By Guray Ozturk,
Head of BFSI and Digital, APAC, Infobip
TRADITIONALLY, shopping assistants are associated with luxury brands, a perk of buying expensive clothes, bags, shoes, or even furniture. But with the rise of online shopping, personal shopping assistants aren’t so exclusive anymore.
What is an AI Shopping Assistant?
AI shopping assistants use artificial intelligence to help customers with their shopping activities. A shopping assistant is available around the clock, capable of simultaneously handling a wide range of customer queries and providing tailored, personalized recommendations.
What’s more, this AI assistant continually learns from each interaction, constantly refining its performance to deliver even better outcomes.
Infobip has identified two types of AI shopping assistants. The first one is Rule-based chatbots that are fantastic for fast deployment and simple use cases. They are trained on specific information and can navigate the user based on key words. Then there are the Conversational AI chatbots that offer human-like conversations and are designed to carry out more complicated use cases. They don’t follow specific rules or restrictions and can naturally analyze the user’s input to provide the best response.
The goal of an AI shopping assistant is to elevate the overall shopping experience of a customer, not just help them pick the perfect outfit. AI assistants can provide personalized recommendations, answer FAQs, send back-in-stock messages and cart abandonment reminders, notify customers on order confirmations, special offers and discounts and delivery updates, and process returns among others. Carrying out these tasks with an AI shopping assistant makes the entire shopping experience faster, smoother, with no need to switch between apps or waiting on a call for an agent to pick up a customer query.
Benefits of an AI Shopping Assistant
Infobip sees integrating AI shopping assistants as a transformative strategy for businesses looking to enhance customer experiences and streamline operations. Companies can leverage these assistants for strategic purposes like optimizing inventory, cross-selling and upselling, and reducing costs.
Reduce costs and save time
Automating routine tasks with AI shopping assistants can significantly reduce operational costs and save time. Businesses can optimize resources and allocate human staff to more strategic and complex tasks.
Greater engagement
By understanding customer preferences and behavior, AI assistants can engage users in meaningful conversations, provide a more interactive and personalized experience, and make shopping more enjoyable and memorable.
Cross-selling
An AI shopping assistant can easily suggest complementary products or upgrades based on customer selections. This can help businesses increase average transaction value by promoting additional items that align with the customer’s needs and wants.
Inventory management
AI can help a business optimize inventory levels by analyzing historical data, predicting demand, and identifying trends. This helps ensure that companies maintain optimal stock levels and reduces the likelihood of overstocking or stockouts.
This combination of personalized interactions and data-driven insights creates a more competitive and customer-centric environment for any business.
Harnessing the Power of an AI
shopping assistant
Zalora, Southeast Asia’s fashion leader, uses generative AI in their business to help them streamline processes and enhance customer experience by automating responses and ensuring customers have a more personalized experience.
These innovations are not merely reshaping customer experiences but are also driving business performance to new heights. Engaging customers through the proper digital channels is crucial to thrive in the shifting retail landscape.
Imagine being an online shopper looking for an item from the comfort of your home computer or smartphone. You discover an eCommerce website that leverages an AI-powered shopping assistant on their live chat service. This chatbot delivers immediate responses while remembering all your preferences, predicting your needs, and offering personalized product recommendations.
By integrating an AI Shopping Assistant with Infobip’s marketing automation tool, Moments, businesses can choose any channel – Viber, WhatsApp, other social media platforms and more – to personally communicate with customers at any stage of the customer journey. This showcases how a business can embrace a seamless and personalized experience via an AI and omnichannel strategy, fostering customer loyalty and anticipation for re-engagement and targeted future offerings.
The journey ahead: Navigating
the future of retail
The future of retail is not about replacing human interaction with AI or going fully digital but rather using technology to enhance human connections and create a customer-centric shopping experience through conversational engagements.
AI-powered shopping assistants, acting as brand ambassadors, can improve customer experience by providing personalized recommendations, prompt responses to inquiries, and valuable guidance throughout the customer journey. This not only enhances the customer experience but also transforms business models, maximizes marketing ROI, and simplifies processes for businesses and consumers.
The future of retail is here, and it is digital, immersive, and customer-centric. With Statista predicting that the number of users in the eCommerce market is expected to amount to 31.6 million by 2029, Philippine retailers are now presented with the opportunity to harness the capabilities of AI shopping assistants, automation and personalized omni channel customer communications to enhance their customer relations in a competitive digital landscape.
Continued developments in technology, particularly in Artificial Intelligence (AI), have paved the way to democratize the use of shopping assistants online. Here is where the good news lies – an AI shopping assistant can be the perfect way to make the customer journey smoother and more personalized than ever before.
According to Statista, a global data and business intelligence platform, revenue from the eCommerce market in the Philippines is expected to reach US$14.66 billion in 2024. Moreover, data shows an annual growth rate (CAGR 2024-2029) of 11.27%, resulting to a projected market volume of US$25.01 billion by 2029.
To help retail and eCommerce brands stay ahead of this curve, we at Infobip see the potential of having online brand ambassadors – AI shopping assistants – as game-changers for growth.
