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Can bots sell? 4 chatbot examples illustrate their impact on conversational commerce
May 07, 2021 • 4 minutes
[Updated] Originally posted on May 7, 2021
AI chatbots have long held a place at the customer support table. But can artificial intelligence be used effectively as a sales and revenue driver, too? Take a look at these real-world commerce and customer service chatbot examples.
Example 1: Say “I do” to sales chatbots transacting orders
David’s Bridal created a conversational chatbot, dubbed Zoey, to handle customer inquiries on their messaging platforms and determine where the conversation needs to go based on the intent of the incoming message.
If the bride indicates they want to order a dress, the AI chatbot will engage and handle the sale. Through this flow, the bot acts as a conversational commerce platform virtual assistant, providing product availability, completing the order, scheduling appointments, and sharing what happens next in the delivery process.
In the first weeks Zoey was live, David’s Bridal sold $30,000 in dresses through the fully automated ecommerce process and AI bot. Plus, turning these brides over to Zoey frees up the sales team to handle more consultative conversations that require human intervention to help move along the customer journey.
Chatbot examples for transactions:
While not every use case in the sales process is a good fit for AI chatbot technology, we can identify those that do make sense to automate (like the more transactional ones).
Example 2: Grab a drink through a chatbot customer experience
Aramark offers concession services at sporting venues across the United States. They launched a “Brew to You” trial, one of our favorite sales and marketing chatbot examples. It used a QR code attached to the back of the seat in front of sports fans in the arena. Scanning the code opened a conversation with an AI-powered chatbot via Apple Messages for Business. Through the AI chatbot, you got a list of available beers, made your selection, and paid via Apple Pay. They even delivered your order directly to your seat so you didn’t have to miss a single pitch standing in line at the concessions stand.
Chatbot examples for more convenience:
Build automated customer service chatbots that add convenience for your customers in messaging apps (like buying a drink without getting out of your seat), and you’ll drive increased order volume, revenue, and customer satisfaction.
Example 3: Eliminate redundant activities and increase value add with automated customer interactions
Open Universities Australia helps prospective students find institutions to complete their chosen education programs. Customer service chatbot technology is upfront and personal in their sales process, featuring a lead generation sales bot that collects information from prospective students so the human agents can focus on quickly customizing the offerings. Along with saving time, this automated conversational messaging increased ROI for OUA by 250% at the time. More recently, they upgraded their bots to generative AI agents, improving the lead qualification rates by 2x compared to the earlier bots.
Chatbot examples for lead generation and qualification:
Chatbots can take over redundant activities, such as information gathering for customer queries, terms and condition flows, etc. This means human agents’ time can be used for value-add activities.
Example 4: Get more done with a little help from your (bot) friends
Even when external processes are not conducive for sales or customer service bots, a conversational commerce approach and AI mindset is still possible.
For example, as part of their sales process, a communications company in the UK requires a prospective consumer to run a line check. The results of that line check are passed to the agent, who then researches the results and determines the best product to position to the customer. To speed up this process, the brand leveraged LivePerson’s agent-facing automation and conversation orchestration to process the data and recommend the best answer as the agents interacted with the customers. The result? It now takes half the time it used to take to get new agents up to the expected performance.
Chatbot examples for agent-facing needs:
Think creatively about how your own chatbot could support sales and marketing programs, including how streamlining internal processes and adding AI agent assist options can benefit customer engagement.
Providing information, taking orders, gathering and processing data — these are just a few ways that automations and AI-powered chatbots can grow beyond customer support and fit into your sales and marketing processes.