How To Use WhatsApp Chatbots for eCommerce in 2021 [7 Use-Cases]

Driven by technological advancement and ever-changing user behaviour, the e-commerce sector is one of the fastest-growing industries, with billions of consumers shopping online every day.

In an already competitive, mobile-first e-commerce market, providing an exceptional customer experience is the way to differentiate your e-commerce business from the competition. Research by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company shows that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profitability by 25% to 95%.

Hence, eCommerce companies are always looking for ways to offer personalized and responsive customer engagement across devices and platforms. With more than 1.5 billion monthly active users, WhatsApp has become an integral part of the eCommerce strategy for many businesses. WhatsApp chatbot has certainly allowed those businesses to cut through the marketing clutter and build meaningful relationships with their customers, driving conversions and growth.

A WhatsApp chatbot for eCommerce allows your customers to communicate with your e-commerce business with the familiarity and ease of the encrypted messaging platform. WhatsApp continues to expand the range of services offered to business users, enabling offering and selling products and services to customers and becoming a primary channel for conversational commerce.

What are the benefits of using WhatsApp eCommerce chatbots?

Converting casual shoppers into paying customers and making profits are some tough challenges faced by the eCommerce business. Fortunately, an eCommerce chatbot can help you automate the process of responding to customer queries while also reducing overhead and improving the efficiency of your customer service team.

In short, WhatsApp chatbots help you run your business at scale, automating conversations, answering repetitive questions instantaneously, and allowing your employees to focus on other value-generating activities. 

Let's look into some of the advantages of deploying an eCommerce chatbot on WhatsApp.

1. Lower cart abandonment rates

According to the research by Baymard Institute, roughly seven out of ten online shoppers abandon their cart due to unsatisfactory experience, one of the reasons being delayed response to their queries. Also, according to Forrester Research, 53% of people who put items in their online carts leave without completing their transactions.

With conversational service automation, enabled by an eCommerce chatbot for WhatsApp, you can respond to customer questions immediately and solve the cart abandonment problem.

2. Effortless customer experience

When you set up the WhatsApp bot, your customers and prospects don't need to download another app or visit a website. They can simply open their WhatsApp app to send you messages, make purchases, schedule returns, and do much more, making their online shopping experience seamless.

Additionally, you can make customer's chat experience interactive by using WhatsApp message templates and providing buttons that could help users to do a task in one go.

3. Personalization

Thanks to the analytics feature available with WhatsApp business accounts, you can use data collected about your customers to understand their needs and personalize their eCommerce store experience. Personalized experience on WhatsApp increases conversions, boosts loyalty and makes your customers come back for more. 

How to use WhatsApp chatbots for eCommerce?

Starting from the first point of contact, the customer's journey of interacting with a business goes through different stages in the sales funnel. Thanks to a WhatsApp eCommerce bot, you can serve customers through multiple touchpoints across the customer journey. 

Let's look at the different use-cases in e-commerce where WhatsApp chatbots can be beneficial.

1. Customer acquisition cum lead generation

Lead generation is one of the crucial stages of the sales funnel. WhatsApp API offers a great opportunity to capture prospects through online ad campaigns, website pages, and campaign-specific landing pages. You can put a click-to-chat banner on your marketing or advertising offerings and take the customers directly to WhatsApp.

Once a customer sends you the first message, you get their name and phone number. If you require, you can ask them to share more details, such as email address and location. As a result, you’ll have a much larger top-of-the-funnel, giving your sales team more prospects to close deals with.

2. Automate repetitive questions

Despite all the advantages, online shopping cannot give customers the chance to examine products up close or ask questions to a sales assistant standing nearby. Although eCommerce businesses have dedicated help sections to remove buyers' hurdles during the sales process, customers want a seamless experience when they visit your website to the moment of making the payment.

These repetitive queries can include product information, refund policy, size chart or the payment options your company accepts. If the buyers don't get a response to these questions quickly, they're likely to drop off and abandon the cart.

The conversational AI chatbot for WhatsApp allows you to answer purchase-related queries engagingly and responsively, instead of forcing customers to scroll through lengthy FAQ pages.

3. Placing an order

The more orders your customers place, the more revenue you generate. WhatsApp chatbot helps you to create a single-channel engaging experience for new and existing customers. Additionally, with deep integration to your CRM or database and payment gateway, buyers can effortlessly place and checkout orders from their phones.

Moreover, you can incentivize sales by offering discounts or vouchers by conversationally offering them inside the bot. Instead of creating an account and verifying an email address, to-be customers can get the instant gratification of purchasing with a few message exchanges.

4. Shipment updates and tracking

Once you have an effective eCommerce shipping process setup, it is vital to keep your customers updated on their shipments. The shipping updates sent over email or SMS often go unseen and are marked as spam, making it harder for customers to be in the know.

Hence, to reduce shipping-related ticket volumes, improve customer experience, and consequently, grow your business, WhatsApp messaging allows your customers to stay updated on the status of their package on the go. Apart from real-time package tracking, buyers can send messages to reschedule or change delivery addresses through the WhatsApp bot.

5. Scheduling returns, refunds, and replacements

E-commerce companies like Amazon and Zappos have great return policies, which prevents customers from having a negative experience if they're unhappy with their purchase. Return & refund are often the most challenging part of the eCommerce customer journey. A complicated refund process can ruin a company-customer relationship; inversely, a great refund experience builds customer loyalty and improves retention rates.

With WhatsApp chatbots, you can allow customers to request refunds in a quick and smooth process. For instance, buyers can provide the reason for refund, schedule pick-up times for return and replacement, and take immediate action through messaging.

6. Update customer details

Much like a business, there’s a change in a customer's personal information too, such as changing location, getting new cards, or buying a new device. Such changes should not prevent them from doing business with you or deter you from serving them.

Again, with deep integration between your WhatsApp business account and CRM or database, you can change customer information as they submit new details over WhatsApp.

7. Feedback collection

WhatsApp bot makes it easier to collect feedback from your customers instead of sending the usual outreach email or SMS that often go ignored. Most importantly, CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) and NPS (Net Promoter Score) are the crucial customer loyalty metrics that help you decide what's working and what's not.

You can remove friction from collecting feedback by sending a review request template message mentioning that the user simply needs to reply to the message to leave a review about their shopping experience. If you want the customers to take photos or record a video of them using the product, the WhatsApp built-in camera support makes the process even easier.

What's next to incorporate WhatsApp chatbot into your eCommerce strategy

WhatsApp has the potential to transform and personalize how eCommerce businesses communicate with their existing and potential customers. In addition to the above use-cases, there are many more applications of WhatsApp eCommerce chatbot, reflecting the immense opportunities available for your business.

You can contact us to start building your first eCommerce chatbot.

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