The role of artificial intelligence in the E-commerce sector and its scope in future

The landscape of business and shopping is changing! This evolution has been brought about by the onset of e-commerce and advanced artificial intelligence capabilities in hyper-targeting each customer, individually.

Starting off as an abstract concept in sci-fi movies, Artificial Intelligence has been consistently making in-roads to our lives. Our fixation with Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortona or Amazon’s Alexa is only a small example of AI’s proliferation in our everyday lives. In the e-commerce ecosystem, Artificial Intelligence, especially machine learning and natural language processing has slowly paved he way for brilliantly segmented and targeted marketing.

With the help of unique AI capabilities, e-commerce and m-commerce platforms today are able to leverage available information regarding similarities and dissimilarities between customers, the kind of phone and apps they use. Utilising the vast datasets regarding customer behaviour and usage patterns acquired by e-commerce platforms, artificial intelligence – with its self-learning algorithms and intelligence, creates personalized shopping experiences for online buyers.

Here’s a snapshot of how Artificial Intelligence is slowly changing the world of business and shopping for good:

The Chatbots Revolution for both, machines and smart devices

AI is rapidly reducing manual effort in communication for the e-commerce platforms. Via natural language processing and machine learning capabilities, AI’s chatbots are able to automate conversation with the buyers.

The same can carry out the daily transactional conversation, which otherwise required human support staff. Furthermore, the chatbot-led conversations transpire with zero scope for human error. Chat assistants are further being used for CRM, personalizing buyer experience by addressing their queries.

Hence, e-commerce sites are today able to drive conversations with their users via AI. Industry pundits believe e-commerce players to go big on the entire chatbots revolution. As per the predictions released by Gartner, chatbots are going to replace 85 per cent of customer interactions by 2020.

TechEmergence further predicts chatbots to emerge as the Numero Uno consumer application of Artificial Intelligence in the upcoming years.

Virtual Buying Assistants:

Owing to the AI-powered virtual assistants, e-commerce sites are able to provide their shoppers with a personal fashion assistant. The technology assists shoppers through personalised recommendations, on the basis of their preferences and past usage patterns. For instance, sending notifications or prompts when prices drop; the virtual assistants will let the shoppers know the instant there is a price change, hence increasing the footfalls on the site, leading to more successful conversions.

Analysing Data:

Traditional merchandising systems no longer possess the required wherewithal to analyse large volumes of data, or read and predict consumer trends. This is where AI comes in, helping consumers with what to buy, based on their behaviour patterns and preferences. The same also provides e-commerce sites with actionable insights to make their platform best suited for their buyers, and come up with the most relevant offers, campaigns, strategic messaging etc.

Making conversations and Improving Order Fulfilment:

Owing to the sheer number of mushrooming e-commerce platforms, consumers today are bombarded with a volley of messages. Hence, it doesn’t come as a surprise, when oftentimes significant communication from e-commerce sites is missed by the customers.

To tackle the same, Artificial Intelligence exploits Predictive Intelligence and Contextual Messaging functionalities to determine the right time to target a customer. This, in return, ensures higher conversation rates, whilst also improving brand’s engagement with its customers.

Furthermore, the noteworthy aspect of the technology is that the practice can be used to target each and every customer individually. Hence, e-commerce companies can now re-engage with every given buyer via strategic messaging, most opportune time, and a communication channel of their preference.

The AI potential has been utilized by e-commerce companies across the globe to minimize shopping cart abandonment, automate processes and optimize the conversion rate. In addition, Predictive Intelligence and Contextual Messaging can also be used to extract maximum business from the new and existing set of users of the e-commerce platform.

In essence, e-commerce sites are increasingly adopting AI to provide a much more personal, intuitive and simplified experience to their patrons. As a consequence, the future clearly belongs to industry-level collaborations between AI and e-commerce giants, with the sole intention of putting forth the best platform for the customers.

- Saahil Goel, CEO & Co- Founder, BigFoot Retail Solutions