insert the chatbot link button on the product introduction page.
Even adding chatbot avatars to all pages won’t guarantee that web visitors will click through. So, when customers have questions, you should respond quickly with answers and allow them to use chatbots if necessary.
Consider this: if you were a customer looking at products, at what point would you inquire? When you’ve browsed through the product’s basic information? Or when you finish reading an entire page? Simply enter the customer’s information and you’ll know where to put the chatbot link button. Based on experience, it is suitable to insert the chatbot link button under the product information introduction, or at the bottom part of the page. We also suggest including some introductory words, as shown below:
[5] Provide incentives to encourage clicks for chatbot usage.
According to a study, although 69% of respondents prefer to use chatbots for inquiries, 31% chose traditional human customer service. To engage customers and encourage them to use your website chatbot, you can offer incentives like discounts and mini-games!
Optimize your chatbot with live video capabilities
Despite their many advantages, chatbots cannot completely replace human responses. Combining various data, 44% of online customers believe that when they encounter problems while shopping online, real-person answers are their most important webpage function. However, 77% of respondents refused to buy because the website does not have a live-person chat feature. It’s clear that adding a live video function to the chatbot is a more effective way to boost conversion rates.
By adding a “Live Customer Service” option, customers can have the most efficient and personalized chat experience possible. This feature will inform customers that they can contact a sales representative at any time. VIMOS, a live e-commerce platform, has developed a live video function into its chatbot, allowing customers to contact offline salespeople instantly. Salespeople can grasp and meet customers’ needs and expectations in real-time through one-on-one interaction. Likewise, one-on-one interaction can provide more product information, encouraging customers to place orders, therefore, generating revenue.
Further reading: 2021 Live Broadcast E-commerce: 3 Must-Know Reasons for Transformation
Summary
Conversation robots are a great way to optimize online customer service while also reducing labor costs. They increase access to accurate potential customer lists, and ultimately improve online order conversion rates. In addition to adding conversation robots to company web pages, retailers and e-commerce businesses should offer incentives for visitors to use chatbots so that they can be as effective as possible.
