The advent of AI in ecommerce businesses has gained an immense amount of attention in boosting customer experience and has become the prime focus area. Safe to say, customer experience has taken center stage.
And this brings us to the million-dollar question, “How do I actually enhance the Customer Experience I offer?”
Taking into account the hottest Martech trends, the answer to that is “Personalization”.
As per Gartner, “Organizations that focus their personalized messaging around helping consumers can expect 16% more impact on commercial outcomes than those that don’t.”
The question is not ‘Personalization or No personalization’ anymore. Today, it’s all about how powerful and accurate your personalization is.
And what determines how good your Personalization is? Yes, your Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities.
The Role of AI in Personalization
AI (Artificial Intelligence) is here, big and bold. Along with all the business use cases, it now impacts our daily lives.
Starting right from face and voice recognition, AI is starting to live up to its expectations. Government initiatives, security measures, social credit, and healthcare industries are realizing a welcome transformation with AI.
But the one thing that has excited ecommerce marketers is the boon of AI in personalization.
Any marketer around the globe will vouch for this combination as it enables them to re-invent and offer the best-in-class customer experience. The ecommerce segment significantly stands out when we talk about using AI in personalization.
Today, your customer expects to receive personalized message content, personalized offers, and recommendations via their preferred channel at their preferred time.
All customers need to do is click on the product to purchase and complete the payment via their preferred transaction mode.
Today, if you aren’t showing your customers exactly what they are looking for, you can rest assured they won’t be your customers for long. It is now becoming a mandate for ecommerce players to offer the best-personalized experience.
Some of the biggest investments and acquisitions are happening in the AI and Personalization space. Let’s be honest, AI in ecommerce personalization is a mandate to achieve customer delight.
Top 5 Use Cases of AI in Ecommerce Personalization
With AI, personalization in ecommerce businesses will be a game-changer. Listing down the 5 key functional areas where the AI in ecommerce personalization boon can work wonders:
Intelligent Predictions and Product Recommendations
Go a step forward and recommend products based on what they are currently looking for and what they will look for in the near future.
A customer’s behavioral data, eyeball data, intent data, and their preference of style, color, size, specs, price, etc., are all analyzed to come up with the best and the most intelligent predictions and recommendations.
The better the predictions and recommendations, the higher your conversions and the profit margins. McKinsey estimated that 35 % of consumer purchases on Amazon come from product recommendations, although the ecommerce giant itself has never revealed its own estimates.
AI-Driven Image Search Functionality
AI capabilities are constantly making the search functionality all the more powerful. For ecommerce players, the image search functionality is by far the most potent search offering capability offered.
Around three-quarters of U.S. internet users regularly or always search for visual content prior to making a purchase. Like something that you see? Just click a picture and get to know everything about the product.
This was very popular for comparing the prices in-store, but this can go a long way. With improved AI capabilities, the buyer can click the picture of the object, and via personalization, they get the best offers and recommendations to choose from. Product discovery and customer engagement have drastically improved with this technology, resulting in more conversions.
Personalized and Automated E-mail Marketing
Everyone talks about offering a personalized experience to their customers on their websites or apps. But do not stop there. There should be a focus laid on creating personalized and automated e-mail marketing campaigns.
Personalized emails, tailored to the journey progress of each user, can address a vast list of concerns and in turn, generate the highest ROI. Personalized automated e-mails give you an excellent opportunity to showcase your creativity and even add a pinch of humor to the content you send across.
The entire buying process can be made very simple for the buyer with one timely e-mail depending on their current journey stage and redirecting them to the website/app to complete the process from where they had left.
Virtual Assistants as a Personalization Tool
Using AI-powered virtual assistants, you are entitled to get the in-store experience of sitting miles away on your comfortable couch. With the injection of personalization, you can interact with modern chatbots, extracting customer details by providing the best-personalized shopping experience in real time.
With Augmented Reality, customers can be shown exactly how they will look after trying the different products in real-time. This makes the decision process extremely efficient and results in enhancing the Customer Experience to great levels. Customer service, order processing, returns, and exchanges are areas where significant impact can be observed.
AI-powered Voice Assistants for Ecommerce
We are in the age of Alexa, Google Home, Siri, etc. Experts predict the dominance of Voice Assistants will continue to increase.
Voice-only commands, voice-exclusive deals, etc., will soon become a typical norm in the ecommerce segment. The ‘out-of-the-box’ voice assistants will transform the ecommerce experience for buyers providing the best seamless customer experience as far as finding the right product and deal for a particular individual is concerned.
In fact, 69% of ecommerce brands see voice ordering as an opportunity.
To truly scale your marketing efforts, consider leveraging a robust ecommerce marketing platform. Book a demo today to discover how it can transform your business.
“Today’s smart retailer is engaging in a new era of shopping experience, combining the human touch and technology to deliver a more tailored consumer experience.” – Guita Blake, Sr. VP, Mindtree
Conclusion
AI in personalization is here to stay and transform the customer experience with every passing day. All customer touchpoints and interactions can be personalized to give you valuable insights. There is plenty of data out there. You just need the best Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence capabilities to harness its’ maximum potential.
To understand how AI in ecommerce can help you deliver personalization at scale, get in touch with us today!
