E-commerce, AI-based shopping assistants also on social platforms

Available 24 hours a day, capable of speaking all languages ​​and comparing an extremely large inventory in real time. We may not realize it, but we can already count on one shopping assistant personal when we buy online. In fact, many sites use chatbot based onartificial intelligence to interact with users. Increasingly accurate conversations that, according to Infobip, are destined to extend to other channels as well. The AI-based shopping assistants they constantly refine their performance, improving with each interaction. Not only. Chatbots can be integrated with the most popular ones social media platformssuch as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.

“Imagine you are an online shopper looking for an item from the comfort of your home computer or smartphone and you discover an e-commerce site that uses a shopping assistant equipped with artificial intelligence in the live chat service. This chatbot provides immediate responses, remembering all your preferences, predicting your needs and offering you personalized product recommendations,” he explains Vittorio D’Alessiocountry manager Italy di Infobip.

“Thanks to integration with popular social media platforms, the chatbot experience can be brought to WhatsApp and other social platforms. This demonstrates that the company has embraced a seamless, personalized experience through an AI and omnichannel strategy, driving customer loyalty and anticipating future offerings.”

The human factor

But will digital shopping assistants replace human ones? The premise is that retail is now one of those sectors that develops in the integration between physical and digital. Suffice it to say that, according to theB2C eCommerce Observatorypromoted by School of Management of the Polytechnic of Milan and by Netcomm, Italians’ online purchases continue to increase even after the pandemic. In 2023 they reached 54.2 billion euros, with a growth of 13% compared to the previous year. In this scenario, companies, to be competitive, are learning to automate routine activities to reduce operating costs and save time.

For example, AI enables the automation of customer questions, order tracking and basic problem resolution. According to Infobip, however, automation does not necessarily mean the loss of human personnel. Resources can be allocated to “strategic” and “complex” tasks. “The future of retail is not to replace human interaction with AI or to adopt a completely digital approach, but to use technology to improve human relationships and create a customer-centric shopping experience thanks to a conversational approach”, concludes d’Alessio.