The global market for Virtual Shopping Assistants is experiencing significant growth. In 2023, the market was valued at approximately $624.7 million and is projected to reach $4,575.9 million by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 32.9%. Source: Coherent Market Insights
The AI-powered companion, Virtual Shopping Assistant, is changing the shopping experience for customers as well as eCommerce store owners.
These AI-generated tools are already blurring the lines between physical and online shopping. Many leading retailers now use them to enhance their customer experience.
Virtual personal shopping assistants provide tailored recommendations and answer customer queries. They also guide customers throughout their shopping journey. You can integrate them into websites, mobile apps, and social media platforms, making them accessible at any time. This allows shoppers from any location to use them seamlessly.
But first, let us understand what Virtual Shopping Assistants really are.
What are eCommerce Virtual Shopping Assistants?
Virtual Shopping Assistants in eCommerce are more than just chatbots that give canned responses. Virtual shopping assistants use generative AI and natural language processing to simulate human conversation. They answer customer queries in real-time.
They have the tools to handle various aspects of an eCommerce store. This includes tasks like inventory management, customer service, and much more.
Integrating such assistants into your eCommerce platform will help better your customer’s experience. Powered by AI, Virtual Shopping Assistants take customers through the whole experience, giving product recommendations, and more.
The virtual assistant for your eCommerce app can transform your entire business for the better. It provides comprehensive support to boost efficiency, enhance customer satisfaction, and increase sales.
Fundamental Services provided by eCommerce Virtual Assistants
1. Customer Care and Support
In a survey done by Salesforce, “State of the Connected Customer,” the findings state that 80% of customers now consider the experience a company provides to be as important as its products and services.
Customer satisfaction is critical in eCommerce. Virtual assistants handle customer inquiries, complaints, and grievances across multiple channels. These include live chat, emails, and social media, where they also manage customer feedback. They work at building a respectable image of the brand through their proper and timely response, thus ensuring customer retention.
2. Order Processing and Management
Virtual assistant for eCommerce app can handle the whole process of ordering, from order placement to delivery like Amazon’s Alexa. This includes handling returns and exchanges, tracking shipments, and making sure that customers receive their orders quickly and accurately.
3. Inventory Management
Keeping inventory at an excellent level is important to prevent stockouts or overstocking. Virtual shopping assistants can assist suppliers by tracking stock levels and updating product listings. This helps ensure that the inventory of your online store stays balanced and well-managed.
4. Optimized Product Listings
Virtual Shopping Assistants are your [not so] secret weapon for creating product listings that your customers notice and drive sales. Besides helping with customer service, AI-powered Virtual Assistant quickly analyzes product attributes, specifications, and other information. Leveraging this feature, you can generate informative and tailored product descriptions with your AI-powered Virtual Assistant that attracts your customers.
5. In-depth Market Research
The goal of market research isn’t just to listen to your customers or your competitors. In other words, it puts together all the relevant pieces so you can get a great view of your vertical, help you formulate solid marketing strategies, and make better decisions overall. This is why it becomes very important for entrepreneurs to set aside a budget and especially time for comprehensive market research, which makes it a full-time task. Integrating AI shopping assistants for eCommerce apps for market research is almost essential. Equipped with advanced machine learning algorithms and natural language processing capabilities, virtual shopping assistants communicate directly with consumers to gather mountains of data in real-time. All this makes up a rich backbone for deep market research and thus can generate insights that traditional methods might leave uncovered.
6. Competitor Research
Thorough research of the competition will not only let you realize your strengths and weaknesses but also give you insight into what exactly it is that the consumer is buying. This would be important in the positioning of your own products and services. Furthermore, detailed competitor analysis can be done by the virtual assistant for your eCommerce store to help you understand your market position and assist in differentiating yourself.
7. Customer Feedback Analysis
Customer feedback is a gold mine of insights that can show exactly what is in your products or services your audience loves and hates.
In this context, virtual shopping assistants can collect, analyze, and interpret customer feedback from different sources, helping you respond to areas of concern and leverage areas of strength.
8. Optimize Refunds and Exchanges
Returns and refunds are part and parcel of the eCommerce world. Making them seamless not only provides rich customer satisfaction but also ensures operational efficiency. Virtual shopping assistants can turn out to be very instrumental in optimizing such processes.
Learn about eCommerce Business Models
eCommerce Virtual Assistants Benefits that Brands Must Reap
The world of eCommerce has been a volatile one lately; developing a lead in the competitive race calls for something more than just a strong online presence. It also wants you to be up and running efficiently while giving customers great service. A Virtual Shopping Assistant has been found to be valuable. It is known how, by automating several tasks with virtual assistant for ecommerce app, an eCommerce store can cut costs and focus on growth while streamlining operations. Let’s take a glance at some of the main advantages of AI shopping assistant for eCommerce:
Improved Customer Experience
Going through a static site with no interactive content can become very monotonous. The customers shopping through their virtual personal shopping assistant will get the product they want to buy and thus enjoy it. Further, real-time assistance can also enhance their buying decisions.
Reduced Abandoned Cart
AI-powered virtual shopping assistants will help lower the average cart abandonment rate by giving shoppers a quicker way to ask questions about products and how to check out. They also help customers remain engaged with a brand through the personalization of discounts.
Increase in Sales
eCommerce chatbots may prove to be very effective in increasing conversion rates through cross-selling and upselling strategies that are automated. These kinds of chatbots offer products to customers after studying their purchase history, as well as their browsing history. For example, if a customer buys a new pair of shoes, then an AI-powered virtual shopping assistant can offer them complementary goods like matching trousers.
Cost-Effective
You can implement a virtual assistant for your eCommerce app to handle FAQs and track orders automatically. This eliminates the need for manual responses. This reduces the reliance on customer support staff and allows customers to access information quickly and efficiently. Moreover, chatbot marketing offers a strong return on investment (ROI) and can significantly lower customer acquisition costs.
50% of all businesses report that implementing chatbots and virtual assistants has helped reduce expenses. Source: Insider
Efficient Lead Capture
Selling to a first-time visitor is challenging. eCommerce businesses should optimize sales by using effective lead generation and nurturing techniques. An AI shopping assistant for eCommerce enables conversation and turns website visitors into qualified leads, therefore tagging customers showing interest in specific product pages.
It is known that the chatbots conducted in virtual shopping have huge potential for raising sales and conversion rates.
Surprisingly, many popular brands already use this technology. Here are a few ways to integrate AI in eCommerce store if you want to join their ranks:
Examples of Virtual Shopping Assistants in eCommerce
Whether it’s for cost savings or improving customer service, there are countless reasons to implement virtual assistants in your online store. They can enhance various aspects of your business operations. By putting virtual assistants on board, an online store can streamline operations and give a fillip to productivity. As a result, this approach supports key areas of brand growth and allows businesses to deliver exactly what customers want.
Here are a few examples of brands that have integrated virtual assistants for eCommerce store:
Amazon Alexa
Amazon Alexa is a cloud-based voice service by Amazon, aimed at interacting with users through natural language processing (NLP). It was originally released in November 2014 with the Amazon Echo smart speaker and currently runs on a long line of smart speakers, smart displays, and third-party products.
It processes commands given in natural language. For instance, you can ask Alexa to purchase items at Amazon.com with the command, “Alexa, order.” By default, when you’re not quite sure of what to buy, you can ask for recommendations, like “Alexa, find a good Christmas gift for my nephew.”
Moreover, smart devices, music playing, and dispensing weather information, traffic conditions, etc., are handled by Alexa.
Walmart Text to Shop
Text to Shop is a service that, via text, places items directly into a Walmart customer’s online shopping cart. Additionally, Walmart’s innovation builds on the simplicity and pervasiveness of texting. It puts the shopping experience at customers’ fingertips wherever there is a mobile phone. Whether you’re at home, working in the office, or on the move, you can add items to your cart in seconds. Just a quick tap on your phone is all it takes.
Walmart’s acquisition of the conversational chatbot design startup Botmock highlights their commitment to AI integration. This move signals their intent to make AI shopping assistants and virtual shopping apps permanent components of their customer journey strategy.
AliExpress Messenger Shopping Assistant
The AliExpress Messenger Shopping Assistant is a chatbot that helps shoppers navigate the AliExpress platform. It works through popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. It leverages artificial intelligence and natural language processing to provide a personalized and interactive shopping experience.
Whether you’re looking for specific products, tracking your orders, or seeking customer support, the Shopping Assistant is there to help. Additionally, you can also search through images. Just take or upload a picture of the item, and the AI engine will identify it and match it with products available for purchase.
Emergence of eCommerce Virtual Shopping Assistant Services
The Virtual Assistant market is forecasted to increase by USD 26.95 billion, at a CAGR of 37.29% between 2022 and 2027.
For the last couple of years, virtual shopping assistants’ services have gained further momentum because of their needs for cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and scalability. The need for running an online store becomes increasingly complex with more entrepreneurs and businesses entering the digital marketplace.
For more insights, check out our eCommerce app development guide!
What’s the Best Way to Integrate Virtual Assistants for eCommerce Store?
Although virtual shopping assistants have revolutionized the online retail industry and bring much potential in reducing costs, it is not enough to just integrate one into your eCommerce store.
Like any other technology, AI shopping assistants for eCommerce may face challenges such as understanding complex queries and managing inventory. Consequently, issues like ensuring data privacy and security can hinder their effectiveness and impact customer satisfaction.
Kody Technolab Ltd is an eCommerce app development company that boasts a team of experts in AI and machine learning, the backbone technology behind virtual shopping assistants. We offer tailored solutions that meet the specific needs of your eCommerce store, ensuring seamless integration of new technology with existing systems to minimize disruption and maximize efficiency. Our team places great value on UX (user experience) design, making sure that AI shopping assistants for eCommerce apps are intuitive, valuable to customers, and easy to use. Kody Technolab also provides ongoing support and maintenance services to keep your virtual shopping assistant at the forefront of technological advancements, with our team always available to address issues and implement updates, ensuring smooth and efficient operation.
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