May 31, 2023 By Salesforce India

Five Ways AI Helps Ecommerce Businesses Improve Customer Experience

in Artificial Intelligence

India ranks among the world’s most engaged online shopping markets. Indian shoppers spent over 8.7 billion hours on shopping apps in 2022, almost 50% more than in 2019. In this burgeoning and dynamic space, the innovative use of AI in ecommerce - from predictive analytics to voice-enabled chatbots - will become key to delivering personalised customer experiences at scale.

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Five ways ecommerce businesses can use AI to provide delightful customer experiences

1. Design personalised offers based on customers’ buying habits

79% of Indian customers always expect personalised offers, as per the Salesforce State of the Connected Customer Report. Deploying AI in ecommerce can help you analyse the customer data gathered from multiple touchpoints to better understand each customer’s preferences, behaviours, and purchasing patterns. Use these insights to introduce customised offers, loyalty programs, and reward systems that build customer loyalty and increase cart value.

2. Make hyper-relevant recommendations based on customer preferences

Personalised product recommendations can make shoppers feel seen and understood, enhancing their overall experience. No wonder, that 89% of customers expect ecommerce companies to understand their unique needs and expectations, while 64% lose trust in businesses that do not align communication with their interests. With the help of AI-powered workflows and analytics, you can:

Offer relevant product recommendations as per changing customer preferences
Identify and showcase customer reviews and ratings for products to help influence purchase decisions.
Predict product demand and notify customers when products are back in stock based on their browsing/purchase history

Discover how Pepe Jeans India Limited is personalising customer interactions through customised outfit recommendations, and an integrated shopping experience tailored to customer preferences and interactions.

3. Revamping the website/app interface based on shoppers’ actions

The average cart abandonment rate in India stands at 51%. Complicated product search processes, irrelevant recommendations, or poor browsing experiences can prompt shoppers to leave without completing the purchase. This can lead to cart abandonment, a crippling problem for the ecommerce industry.

Analysing the actions of shoppers on an ecommerce website offers data-backed insights into their behaviour and preferences. Such data can also enable online retailers to:

Offer relevant filters and sorting options to give shoppers greater control over their search results.
Streamline the checkout process by setting default payment modes based on shoppers’ past preferences and reduce the number of steps to improve overall usability.
Optimise website layout and navigation to make it easier for shoppers to find what they are looking for.

4. Ensure supply chain efficiency and process synchronisation

Supply chain agility helps ecommerce businesses in India to engage with and respond to customer demands swiftly without blocking additional cash via stockpiling.

AI-generated visualisations can help create customised views of data across touchpoints and enable teams to make well-informed decisions on operations, inventory management, resource allocation, and more. By using predictive analytics, logistics, and sales teams can identify patterns and trends in data to:

Anticipate future demand, inventory levels, and customer behaviour.
Optimise operations to better serve customers and increase revenue.
Identify the best shipping routes and upselling opportunities.

5. Build new experiences with headless AI

Over 51% of e-commerce companies in India plan to adopt headless commerce within the next two years, as per the Salesforce State of Commerce report. The top reasons for favouring headless commerce implementation include customisation of digital experiences and faster changes to ecommerce interfaces.

AI-based headless architecture enables anyone, including non-IT staff, to make changes quickly and easily to the front-end without changing back-end systems. This lets businesses swiftly introduce new features and experiences based on customer data. Headless AI offers enhanced speed to market and does away with additional IT expenses associated with traditional application architecture.

Einstein GPT for Commerce can help transform ecommerce platforms by offering personalised product recommendations that lower the cost of order placement by 26%.

Move faster and lower costs with an all-in-one commerce solution

Salesforce Einstein AI for Commerce, an offering along with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, helps businesses speed up growth and boost revenue while lowering costs. It combines Salesforce’s proprietary AI models with generative AI technology from an ecosystem of partners and real-time data to help automate and tailor recommendations for customers.

Are you looking to transform customer data into actionable insights and create customised shopping experiences? Einstein AI for Commerce offers some powerful capabilities such as

a. Einstein Product Recommendations – Personalised products displayed on every web page and tailored recommendations to every shopper’s needs.

b. Einstein Predictive Sort – Automated adjustments in search and category pages based on customer action.

c. Einstein Commerce Insights – A powerful dashboard to understand purchase behaviour and improve shopping experiences.

d. Einstein Search Dictionaries – Analyses all site searches to recommend relevant results every time.

Einstein GPT for Commerce gives businesses the power to drive revenue growth and deliver exceptional shopping experiences to their customers. It improves product discoveries through accurate sorting and search results, reducing cart abandonment, and enhances the customer experience with multi-channel outreach at every touchpoint.