Is There Anything More Annoying As A Business Owner Than Abandoned Carts?
How frustrating is it when you get enough attention and interest from customers for them to put your product in a cart only to leave it sitting there abandoned like the last slice of pizza everyone’s too polite to take?
Nearly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned. 70% of potential purchases… 70% of potential profits!
You have probably done it yourself countless times, I know I have. Something piques your
interest; a cool advert, an engaging website, a unique product. You rush to put it in your cart completely intent on buying it but then.. something happens and it all fizzes out.
Why The Current Solution To This Problem Doesn’t Work.
Businesses have tried to be clever and address this problem through email follow up. You see this touted everywhere as the holy grail solution for abandoned carts. It is an OK approach, I guess.. If you are comparing it to the alternative of doing nothing.
Email follow up fails to address the problem in real time though. The momentum is gone, the customers have moved on to the next bright, shiny thing that has captured their attention. In all honesty, if you eventually get the sale from email follow up that person was most likely coming back anyway.
What Is the Real Problem?
Let’s come back to the problem at hand. The research about abandoned carts all comes
back to one overarching issue: a lack of customer support at checkout.
Customers get as far as putting products in their carts but then they have questions.
They have questions about unexpected costs at checkout, they want to know more detail about the products.
Essentially, customers have enough unanswered questions which results in doubt about following through with the purchase, so they abandon their cart and move on..
How To Address This Problem
So.. how do we address the problem of a lack of customer support at checkout? We provide customer support at checkout! Seems like a relatively straight forward solution.
This is what occurs in any decent brick and mortar store; you have a friendly customer service assistant milling around ready to jump in at a moment’s notice to answer any questions you might have to persuade you to proceed with the sale.
Replicating what happens in physical stores has until recently been challenging for online
businesses that operate on a 24/7 basis. It is not practical or financially viable to have a
person on the other end of your website answering every question in real time as it arises.
This is where the substantial developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) come into play.
In case you have been living under a rock, AI is now advanced to a point that it is well..
intelligent. In fact, it actually darn impressive!
We are far from the earlier versions of clunky bots that were added to some websites with pre-populated answers to a range of questions.
AI programs use machine learning algorithms to process and analyse large amounts of data to generate responses to enquiries. AI agents can now be trained on every aspect of your business from product details to FAQs. They remain up to date by pulling data out of your website and business social media in real time. All of this is cross referenced to large datasets of information on any topics of relevance.
What Is The Result?
What all of this results in is a customer service agent that is an expert on your business. An expert that is available 24/7 and can answer any query thrown at it in real time.
Businesses are starting to successfully utilise AI agents to address the problem of abandoned carts. Fashion e-commerce store Ad Hoc Atelier is an example of this.
Ad Hoc Atelier was experiencing the challenge that 4 out of 5 carts on the website were abandoned. When they investigated this, it all related back to a lack of customer service that suited what the customers wanted.
Customers didn’t want to communicate through phone calls or wait forever and a day for email responses.
Ad Hoc Atelier addressed the problem of abandoned carts by implementing an AI Agent on their product pages that asks customers if they need any help.
They were aiming to replicate what happens when you walk into a physical store.
The results? A 50% conversion rate for customers that engaged on the chat and a 25% decrease in abandoned carts. Do the math and you will realise that those percentages would make a significant difference to your bottom line.
AI agents respond instantly and engage with multiple customers at a time. You can talk to
the customer at the exact moment they want to buy your product. This instant and timely
response can be all that is needed to tilt the persuasion from abandoning a cart forever to proceeding with a purchase.
If you can handle the next part of satisfying the customer with your service or product they can become a lifelong consumer of your brand.
In essence, in dealing with this specific problem of abandoned carts, AI outperforms
humans. So why not take advantage of this technology and take action that can quickly and simply improve your bottom line.
All the best,
Michael
P.S. If you want to me to analyse your business and advise what AI solutions to could be implemented, feel free to get in touch. Fill out the form on our contact page and we will be in contact with you within 48 hours to see if we can offer you a suitable AI solution.