The advantages The Art Company gets from Oct8ne’s chatbot

Automatisation in e-commerce is a very important and frequently discussed topic and, with the increasing implementation of chatbots, the way we interact with customers has changed drastically. Applying automatisation to customer service in this field is very interesting because it helps your audience get what they need in an immediate and effective way without the involvement of an agent, and this is becoming a key factor in the completion of online purchases.

That is why Oct8ne has developed its own chatbot. We have already spoken several times in Cross Border Magazine about this tool—the only visual customer service software that allows us to show images and videos in real-time to customers through chat—and, although the software was born as a live chat system, it has developed this new functionality to improve as a product and give the best experience to customers. If you have been asking yourself how users react when served by a bot, you can find your answer in the case study of The Art Company, which has opted to automate the customer service process with Oct8ne’s chatbot. 

How Oct8ne’s chatbot works on The Art Company website 

The Oct8ne bot is a conversational bot model that works through a flow of questions and answers, so users can reach the solution they need on their own. The Art Company decided to establish this customer service model due to its international target: “We need to cover customer service 24 hours a day and, with the time difference between countries, the chatbot allows us to continue helping customers when our offices are closed.” If we analyse the data from its last quarter, The Art Company achieved a service level of 98%, where 88% of the sessions have been attended through the bot. As the company explains, many of its customers “have standard questions that can be automated”: such as order tracking, returns, payment methods or questions about sizes.

“The possibility of answering the customer automatically, diverting to agents’ questions that the bot cannot answer, allows us to carry out our work in a more efficient way. Most of the questions we get are about returns, shipments, or product availability. In fact, when a client wants to speak to an agent, it is mostly due to questions that cannot be answered immediately, as they depend on other departments or because they prefer to expose their doubt in detail.” Another way to streamline work has been to connect The Art Company bot with its order management system so that its customers can see the status of their order by entering the code directly in the chat. 

Why triggers are a good match with the chatbot 

Triggers are predictive algorithms that can open your live chat automatically and send a personalised message to each customer, according to their actions on your website. If they’ve been on a page for a long time, if they’ve compared several products or services, or if their cart has reached a certain value. In e-commerce, triggers are fundamental in capturing the customer and keeping them on your page if an issue arises during the purchasing process.

For The Art Company, combining both functionalities has been vital. In the same way that the bot has answered 88% of the questions they have received during the last quarter, almost 70% of the interactions with the chatbot have taken place thanks to triggers. Many studies show that not all users express their concerns on customer service channels, even if they have them. As such, triggers are a great way—automatic and predictive—to detect which visitors need your help and offer it proactively. The triggers manage to succeed in stopping many possible abandonments if, instead of just offering help, you customise the message based on each customer’s behaviour. The company managed to push sales by setting a trigger with discounts. Once the engagement is created, users have expressed their doubts with the bot.

Why the chatbot helps increase sales

Thanks to the chatbot speeding up the work of the customer service team, this department can focus on providing personalised advice to potential customers to improve their customer experience. Being able to automatically differentiate a customer’s needs not only improves the customer’s experience but will also directly impact sales: if a user solves their question quickly, they can continue with the purchase process and, if they need personalised advice, they will have an agent available. Increasing the time your agents spend guiding users means that they will have more opportunities to apply cross-selling and up-selling techniques.

This article was previously published in Cross-Border Magazine 16.