Siri, Alexa, Meena, and Cortana are all brimming with life in the technological field. But you strike gold when you develop a new chatbot for your retail business. Yes, that’s what your retail business needs right now.
Think of the nature of the Gen Z customers. They are quick, sporty, and super fast. Can you retain these customers if they have to wait for long hours only to get their doubts resolved? Never! There are hundreds of others waiting to serve your customers. So, if you don’t, someone else will.
This is where your retail business can thrive with the best chatbots. 80% of the retailers have already implemented and are planning to utilize virtual AI chatbots and shopping assistants. In another research by the International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management, the researchers revealed that chatbots reduce risk in online shopping and enhance the ‘flow experience’ of the customers, where they get fully immersed in the digital shopping process.
I can’t help you with a list of potential customers for your retail business. But I can definitely provide you with a detailed step-by-step guide on how to create a retail chatbot. This blog post will walk you through the steps to creating a retail chatbot, types of retail chatbots, and some real-world retail chatbot examples. Let’s get started.
Why does your retail business need a chatbot?
You must be wondering why your retail business needs an AI chatbot. So far, your business is doing fantastic the traditional way. So, what happened or what took place in between, so that you need to implement chatbots now?
In a journal by Issues and Perspectives in Business and Social Sciences, researchers revealed that 67% of the customers interacted with customer support. In comparison, 87.2% of the customers provided neutral or positive feedback.
Here are the benefits you can reap after implementing a retail chatbot:
- 24/7 customer service - None of your retail business’s human agents have the time to devote themself completely to answering customer queries. This is where your retail chatbots can help you. These AI-based chatbots are available 24/7. This means your customer gets a solution to their problem immediately, at any time, from any part of the world.
- Lead generation and qualification - How many leads can you generate in a day with human efforts? Well, the number is too small and depends on how much time your human resource agents can manage to devote to this task, after finishing the other critical tasks. Here, an AI-based chatbot understands the target audience of your retail business and helps you find leads accordingly. In short, retail chatbots fill your business’s pipeline to help you never run out of customers.
- Product recommendations and cart support - Each of your customers has different needs and preferences. Your human agents can’t understand the needs of every customer. Now, think of how a retail chatbot can help you here. Due to the presence of NLP, AI, and ML technologies, these retail chatbots figure out the needs and preferences of your customers. This drives sales and also reduces cart abandonment by sending notifications at the right time.
- Improved customer retention - Your retail business needs more customers to drive sales. Here, your retail chatbots play a vital role by keeping them engaged throughout the customer buying journey. Whenever a customer faces any trouble while purchasing any product, the chatbot guides the customer like a virtual assistant.
A step-by-step guide to creating a retail chatbot using Copilot.Live
If you still think retail chatbots are just about automation, it’s time I break this myth. Well, the retail chatbots have gone far beyond automating tasks. Now, they are a medium to engage customers and turn visiting web browsers into paying customers. If your goal is to maintain a healthy relationship with your customers, implement retail chatbots now.
But which chatbot platform is the best for your retail business? I know how confusing it is to choose one from so many available in the market. Amongst all, you can trust Copilot.Live is an affordable solution for your retail business.
Copilot.Live is an AI-integrated retail chatbot-building platform that helps you with shopping assistants. Right from offering cross-platform integration to workforce automation and AI voice calling, Copilot.Live has your back in all aspects. The chatbots in Copilot.Live can be customized according to the themes of your brand.
Is building a chatbot in Copilot.Live a difficult task? Do I need coding knowledge? Well, it’s not at all a Herculean task. Here are the steps you must follow to build a retail chatbot using Copilot.Live.
Step 1: Define your business objectives
The first step in creating a retail chatbot is to figure out what or how you want the chatbot to function. The kind of function you want in your chatbot will determine its creation. Your aim can be reducing cart abandonment, offering 24/7 customer support, or increasing sales conversions. To define the business objectives, first, find out the pain points of your customers. Remember, your chatbot should be able to solve these pain points of your customers.
Step 2: Identify your audience and use cases
Not all customers in the market are your target audience. If your retail business sells trendy clothes, your target audience is Gen Z customers. On the other hand, if your retail business sells women's medicines and supplements, your target audience is women sector of 30-50 years of age. Likewise, your chatbot should be able to serve the use cases that these businesses cater to. Copilot.Live allows you to transform your chatbot and customize it according to themes and brand personality.
Step 3: Design the conversation flow
After you sign in to the Copilot.Live, the platform will lead you to a dashboard with multiple menus. These menus include overview, configuration, inbox, data sources, deploy, workflow, and integrations. In the Configuration tab, you add a persona to your chatbot that defines its core identity and behavior. Further, in the Inbox tab, you find the details of all the conversations that the chatbot has with the customers.
Step 4: Train your chatbot using domain-specific data
The efficiency of your chatbot depends on how you train it. After all, it is a tool that needs proper fine-tuning and training according to your domain. In the dashboard of Copilot.Live, the data sources option allows you to add relevant data sources for the accurate functioning of the chatbot. Besides, when you check the inbox, you get to know what your customers like and what they don’t like.
Step 5: Integrate with your backend systems
As a retail business founder, your goal is to reach out to customers on a global level. For this, you need to offer the best customer experience all over the world. To help you in this, the chatbot of Copilot.Live allows cross-platform integration. Copilot.Live allows your retail chatbot to be integrated on your retail website, voice calling, WhatsApp, and Slack.
Step 6: Examine your chatbot
Is your chatbot ready now? Well, if you want your retail chatbot to stay ahead of the curve, put it under multiple tests to check for any fallacies. Check the chatbot product filtering and searching process, order tracking and cancellation, and discount queries. You can also collect user feedback to figure out the performance gaps and refine the conversational flows.
Step 7: Deploy and launch the chatbot on multiple channels
As the retail business founder, your primary goal is to expand your business’s reach globally. Here, Copilot.Live makes use of the amazing feature of multichannel support. The primary function of this feature is to integrate your chatbot into multiple platforms to expand your customer reach. It is one of the finest ways to offer an enriching customer experience and engagement.
Step 8: Track performance and metrics
Does your work stop here? Well, this is just the start. You need to figure out if your retail chatbot is serving the right purpose. For this, track and monitor the performance of your chatbot and keep an eye on the metrics. Copilot.Live has an analytics dashboard where you get a clear picture of how your chatbot is performing. It focuses on metrics like positive and negative customer feedback, unique users, and more.
Step 9: Scale with AI and human support blend
Undoubtedly, the customer query volume will grow with time. Here, Copilot.Live helps to combine human intelligence with AI for better automation. Since Copilot.Live supports hybrid chatbot models, the chatbot can handle complex human queries. Besides, it escalates to human resources whenever it faces a complicated human query.
Types of retail chatbots
Gone are the days when retail chatbots followed a one-size-fits-all policy. Due to the different customer demands, technology has come up with all these types of retail chatbots that align with your business’s goals and customer needs.
1. Intelligence
Based on intelligence, you get two types of retail chatbots - rule-based bots and AI-powered bots. In the rule-based bots, the chatbot has predefined scripts that can handle only basic customer queries. Contrarily, AI-powered chatbots are more powerful as they run on the mechanism of natural language processing. Meaning? AI chatbots understand the occasions, sentiments and intent of your customers and recommend products accordingly.
2. Area of application
Based on the area of application, the retail chatbots are available in three types: sales bots, support bots, and feedback bots. The primary function of a sales bot is to guide your customers throughout the purchase journey. On the contrary, support bots specialize in handling customer queries to reduce pressure on human agents. Finally, the function of feedback bots is to help the retail business with honest customer feedback for improvement.
3. Platform
Depending on the retail platform, the chatbots can be web-based, app-based, or social media-based. The web-based chatbots are integrated into websites, and the app-based ones are implemented on mobile apps, and the social media chatbots are connected to the social media platforms of your retail business. All of them aim at improving customer experience and retaining more customers.
Real-world examples of successful retail chatbots
Already, some popular retail brands have implemented the best chatbots. Now, all of them are reaping the benefits. If you are still skeptical about creating a chatbot for your retail business, let’s take a look at these three real-world examples.
1. GoFynd (Fify)
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The AI-powered chatbot of GoFynd named Fify is much more than a normal automation tool. In fact, Fify is a complete virtual assistant that helps customers with directed shopping. Fify understands the emotions of the customers and the occasions for which the customers want to buy clothes. Once the chatbot figures out what the customers want, it shares a list of some recommended products. Besides, right from improving user engagement to applying ongoing discounts, Fify does it all for you.
2. Sephora’s Virtual Artist
The virtual artist chatbot of Sephora has completely transformed the online beauty shopping sphere. Due to the presence of augmented reality, the Sephora chatbot offers a try-on feature where customers get to try the makeup products even before purchasing them. Besides, the chatbot suggests products based on the skin concerns of the customers. Therefore, the visual-first and immersive experience of the chatbot definitely influences the purchase decisions of the customers.
3. Nykaa Virtual Assistant
Similar to Sephora, Nykaa has also come up with its chatbot, Nykaa Virtual Assistant, not just to automate tasks but to offer complete guidance on skincare and beauty to customers. The chatbot has a quizzing format to understand the skin concerns of the customers so that it can recommend products accordingly. Besides, the chatbot acts as a constant support to the customers, right from choosing the product to purchasing the product.
How much will it cost to develop a retail chatbot?
Here comes a million-dollar question: What is the cost of developing a retail chatbot? Will it burn a hole in my pockets? Or, is it a worthy investment for my retail business?
Well, your cost to develop a retail chatbot from scratch depends on a lot of factors like the technology used, complexity, and developmental approach. Generally, it is an expensive process. When you are building a customised retail chatbot, you have to hire developers, UI/UX designers, QA testers, and AI engineers. Further, it depends on the features and scope you want to add to your retail chatbot. The prices can soar high when you add features like multilingual support, ERP system, CRM integration, etc.
Now comes the manual building of the chatbot. Every time your retail products have a new update, they need to be upgraded in the chatbot. This incurs recurring costs. You need to maintain such ongoing maintenance to ensure a steady improvement. But again, know that this will lead to an increase in cost.
However, if your goal is to reduce costs yet want to improve the customer service of your business, you can rely on Copilot.Live. We offer you advanced chatbot features at the most affordable rate.
Conclusion
Therefore, by now, you must have a clear idea about the steps you need to incorporate to create a retail chatbot. Just like the retail industry leaders, if you want your retail brand to shine brightly and stay ahead of your competitors, it’s high time you use Copilot.Live to create a retail chatbot. The steps mentioned here are pretty simple and easy. What makes Copilot.Live is a perfect choice for your retail business because of its flexibility. So, develop a chatbot on Copilot.Live and keep on updating it to satisfy customers.
