Mobile commerce is becoming more and more popular, and who can blame consumers when they can now browse and shop from the comfort of their couch or compare options while they’re shopping in-store? Customers are now defaulting to their phones when they need information about businesses and their products quick. Problem is, that information is often buried 2+ clicks deep in a navigation menu at the bottom of a brand’s homepage in teeny tiny font.
All this being said, it’s no surprise that customers have a growing affinity for AI-powered live chat. According to a 2018 Salesforce report, 69% of people prefer chatting with a chatbot whenever they want answers to quick questions instead of waiting for a human being. But what exactly are people asking these chatbots into the late hours of the night and the wee hours of the morning?
After consulting our conversation logs and data from a few of our top clients, we’ve created the following list representing a large majority of users’ questions and provides an interesting glimpse into how customers are interacting with the future of customer service and ecommerce.
AI-powered conversational technology can help online merchants, whether on Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, Lightspeed or Prestashop, automate up to 60% of their customer service questions, which means more time for human customer service teams to spend on high-value interactions.
So, without further ado, here are the most common questions customers are asking our chatbots.
1. “What are your products made of?”
The whole point of a chatbot is to create a branded, omnichannel hub for any and all questions your customers have. That being said, more often than not, customers will come to your chatbot with a question in mind, so it’s crucial to have your bot trained on your product lineup and common brand questions.
Whether they want to know your products’ ingredients or materials or which product is the best for their specific needs, a chatbot is a perfect venue to have those questions asked and answered. Customers get their answers fast, without taking up valuable time of your human customer service agents.
2. “Where’s my order?”
Instead of scrolling through their email, finding the order confirmation, going to an external website, and typing in a tracking number, more and more customers are headed straight for a brand’s live chat window to ask where their order is. For them, it’s just more intuitive and simpler, especially on mobile with smaller screen sizes. And now with seamless integrations with postal services and courier companies, users can get live updates on the location of their order directly on Messenger.
3. “I need to make a return. What’s your refund policy?”
Returns, refunds, and exchanges are par for the course for any merchant, whether physical or online. It’s an easy concern to automate and can save customer service agents hours upon hours of customer frustration. Plus, getting these customers the answers they need fast and managing their expectations starts these types of interactions and relationships on the right foot.
4. “When are you guys open today?”
By tapping into a company’s Google My Business profile, our chatbots can dynamically pull relevant information from their business listing including opening hours and directions. Not only can users then get an instant answer regarding where your store is or what time you’re open, but whenever your hours change on Google due to holidays, it’s dynamically updated and reflected in the chatbot.
5. “Where’s your store?”
It’s not uncommon to hear that traditional retail is doomed and that no one shops in-store anymore, but that’s simply not the case. It’s not uncommon for users to do their research online and ultimately pull the trigger with an in-store purchase.
A chatbot can help eliminate a handful of clicks by integrating directly with your own website’s store locator module or Google My Business to give users real-time directions, opening hours, and store locations based on the customer’s individual location.
Users can choose to share their exact location or city with a single click and be given custom directions and other information about their closest stores.
6. “What’s the best deal you can give me?”
During sales, peak periods, and limited edition releases, certain products can become unavailable, much to the dismay of customers. That’s why price drop notifications, as well as stock notifications, were a complete dealmaker with Decathlon as well as The Last Hunt, an online retailer that specializes in selling brand name outerwear at discount prices.
For Decathlon, users can sign up for stock notifications if their desired product isn’t in stock, and be notified when it’s available again. For The Last Hunt, customers who aren’t quite ready to pull the trigger on a deal can sign up for price drop notifications, and be notified if their desired product drops in price.
Optimize and monetize customer service
What’s clear from these insights is that customers expect instant service, whether they’re inquiring about shipping costs, product availability, delivery notifications, and more. For all these inquiries, chatbots help guide them quickly and efficiently through every step of the process with personalized service, and instant answers, only involving the human when necessary or desired.
By improving and automating a portion of your customer support system to be available 24/7 this not only creates more free time for human customer support agents to focus on the more sensitive, complex questions, but it also helps you ultimately monetize your customer service team. And with powerful ecommerce integrations under the hood, turning customer inquiries into sales opportunities is easier than ever with Heyday.
