As the Internet shopping experience becomes more and more advanced with time, customers now have a lot more options when it comes to their products, customizability, and features that can streamline the purchase process.
However, by bombarding customers with a huge amount of product options, features, and information, it quickly becomes overwhelming, so the whole shopping becomes more complex rather than simpler. To counter this, customers go to customer's ratings/reviews or even social media influencers to ensure they are making the right decision.
Fortunately, conversational marketing and support through chatbots is the perfect solution for this problem. With recent advancements in AI and machine learning, customer engagement can truly be revolutionized.
In this article, we’ll expand on how these new discoveries in AI can be utilized, how chatbots can change the style of marketing, as well as how they help customers.
Let’s get to it!
Switching To Pull-Style Marketing
Traditional marketing often consists of push-style marketing. This refers to marketing that consists of constantly pushing and directing customers towards a product. This is usually done through pop-up ads, email marketing, etc.
While this isn’t necessarily a “wrong” approach, it definitely can be overwhelming, especially when most industries out there use push marketing. This is why it's important to switch, or at least, implement pull marketing. This new approach will be a breath of fresh air for customers which is something they can definitely appreciate.
But, what does pull marketing exactly mean? Well, in short, it focuses on providing customers with genuine content and useful information that pulls them into a product, rather than pushing the product toward them. This can be achieved through targeted social media content, positive online brand presence, and last but not least, chatbots.
Now, let’s see how chatbots can and have changed the marketing game.
Instantaneous and Optimized Customer Engagement
One very obvious advantage to implementing chatbots into an online shop is the fact that you entirely streamline your customer service. With practically no human input, chatbots will immediately provide answers to the customers’ questions.
This brings response times to nearly 0 which has a huge effect on the user’s experience. By maintaining this instantaneous and streamlined customer engagement, you will notice a huge improvement in customer retention.
We also need to keep in mind that chatbots can handle dozens or hundreds of queries at the same time which is something human chatters would not be able to do. So, a chatbot implementation extensively reduces the human workload needs.
Personalized Interactions
The problem with chatbots is that customers can quickly figure out if they are talking with a human or a “robot”, which is usually seen as a negative. This is because chatbots can’t respond naturally to queries and might even send out the same response for a lot of different questions.
However, with the latest advancements in AI technology, chatbots are now considerably more human-like in their responses. They also have a much larger database for different queries, so that responses sound more natural in the interaction.
But that’s not all! AI chatbots are now equipped with tools that can analyze a user’s interactions with the website. This means that the chatbot can adjust its responses based on the customer’s preferences.
For example, if a customer has browsed certain products or added them to their cart, the AI will account for this information when the customer messages the chatbot. This makes chatbots much more efficient at solving user problems.
We can also use this AI analysis of the customer’s behavior and interaction with the store to inform the design of a drag-and-drop website, further optimizing the user’s experience.
Impeccable Customer Support
It’s no secret that customers quickly get annoyed when they can’t get immediate support for their problems. No one likes to wait for an answer, especially when facing an issue that needs to be resolved quickly.
Fortunately, AI chatbots can be the perfect solution for better customer support. It provides immediate answers, it can customize its answers based on the user’s issue to actually provide a working answer, and all while operating 24/7. Additionally, integrating an answering service can ensure that customers who prefer human interaction can get their concerns addressed, even outside of regular business hours. More advanced AI models could also respond in the customers’ language as well.
A brand with good customer support will see an increase in customer loyalty, customer retention, and improved brand reputation.
Further Evolution Of AI Chatbots
The truth is that artificial intelligence and the chatbots that use this intelligence are still in their adolescence. We expect to see some impressive advancements in AI which means that the way we handle conversational marketing with chatbots will improve as well. In fact, the chatbot market is expected to see a growth of up to 153% until 2027.
So, with such huge investments, a big growth in chatbot technologies is expected.
Here is what’s we might see just in the next few years:
Emotional Intelligence
Right now, AI is just a more complex large language model, so it can’t really mimic emotional intelligence. However, as these models get more and more advanced in the next couple of years, we might see AI that might show something similar to emotional intelligence.
If this is implemented into chatbots or even call bots, they could be much more effective at handling customers and providing them with exactly what they want. Not only for marketing, but support as well, and for some companies, maybe even for mental health support.
Even More Personalized Experiences
With AI “emotional intelligence“, we can turn chatbots into even more effective sellers, providing a much more personalized experience for every customer. Chatbots will be able to generate unique responses based on the customer’s question, response, interaction with the store, past experience with the store, and much more.
The more personalized and human-like experience the customer will get, the more likely we’ll see them convert into a buyer.
Conclusion
Conversational marketing is definitely the future for online brands as it provides a natural shopping experience for customers. And, chatbots are the leading technology when it comes to conversational marketing because it creates a win-win situation for both the customer and the business itself.
It’s cost-efficient and easy to operate while providing customers with quick solutions to their problems without having to rely on a human response.
Furthermore, As AI and chatbot technologies continue to evolve, the potential for conversational marketing will only grow. In the future, we can expect even more sophisticated chatbots that can understand and respond to complex queries, as well as more advanced AI systems that can deliver hyper-personalized customer experiences.
