Leveraging omni-channel conversations to drive sales during the holiday season

This post is sponsored by AiChat.

When the COVID pandemic hit two years ago, more than 74% of the world’s consumers quickly moved to shop online, which accelerated the speed of digital transformation across industries. As a result, the retail landscape has shifted, with the lines between shopping online and offline blurring dramatically.

With the holiday season coming up, a key challenge for merchants is recreating the same excellent customer experience that they experience in-store on their eCommerce storefronts.

With online sales expected to peak during the upcoming holiday sales season, merchants are likely to see a sharp uptick in customer enquiries – so, providing a positive customer experience for each of these requests across multiple platforms will prove to be crucial for brands looking to find success this season.

In fact, 65% of all consumers find positive experiences with a brand across sales channels to be more influential than great advertising, according to a PwC survey. Because of this, merchants are looking for digital tools to connect their digital and bricks-and-mortar stores to build a seamless customer journey.

In this article, we explore how brands can leverage omni-channel conversations to drive sales while improving retention and loyalty during the hectic shopping season. We also dive into how SHOPLINE, Asia’s leading smart commerce platform, and AiChat, Southeast Asia’s No.1 AI chatbot platform, are helping eCommerce brands to automate personalised conversations for omni-channel success.

Communicating with customers everywhere with conversational commerce

Conversational commerce has emerged as a growing trend for eCommerce merchants. A recent report found that 58% of customers are using chatbots for customer service in 2022 – a 15% increase from 2021. This is while another study found that five in 10 (53%) Singaporean shoppers have enlisted the help of chatbots to get the information they need for holiday shopping.

In today’s always on-the-go, on-demand mobile world, customers are demanding faster response times, and brands need to constantly engage with customers with instant responses, especially in the spaces between the physical and digital touch-points.

Missteps can risk losing hard-earned customer loyalty and spending. Case in point, the study has shown that leaving consumers with unresolved queries can result in over $2 million in missed revenue per day.

For SHOPLINE merchants, the addition of real-time conversational commerce features, through its partnership with AiChat, means that merchants are able to use AI-powered chatbots to create personalised customer experiences for service, marketing, and shopping.

Get your storefronts primed for the holiday season

The holiday season is a time when brands are rewarded for engaging creatively and interactively with their customers. During the holiday months, brands often shake up their retail efforts with holiday discounts, seasonal products, and holiday-themed marketing campaigns. With the ramping up of holiday season sales and marketing tactics, online storefronts also need to scale-up to meet these needs.

With an AI chatbot solution, brands can dress the store virtual assistant with holiday themes and catchy greetings. Beyond being a non-intrusive way to welcome customers, they can help boost engagement and increase brand lift in a fun and engaging manner.

The M1 chatbot, powered by AiChat, invited visitors to create and send their own personalised Lunar New Year cards to their loved ones.

From an infrastructure standpoint, eCommerce sites need to be fast, responsive, and ready to fulfil even when receiving significantly more visitors and orders. At the same time, their online stores can go through holiday-season “makeovers” to capture the seasonal look, and feel, so that websites are in step with themed promotional efforts.

SHOPLINE’s marketing calendar feature enables merchants to instantly change up their eCommerce sites with holiday-themed elements.

Automate your eCommerce efforts to seize holiday sales

The holiday season can be a particularly hectic time for eCommerce operations – with significantly more orders and customer requests coming in, brands need to be on top of their customer needs, and cannot compromise on the customer experience.

A part of their holiday efforts that brands can automate effectively would be their messaging efforts. After users start a chat, businesses can design and send a series of automated re-targeting follow-up messages to those who have left without completing their purchases.

The eCommerce chatbot would be able to proactively assist with holiday-related frequently asked questions. Brands can also leverage conversational AI to send personalised messages offering customers recommendations or even discounts to help ease potential friction along the shopping journey to boost conversions.

The Marina Bay Sands’ chatbot, powered by AiChat, provided shoppers with gift shopping recommendations, driving awareness for its shopping facilities during Christmas.

Specifically in the eCommerce context, customers are often overwhelmed by a wide range of products and categories offered. A smart chatbot can help to save customers’ time, and make personalised product recommendations, by asking a set of questions to understand their shopping preferences. To take it a step further, digital vouchers and coupons can also be automated to support cross-selling and drive sales.

“Conversational commerce is the future of brand experiences: convenient, fast, effective, and results in higher eCommerce spending. Brands that foster two-way personalised conversations with customers across platforms will have a definite competitive edge, and AiChat’s conversational experience platform enables this to happen at scale,” said Kester Poh, co-founder and CEO of AiChat.

At the same time, eCommerce workflow automation technologies such as SHOPLINE’s Flow automation apps help merchants to automate tasks, campaigns, and processes across their online storefronts. This powerful tool allows brands to help cut down the holiday season’s busy work by empowering merchants to build custom workflows and processes that they need to run their businesses.

SHOPLINE Flow Automation is an automation platform that enables merchants to automate tasks and processes across their eCommerce storefronts with apps in the SHOPLINE Marketplace.

“Conversational commerce has taken off globally as one of the best ways that brands can communicate directly with customers to create a positive customer experience,” said Amadea Choo, regional head of marketing (APAC), SHOPLINE.

“We are proud to continue our collaboration with AiChat to offer our merchants best-in-class solutions that simplify omni-channel retail operations by increasing customer loyalty and reducing customer support costs.”

Want to learn how to combine chatbots and eCommerce to succeed this holiday season?

Sign up for the free SHOPLINE and AiChat’s webinar masterclass on “How to effectively handle business operations during the holiday season – the busiest time of the year” – happening on Thursday, 6 October 2022 at 8pm.