The Rise of Ai Voice E-Commerce

During the last 10 years, companies such as Google, Mercedes Benz, Amazon, Apple and Facebook have taken several bold steps towards introducing ‘ Voice Search’ through natural language processing (NLP) technology.

But the biggest disruptor in this space is ‘CONVERSATIONAL Ai AND ITS IMPACT ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR.’

So what is ‘Conversational Ai’ and how will it impact your eComm business? Basically, it’s any device we can talk to that can respond in a human-like way. We’re currently at the infancy of this future bell curve trend with Chat Bots, Messaging Apps, Google Voice and Home Assistants, all using conversational Ai to activate shopping and services.

The secret sauce happens by combining speech recognition, natural language processing and machine learning to understand WHAT we are asking and HOW devices can respond like a HUMAN BEING. The machine learning part is how software can classify consumer questions, behaviours and combine these with its inbuilt data to better respond to questions.

In this article, we will cover the following key changes that Conversational Ai will present for your e-commerce business and how to prepare to take advantage of this new technology.

1. Increased customer conversion
2. Revolutionising customer connectivity
3. Building the brand right eVoice for your business
4. Why early Conversational Ai adoption is key

1. Increased Customer Conversion

Digital consumers are demanding better service, more accurate results and faster outcomes when in buying mode. According to Microsoft Voice Report 2019, the speed of results for consumers will become the major differentiator for all e-commerce brands by 2023.

In-store sales conversion is approximately 25-35 percent depending on the factors such as who the shop assistant is, their product knowledge and their ability to connect with a customer. While older cohorts prefer the service of a human, this poses a major problem for digital-savvy customers as it’s largely reliant on inconsistencies in product knowledge, a lack of speed to respond and limited by the opening hours of a store.

Voice Assistants have the power to work In-store and Online (24/7, 365 days a year) without the cost of a massive team.

“It’s not the big that beat the small anymore but the fast that beat the slow,” said Deryll Naidoo, the Abnormal Digital Founder.

“When you combine the ability to serve your customers enquiries at hyper speed, with accurate results and in a way that comes across like it’s from their mate. It doesn’t matter what size your business is. This is the major competitive edge that machine learning Ai Search can deliver for the SMB and Enterprise level e-commerce businesses.” said Deryll.

2. Revolutionising Customer Connectivity

Convenience, convenience, convenience. Conversational Ai operates 24/7, 365 days a year without complaining or taking sick days. Voice Assistants are designed to connect with users at their convenience. Whether this is at 2 am or 11 pm at night, Conversational Ai is always learning how to better serve customers.

A lack of trust is one of the key factors inhibiting Voice Technology from completely replacing human services. According to the PWC Consumer Intelligence Series report, the more serious queries involving money across shopping, refunds, large spending such as airline tickets and holidays, customers prefer what they trust, one-on-one human interaction.

Fresh figures from Salesforce’s Holiday Insights Hub and 2 020 Holiday Predictions report showed Australia and New Zealand’s ecommerce growth was the highest across the globe at 107 percent in Q3 2020 and 108 percent in Q2, 2020. This signals the biggest growth in user adoption and consumers trusting systems they have previously not used.

3. Building the Right Brand eVoice for Your Business

Separating your Voice Assistant is literally the key to differentiating your brand from others. If you’re a fashion business, you probably wouldn’t have a voice similar to Morgan Freeman speaking to your customers.

Thinking about what type of voice to represent your business will determine how well you know your customers. Mercedes Benz is leading the charge in this space with their ‘Hey Mercedes’ voice assistant. Drivers can choose from several voice types that best connect with their personality. Mercedes research says that women prefer female assistant voices that are soft but direct whereas males are okay with either male or female voices but prefer a bit of humour in responses.

Each business should conduct its own consumer research that fits in with its customers. This may be especially challenging when a brand speaks with multiple demographics.

4. Why Early Conversational Ai Adoption is Key

The distance between e-com brands adopting Voice Search this year and those in 2022 is growing exponentially. The opportunity to overlay your current systems with this early-stage tech is simple but requires a generous length of time for systems to learn from existing customer enquiries.

Should you decide to wait a year, think again. Here’s why. The average $10 million e-commerce business has 40-80 enquiries daily. That’s 14,600 – 29,200 enquiry conversations a year that your Conversational Ai tech would be missing out on learning from. In year 02, you can triple this amount due to the rising growth of e-commerce in Australia.

Abnormal Digital are currently working with e-com clients to integrate Voice Search into their customer service systems. Interested to chat about this service for your business? Get in touch today.

Discover more here: abnormaldigital.com/work

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