The evolution of technology reached eCommerce, this time, converging with artificial intelligence (AI). Brands are including in their marketing plans and digital content tools that allow the collection of data and figures of the online behavior of fixed and potential consumers to understand their tastes and interests during their purchase process. Jorge Zuñiga Blanco, an entrepreneur and technology expert from Costa Rica, explains how AI is changing eCommerce and why it matters.
One of the AI tools now available to eCommerce businesses are “Commerce Clouds, where you can collect demographic information about target consumers or data about their online behavior to better understand their purchase process, in addition to more accurately predicting the items they could buy, according to preferences. Another are the “chatbots,” which have the task of providing a unique and personalized experience to the user, helping them to solve customer service issues such as doubts about the product or service.
Client-centric searches are one of the most valuable bases of AI. It uses natural language that, when implemented in eCommerce tools, allows contextualizing and presenting better search results for the consumer, in addition to organizing them through image and video recognition.
AI is making changes in sales. Says Zuñiga, “It helps to identify exceptionally good customers thanks to market segmentation and other searches, but it is also being used in the shopping experience to identify how much time a person spends seeing a product and from there, create a new sales process, generate a more effective purchase and retain more customers with the brand.”
Voice assistants have rapidly gained attention. Although much has been said about them, their importance lies in the use of natural language impacting the way customers search and buy.
Online commerce requires customer service 24 hours a day that responds to queries and responds in real-time to the consumer, according to the language required. At this point, language and localization take a fundamental role to meet the needs of the consumer, since the closer the customer feels with the brand, the greater their degree of satisfaction. Having live representation around the clock would be resource-intensive and costly, which is why chatbots exist. Although they were clunky at first, AI has made them extremely user-friendly and they now improve, not hurt, the customer experience.
AI can also make improvements in the search experience of the end-user. “AI allows segmentation according to the parameters established by the brand,” says Zuñiga. For example, according to its industry, its products or services, the markets in which it operates, among others. Ranked among the most effective modes, personalization is at the core of AI in eCommerce marketing. Based on the specific data gathered from each online user, AI and machine learning in eCommerce are deriving important user insights from customer-generated data.
Efficient stock management consists of maintaining the appropriate level of stocks that can meet market demand without increasing idle stocks. While the conventional form of inventory management was limited to current stock levels, AI-enabled inventory management is enabling how to maintain stocks based on data related to all functions of the business.
In addition to inventory management, AI is enabling warehouse management with the emergence of automated robots that are projected as the future of artificial intelligence in eCommerce. Unlike human employees, AI robots can be used to store or retrieve 24/7 stocks along with an immediate shipment of items ordered after an online order.
In addition to transforming the eCommerce industry in multiple ways, AI in the B2B eCommerce sector is driving a number of innovative solutions. AI-based technologies are introducing online shoppers to a range of products they didn’t even know existed on the market. For example, AI-based technology company Sentient Technologies is enabling virtual digital shoppers to be able to recommend new products to online shoppers based on their personal buying patterns and data insights. This is just one of the changes being seen, with plenty more coming down the pipeline.
