Yellow.ai

The 2021 holiday season is approaching. In a few short weeks, we’ll all be flooded with (virtual) holiday party invitations, twinkly lights, and, of course, panicked, last-minute holiday shopping. And, continuing the trend from previous years, most of this shopping will take place online. In fact, the Adobe Digital Economy Index predicts that online US holiday shopping will reach a whopping $207 billion this year.     

Between the trend towards online shopping, and the ongoing pandemic, which has caused many individuals to opt to stay indoors, it’s likely that some customers will only engage with your brand virtually. Combined with the ongoing supply chain crisis, the potential stressors of this holiday season are unrivaled. 

Enter chatbots. When used strategically, they can completely uplevel your customer service strategy. It’s especially crucial to optimize them ahead of the bustling holiday season, when order volumes and customer inquiries are higher than usual. 

“When used strategically, chatbots can completely uplevel your customer service strategy.”     

Holiday shoppers don’t think about channels, they just shop. Their pre-shopping research and buying journeys are fluid processes where they skip between online stores, social media like Instagram, channels like WhatsApp, FB Messenger, review sites, physical stores, mobile apps and whatnot along the path to purchase. 

As a retailer or e-commerce platform, the onus is on you to deliver the right experience at the right time by being omnichannel. And this is only possible if you are able to connect the dots of your customers’ purchase history across channels, and gain a real understanding of their behavior and needs.

Here’s how to make the most of your chatbot ahead of this holiday season. 

Assessing Past Data 

The first step is critical: gather data from past years, and review it to identify any patterns or areas for improvement. Pull last year’s website traffic data, and compare it with year-round data to find any recurring patterns that arise in the customer’s journey through your website. 

You can also use this data to identify any additional capacity needs. Were customer service lines flooded last holiday season? Chatbots can help reallocate your customer service resources by taking on simpler and repetitive requests, so your customer service associates can stay focused on problems that require more nuance. 

In most cases, companies don’t need entirely bespoke chatbots. However, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to chatbots—that’s why it’s important to use a verticalized chatbot platform that you can use to easily plug and play your information, using pre-existing themes, personalities, and conversation designs. The information-gathering stage will lay the foundation for the strategy that meets your company’s specific needs. Companies should aim for reduced deployment time, consistent solution quality, and improved accuracy.   

Drop-Off Points 

Once you’ve examined your data, identify any recurring customer drop-off points. Are there any points in the customer journey where the website fails to compel them? Whether they drop off at the home page, at payment, or somewhere in between, identifying these spots can help you understand where a chatbot may be deployed or optimized to help keep customers engaged.

If customers have trouble navigating the website, be sure that the chatbot is easily accessible to them as they click through to answer any questions they may have. It’s even better if the chatbot pops up proactively to keep the customer engaged, sharing discount codes, details about products, or answers to FAQs. 

If you tend to see customer attrition at the check-out point, ensure that there’s a live chat available at the checkout stage to answer any last-minute questions and avoid cart abandonment. 

Upsells 

Chatbots aren’t just tools for resolving customer service issues—they can also help bolster your revenue and sales by offering product recommendations and upsells. 

For example, if a customer adds a new smartphone to their cart, the chatbot can suggest headphones, chargers, and other accessories to go alongside the product. This helps boost sales, and also helps establish your company and website as a trusted advisor to the customer. 

Types of Chatbots 

The type of chatbot you choose—some that offer low-code/no-code platforms—to employ will change depending on your customer service needs. There are four main types of chatbots to consider for retail websites: 

• Conversational chatbots use natural language processing (NLP) to understand human communication. They are best suited to pick up on the nuances of human communication and can solve the more complex customer service issues that may arise.  

• Menu chatbots are simple, decision-tree-based models that ask customers to click the options that best match their inquiry until they receive their answer. These are best suited for simpler requests, such as confirming shipping timing. For more nuanced problems, the chatbot can quickly pass over complex queries to a human agent. Keyword recognition chatbots use keyword matching to analyze the customer’s query and then provide corresponding resources based on its information database to remove redundancies between similar questions or ambiguities.

• Machine learning chatbots are trained using data sets based on past customer inquiries to achieve the required level of accuracy and personalization for high volume requests. Conversational AI solutions combine NLP and NLU, multi-factorial intent recognition capabilities, and a deep learning-based insights engine to deliver total customer experience at scale. Such bots can understand sentiments, intent and past behavior, and also modify pitch, tone, excitement, and more in a multitude of languages across a wide variety of voice, messaging, app, social, and online channels to fulfill customer needs all around the world.

Centering Empathy  
Even for the most prepared retailers, the holiday season can get stressful. To mitigate any customer frustration, be sure to center the customer’s needs in your strategy. Here are a few ways you can make sure your chatbot is suited to meet the needs of your customer, and relieve some of their holiday stress: 

• Intuitive communication: Employ sentiment analysis indicators in the bots to identify frustration or anger from customers, and flag to a human customer service associate. 

• Pass-off point: Determine a point at which the complexity of the discussion will need to be handled by a customer service agent. 

• Proactive communication: Program bots to share updates on the delivery at hand before the customer asks.  

• Omnichannel communication: Whenever possible, save the customer’s email and cell phone number, so the bot can continue the conversation across other channels. This will require employing a unified CX platform that captures all customer information and context, across channels. 

And finally, don’t be afraid to “merry up” the chatbot itself. Implementing holiday-themed language, like “ho ho ho” or a simple “happy holidays!” into the chatbot can help further humanize the bot and your brand, and build a stronger connection with the customer. Remember, in the present scenario, your chatbot may be the only direct communication a customer has with your company: So, make sure that every interaction counts.