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Customer service: how artificial intelligence can increase customer loyalty

Can the use of artificial intelligence lead to improved customer loyalty in customer service of ecommerce business? At first this appears to be a contradiction. On closer inspection, the logic reveals itself: It's about optimizing contact with customers.

It has been proven that a functioning customer service is more responsible than ever before that a customer feels bound to a provider - and the number is rising. 

There are essentially two reasons for this: On the one hand, the growing number of online providers means that the customer notices when things are going better for one than the other. And “better” simply means that customer service responds particularly quickly and is available around the clock.

Here are a few figures: The time span in which customers expect a response to their chat request is six to 15 seconds, 80 percent of all customers want their e-mail to be answered in less than an hour and 75 percent of consumers do their math at night and on weekends with the same response time as normal business hours. 

On the other hand, customer loyalty drops faster. He is generally more sensitive, and the awareness of good or bad service has grown with time and experience. Current research shows that even one bad experience with a provider can cause half of customers to switch to the competition.

Why customer service plays a key role in online trading

In online retail, customer service also plays a key role in interaction with customers much more than in brick-and-mortar retail, as they are the only point of contact. 

Thanks to artificial intelligence, companies have various options for making their customer service faster and more available . And the implementation is much easier than many providers suspect. 

Customer Service: Three levels of artificial intelligence support

In principle, the customer service employee should be able to decide for himself how much the AI ​​supports him. Starting with the simple preprocessing, in which the AI ​​analyzes the content of incoming standard inquiries and forwards them to the appropriate point, through the assistance, in which the AI ​​suggests a series of dynamic instructions to the customer advisor, which he then initiates and completes with just a few clicks, up to fully automated processing in which the AI ​​resolves cases conclusively.

Here is a numerical example from the first level "Analysis and Routing": The AI ​​is able to process 85 percent of incoming inquiries during preprocessing, which saves customer service the equivalent of 2,125 hours of work when 100,000 e-mails are received (based on 13 minutes total processing time per Process / ticket as the mean of the average processing times for telephone inquiries (6 min.), Chat (13 min.) And e-mail (20 min.).

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8 simple examples of automation in e-commerce

It was Benjamin Franklin who once said "Time is money" and still speaks from the soul of many people today. So there actually seems to be something to the phrase. 

The self-employed, in particular, discover every day how valuable every minute they have is. In order to be able to use every minute as effectively as possible, many of them rely on various automation processes. The following article will tell you which of these are particularly relevant and useful for you as the operator of an online shop.

Automation is becoming increasingly important in online retail

Online trading has become indispensable in Germany and everywhere else in the world. The degree of automation in the industry is increasing more and more so that retailers can meet the ever-increasing demand and, above all, solve logistical problems. Intralogistics in particular is affected by this.

This is the result of the study "E-Commerce & Intralogistics 2020" , which was carried out by the market research company Technomar, the logistics management consultant trilogIQa and the Institute of Interactive Commerce. The working group received support from the German E-Commerce and Mail Order Association.

Automation is an important step for companies in general and online shops in particular that want to waste as little time as possible on routine, repetitive tasks. Using eight examples, we will show you how this effort (among other things) can work out in practice - and especially in administration.

Email and Email Marketing

When it comes to automation processes in e-commerce, you almost inevitably have to refer to the sending of e-mails. No shop owner who wants to make his business big will sit down and send every email to (potential) customers by hand.

Regardless of whether it is a newsletter, order confirmation or information about incoming payments - standard messages can be sent automatically with various programs.

Email marketing is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be able to encourage people to buy, on the other hand, it becomes annoying very quickly. So that you do not have to invest a lot of time in individual and personalized messages and still achieve the desired effect, so-called triggered e-mails are recommended.

These automatically indicate to a customer, for example, that their shopping cart is full, which they have not yet converted into an order. A well-known service that offers triggered emails (and also comes from Germany) is KRYD . The company claims of itself that it increases the "relevance of communication".

Create invoices with just a few clicks

Another classic is the automatic creation of invoices. Here, too, there are a number of solutions that take on the task and, with the help of the stored customer data, send a document that is ready to be sent in seconds. Many of them are already integrated in the shop system.

Shipping and returns - Amazon helps

Every online retailer will be able to confirm that shipping goods and accepting returns is extremely time-consuming. Anyone who wants to rely on automation in this area does not necessarily have to spend huge amounts of money on the latest robot technology. One option that is well worth considering is called Fulfillment by Amazon and works like this:

You store your goods at an Amazon location (and do not need your own warehouse)

They take care of the compilation, packaging and dispatch of your customer orders

Returns are also accepted and processed by Amazon

You store your goods at an Amazon location (and do not need your own warehouse)

They take care of the compilation, packaging and dispatch of your customer orders

Returns are also accepted and processed by Amazon

Of course, such a service always has its price. Retailers who are interested in Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA for short) should calculate carefully in advance whether this step is worthwhile or not. Automation is helpful - but not automatically economical in every case.

Marketplaces support automated international shipping

Let's stay a moment with the topic of Amazon. The e-commerce giant is - as we all know - a classic online marketplace and as such is ideally suited as an automation tool. Especially if you intend to send your goods abroad, Amazon and Co. can (partly) automatically assist you.

ERP systems - indispensable automation tools

Automation in e-commerce without a property management system? Absolutely unimaginable. The “Poshmark Pro Tools” will be very handy tool when you are going to deal with the Poshmark; it automates your ecommerce activities and leads you to greater sales.

The merchandise management system not only reports when stocks are running low, it also manages all incoming and outgoing goods. So that the inventory management system can also do justice to this responsible task, it must of course be "linked" to your online shop. We are happy to support you in this task with our individual interfaces .

Bookkeeping: making the evil a breeze

Incidentally, these interfaces for online retailers can not only establish a connection to the inventory management system, but also to the accounting system. 

This corporate division also offers excellent opportunities to establish various automation processes - from the automatic booking of incoming and outgoing invoices to advance VAT returns and reminders of orders that have not yet been paid.

Cross-selling: propose recommendations to save time

Hardly any online shop operator will take the time to manually select which products suit another or which the buyer might like. It is simply no longer necessary and much too time-consuming.

Customer care using FAQs

Do you keep getting the same questions about products, shipping and other topics? Then answer them once in the form of FAQs ( "Frequently Asked Questions" ).

Such a project can take up a lot of time at first, but it is definitely worth it. Because if the frequently asked questions (plus the answers to them) are placed in a clearly visible place in the shop, the inquiries from customers will decrease significantly. This can also be understood as a form of automation (in this case: automated customer support).

Additional tip: The creation of FAQs and other texts for your online shop are tasks that can easily be outsourced to an external expert. This gives you more capacity for your core business again.

Automation means optimization

At the beginning you may find it difficult to give up certain tasks and leave them to various tools and algorithms. However, if you have the necessary confidence, you will soon notice how great the relief is that comes with the automated processes.

In addition, you must never forget that automation is always a form of optimization. Especially when you are growing your business or want to take the next step, it makes perfect sense to look at the areas in which automated processes are possible.