Hi! I work at a chatbot development company – no worries, I won't spam you with selling stuff. We want to work more with e-commerce brands, so I got 2 general questions to better understand the market. What channels do you use to learn about your industry news? Do you use LinkedIn? If not, then which social media for professional gain? Thanks a lot!
My experience with chatboxes is that they are USELESS. Typically they are staffed with idiots that cannot answer even the SIMPLEST questions. Don't care about industry news, so don't follow it. Don't use linkedin cuz it is just another bloated egotistical forum to promote spam. Social media is useless.
Funny. I posted a similar reply, then deleted it. Didn't want to ruin the lady's first DP post. But, yeah, I agree with what @mmerlinn said about chatbots. @Avandegraund do you work on developing them or the promotional side of things?
From both sides. And I disagree that chatbot are useless. Won't tell you about successful project my company's doing, but just such examples like Alexa, Woebot are a great example of what chatbots can do.
I actually like them when you know that you're just not looking in the right place on a complicated site and the bot will be able to help you. What's really annoying is when there isn't "sentiment testing" or an easy way to get to a real human. Bots should be able to know that if I type "I'm so angry! get me a human!" to transfer that person away from the chatbot to a human or to suspend the chat until a human can get to it. A recent example: https://forums.digitalpoint.com/thr...-and-bradstreet-to-get-a-duns-number.2872133/ The bot didn't allow free text and the humans hadn't thought of all the weird problems their users have - and there was no way to get to a human. I'm sure it helps some people, and the CEO feels smug that there's a "bot" reducing his (most likely) call centre costs but I found it infuriating.
chatbots are good if you're able to answer them 24/7, and answer them fast. Don't put people in queus or awaitng response for more than 15seconds. If you can't man them, they are a hinderance as it just means customer has tried to ask you a question and didn't get the question answered and probably left to go to a different website. From my own attitude as a shopper. If I want to find an answer from them, like shipping costs, delivery times, shipping location, discount codes etc. If there is no chat popup I will look for the answer myself in the description, FAQ page etc. If there is a chat pop up I will just ask the person in chat. If I get no response I just leave the site. Customers don't have patience, remember they visit your website knowing that there are other websites they could have clicked on in search results. The other sites are at the back of the shoppers mind. If there's any doubt, annoyance, confusion on your website, they will just leave.
chat bots are unmanned by definition. I agree though, that bots should be backed by humans who can take over the chat
just finished a live chat with a security camera company that I'm reasonably happy was with a live person. Here's the short version, I'm pretty sure a bot could have done better. The human was so focused on the physical product that they forgot that the app is also part of the "service" they provide. A bot would have latched onto the "log in" and "android app".
Chatbots can become the most valuable asset for an ecommerce industry. They can enhance customer experience without the need of ramping up staff and hiring more people. Also, by providing customers with immediate responses, shopping chatbots significantly drive sales to your online store. Besides, chatbots reduce CAC since they offer engaging and instant conversation on your online store; thus, customers stay longer on your website. So I think virtual assistants are the new say in the online retail world and should be the front of mind for retailers. If you're interested to find out more about this technology in the ecommerce field, here's our blog post. As for the channels, I use the most popular news websites and industry-related blogs like the one I mentioned.
An eCommerce chatbot is an AI-powered Intelligent Virtual Assistant solution that can be implemented by online retailers to engage customers at every stage of their journey.
I don't use chatbots that often, as they usually seem pretty spammy to me. Sometimes they can be helpful, but most of the time they are just ruining good users' experience as they disturb you and pop out while you are trying to get some info. As for getting more industry news, I usually use Google alerts and check the topics that are valuable for me, and receive daily emails about news in the industry. LinkedIn can be useful as well, but this is the best option, at least for my needs.