Guiding customers through the buying process with Chatbot

With the explosive growth of Internet, there is a fierce competition among businesses in finding customers. Businesses have to seek for different approaches to target new customers instead of waiting on them. Against this backdrop, chatbots have emerged as an effective tool guiding customers through the buying process. 

1. The important role of chatbots in the buying process of consumers?

Instant, fast and flexible support

The reason why customers today prefer shopping online is instant. “Instant” is one of the most important criteria, helping businesses gain a competitive advantage in customer service.  If customers have to wait for shop assistants for hours, even days, to get further information of the products, thus they may no longer be interested in the purchase. Therefore, businesses should respond to every customers’ request quickly and wholeheartedly, giving customers the opportunity to shop 24/7 and purchase the products in minutes.

Chatbots provide customer support 24/7, even holidays and weekends. A chatbot can instantly handle hundreds of requests at once, delivering a seamless experience for customers.

Customization

Personalizing customers is one of the important steps in customer service. As virtual assistants, chatbots can help businesses to personalize each customer easily. Chatbots can immediately chat with customers, bringing a friendly atmosphere to customers.

2. Chatbots participate directly in the buying process

With the outstanding advantages, chatbots can be utilized directly throughout the buying process of consumers, helping to optimize the process and bring benefits for businesses.

Phase 1: Attract customers

In the first phase of the buying process, chatbots can act as brand ambassadors. Businesses set up chatbots to attract the attention of shoppers, marketing their products and services, and get customers to try these products/ services. There are several ways to attract potential customers, such as:

• Connect chatbot to ads: When running ads on online channels, businesses need to direct customers to click on the ads, so that customers can connect to such sales channels as Livechat or Messenger of Fanpage. Chatbots on these channels will begin to perform its task, including introducing product/service and answering questions immediately.
• Conduct campaigns to reach customers: When launching a new product, service or discount promotion, businesses can use chatbots to send mass messages to customers. Chatbot helps businesses proactively approach customers and answer customer questions about the program.

• Set up chatbots on sales channels: Businesses can sell products and services on many different channels such as website, Facebook page, or Zalo page. Integrating chatbots directly on sales channels helps businesses take care of various customers on every channel.

Chatbot on Vietnam Airlines website.

Phase 2: Actively interact with customers

In this phase, chatbots will consult and answer every requests of customers proactively, guiding them to make purchase decisions. There are a variety of tasks that chatbots can perform:

• Offer product recommendations: When customers are interested in a certain product/service, chatbots can give many suggestions about similar products to customers.

FPT Shop’s chatbot suggests appropriate products to customers.

• Provide product details: As a professional salesman, chatbot has a firm understanding of products and the ability to inform customers the details of that products. Chatbots can answer general questions right in the chat. Meanwhile, in terms of detailed technical information, the bot creator can navigate customers to the website to learn more about the products and easily compare it with many other ones.
• Answers to FAQs: A chatbot can handle up to 80% of common requests from customers, helping agents to save time and effort. It is possible for AI-powered chatbots to answer frequently asked questions 24/7, such as warranty policy, return and exchange policy, installment policy, or delivery.
• Connect to agents: In cases, chatbots cannot solve the problems, customers can request to connect directly to agents and get better services, with a few simple steps.
• Create orders: FPT.AI Conversation-based chatbots can collect information to create a complete order, including Product name, Product description, Quantity, Phone number and Address of customer, Note, etc. Then, the staff will confirm the orders and deliver the products to customers. The purchase process of the chatbot is extremely fast, helping to reduce manual tasks of a salesman.

SHB Finance’s Chatbot provides customers with loan information.

• Payment: When customers finish the orders, chatbots will assist customers in payment. FPT.AI Chatbot can easily integrate with payment systems of businesses through API. Therefore, when customers transfer money to the accounts of businesses, chatbots can access the payment system to check and extract data, then send the payment status to customers.

Phase 3: After-sales service

After-sales service is an essential phase to provide help and information to customers after they have bought a particular product. This kind of service shows respect to customers, contribute to hold customers, increase their loyalty and intimacy.

There are some after-sales services, namely:

• Check order status: After completing the purchase, customers have to wait a few days to receive their products. In case they are impatient, they can ask chatbots to get information about their order status. Chatbot of FPT.AI can connect to the companies’ database to get information, then send the status of orders to customers, so that they can save time for waiting on agents and shop assistants.

Tiki’s Chatbot helps customers check their order status.​​​​​​​

• Update special offers via messages: Purchased customers are those who really care about products/services of businesses. Therefore, when there are promotion programs in the future, businesses should send information to these customers to generate their demand to attractive deals.

It’s crucial not to overlook the value of chatbots in customer care. Every company, from small outlets to retail giants, has been deploying chatbots on sales channels. However, companies need to consider the methods to utilize chatbots effectively in their systems. FPT.AI Conversation provides a powerful chatbot platform with diverse features, helping businesses to automate their customer services.

Check https://bot.fpt.ai/ to experience the free chatbot platform of FPT.AI.