The rise of AI is ushering in a new era of ecommerce — one where conversational commerce will shape next-level customer experiences.
But with so much changing so quickly, understanding this new future is a bit tricky. Creating conversational AI-powered ecommerce experiences isn’t an easy feat, especially when antiquated chatbots are our only frame of reference for customer-facing AI.
Chatbots have been around for a while now, but with conversational AI taking the ecommerce world by storm, chatbots as we knew them are a thing of the past. Comparing these outdated tools to the conversational AI interfaces now available to businesses is like comparing a pocket calculator to a MacBook.
Conversational AI can do so much more, with the power to guide customers through a complete and personalized experience with your brand. It can offer a truly two-way conversation with your consumers, allowing you to organically nurture every step in the buying journey, revolutionize online shopping, and foster long-lasting customer loyalty in a way that has never been achievable before.
Here are the key differences between the chatbots of yesteryear and the revolutionary conversational commerce tools that you can use to stay ahead of the ecommerce curve.
What Exactly Is Conversational Commerce?
Conversational commerce is the process of using automated customer interactions and AI technologies to create more engaging customer experiences when shopping online. It allows consumers to interact with your business through multiple channels like messaging apps, on-site chat windows, and voice assistants to solve issues, find the perfect products, and communicate with your brand in a more organic way.
Conversational commerce has recently grown in leaps and bounds thanks to the advancements of conversational AI, a type of artificial intelligence that can simulate human conversation. This emerging technology allows businesses to offer a truly interactive dialogue and dynamic exchange with their shoppers.
This might sound reminiscent of messaging chatbots you find on many ecommerce sites, but the depth of uses that conversational commerce now offers is unmatched. With conversational commerce, customers can get quick answers to important questions, easily purchase items without having to navigate through entire websites, and receive helpful suggestions based on their previously collected customer data, including personalized product recommendations.
With so much to offer shoppers, conversational commerce eclipses the chatbots of the last decade. And when you take a look at how these two technologies work, it’s easy to see why.
The Difference Between Previous Chatbots and Conversational AI
At face value, conversational AI chatbots do look similar to old-school chatbots.
Both are designed to engage customers at important points in the online shopping journey and provide assistance. They’re often deployed on a website, interacted with through a chat window, and strive to emulate the customer conversations that shoppers might get through an in-store experience.
But this surface-level resemblance is where the comparison ends. While the interface feels familiar on a fundamental level, the way conversational AI can interact with online shoppers is completely revolutionary.
Conversational AI harnesses natural language processing, machine learning, and real-time customer data to deliver far more nuanced, context-aware, and adaptive interactions. This evolutionary leap makes conversational AI chatbots a true game-changer, and makes the flaws of old-school chatbots glaringly obvious.
Consumers Feel Limited by the Chatbots of Yesteryear
Up until the recent explosion of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and Siri, most people viewed chatbots as simple, superficial tools.
That’s because ecommerce chatbots were limited to a rule-based system that restricted communication to a set number of predetermined responses. They could only reply to a narrow range of customer queries, so that was what your conversation was limited to — you had to play by the chatbot’s rules to get any value out of the interaction.
We’ve all encountered rule-based chatbots before. They resemble automated phone menus, guiding users through a series of preset choices to reach default answers.
And while there are positive use cases for these types of chatbots, like providing information on business hours or processing basic customer service requests, they can’t go beyond simple interactions. And more often than not, your customers will get frustrated by the limitations of these self-contained systems.
Conversational AI Can Listen, Chat, and Learn
But those limitations are things of the past thanks to the rise of advanced conversational AI technologies. Today, AI-powered chatbots serve as virtual assistants, capable of comprehending text and speech and offering responses that go well beyond a basic script.
Instead of restricting users to a predetermined set of questions they can ask, conversational AI uses natural language processing to analyze and grasp human intent in the prompts it receives. It can discern any question it is faced with, even when prompted with colloquialisms or slang.
Not only does conversational AI understand what a user is saying, it can also generate responses beyond what a rule-based system could produce. This is thanks to generative AI, which can create appropriate and relevant responses within a real-time conversation. It has the ability to facilitate two-way customer interactions, surpassing keyword-based responses or interactions dictated by menu options.
Another key ingredient of conversational AI’s ability to create organic dialogues lies in machine learning, which gives it the capability to learn and broaden its understanding through further data input. The more customer engagement, the better conversational AI gets — it refines itself without the need for additional engineering support, learning to provide deeper, more nuanced answers and handle abstract questions.
Having a conversation that truly grows and deepens with customers as they interact more and more is the crux of conversational AI’s value for ecommerce. It can learn from a user’s responses to suggestions, incorporate their preferences, and guide their customer journeys with personalized content that speaks directly to their wants and needs.
Conversational Commerce Is the Evolution of Ecommerce
In this exciting new era of ecommerce, brands need to look past the preconceived notions of what chatbots can do and recognize the incredible potential that conversational AI offers.
It does so much more than surpass the previous abilities of chatbots. Conversational AI opens up a whole new shopping journey for your customers, reshaping customer engagement to mirror the personalized, real-time experiences that in-store shopping provides — and that online shopping always aspired to.
Businesses can now use conversational AI to serve as a personal customer service representative that is an expert on your brand, your products, your policies, and more. It can speak in your brand voice and cultivate ongoing conversations at key touchpoints in the shopping journey. It can be trained to guide each individual shopper through their entire customer experience and tailor their interactions with data on their likes and dislikes.
This isn’t just a tool that you need to keep an eye on for the future. It’s a game-changing moment in ecommerce that is shaking up the status quo here and now.
It’s Not a Matter of If, But When You Adopt Conversational AI
Conversational commerce is revolutionizing shopping as we know it, and businesses need to embrace conversational AI as an integral part of their ecommerce strategy.
It’s no longer a theoretical novelty or a futuristic tool reserved for mega-brands like Apple or Amazon. It’s quickly becoming an essential piece of every online shopping experience, and you can’t afford to be left behind as conversational AI transforms customer experiences, expectations, and loyalty.
To meet the rise of conversational commerce head on, you need Bloomreach Clarity, our conversational shopping product powered by the latest advancements in AI.
Leverage the Power of Conversational AI With Bloomreach Clarity
Trained on real-time customer insights, your product catalog, and our 15+ years of data on how customers shop and search, Bloomreach Clarity allows every customer to seek guidance from a trusted expert instantly — one that can point them to the right products at the right time.
Our conversational AI tool can make every shopping experience feel like a 1:1 session with a personal shopper, responding to your customer’s real-time needs when and where it matters most. Whether they need help browsing your products, have a question about items in their cart, or need assistance at checkout, our AI shopping assistant can step in to ensure that every potential crossroad in the online shopping journey ends with customer satisfaction.
Plus, you don’t need to wait long to see real results — Clarity is designed with out-of-the-box functionality and common online shopping pain points in mind, helping you capitalize on key moments in your customer journey and provide the tailored experience that modern customers expect.
Conversational commerce and artificial intelligence aren’t going anywhere, and shopping will never be the same again. Now is the time to modernize your customer engagement strategy, optimize your customer experience, and see just how limitless Clarity can be — visit our site for a demo today.
