Generative AI is set to revolutionize ecommerce, enabling a more interactive and personalized shopping experience, which is integral to both attracting and retaining customers. In the crowded landscape of ecommerce, a positive customer experience across every aspect of an order has become intrinsic to online success. Details matter, from the initial landing page to order fulfillment through to delivery and aftercare.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the way brands connect with their customers. Although the impact of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools and plug-ins is yet to be established, these capabilities are being considered a driving force behind how many businesses will gain a competitive advantage.
The AI boom shows no sign of slowing down, with a global market value projected to grow to more than $500 billion this year. The AI industry continues to evolve rapidly with the introduction of ChatGPT, Google Bard, Bing Chat and Jasper, to name a few.
It’s still early days, but AI advancements have the potential to fundamentally change ecommerce operations by drastically improving order fulfillment practices and bridging the ever-significant personalization gap forming between the online and offline realms. This applies across the customer shopping journey, from customized recommendations to predicting consumer behavior and product demand as well as creating more seamless omnichannel experiences. The possibilities appear to be endless.
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Brands can now replicate a positive in-store experience online, but the right AI products can equip them to level up when it comes to personalization. With AI, brands can analyze customer behavior across shopping channels to provide highly customized product suggestions. For example, the use of natural language processing (NLP), a form of AI that focuses on how computers can understand language as humans do and respond appropriately, makes it possible for ecommerce businesses to offer more advanced and intuitive recommendation engines.
ChatGPT, for instance, understands natural language queries and can provide relevant product recommendations in real time. This not only provides a better user experience but also allows businesses to offer tailored recommendations at scale, improving their overall conversion rates as well as the experience for the customer. ChatGPT has the potential to help brands replicate the same personalized advice a customer would expect to get in a traditional brick-and-mortar store, helping achieve a seamless online experience and increasing the likelihood of a repeat purchase.
Offering a More Interactive Experience with AI-Driven Plug-ins
ChatGPT plug-ins can also offer much more than the simple search function that many retail websites house and that customers often rely on to find their desired item. By its very nature, online shopping promises efficiency of purchase for the customer, yet arguably ChatGPT can aid this efficiency by helping to consolidate the process.
For example, if a customer wants to purchase a staple makeup product, a pair of sneakers and a hoodie all at once, traditionally the customer would have to surf the search function of the site to access the different category options. This involves inputting key words that can result in a dead link or generating unwanted products in some cases.
ChatGPT has the potential to streamline the shopping experience through the ability to generate interactive visuals from a list of descriptors. A customer then selects several options at once that can help consolidate their cart and provide a more user-friendly and personalized experience. Although brands won’t have full control of the customer experience in this type of shopping model, they will be able to control inventory and fulfillment orders.
Insights into Future Customer Demand
The ability of chatbots, affiliated plug-ins and other automated systems to streamline demand forecasting by gathering customer feedback in real time is significant. ChatGPT, for example, can utilize specific plug-ins to create and manage to-do lists, analyze customer queries and complaints and identify potential issues with products or services. This allows businesses to respond quickly and effectively to the customer.
The value in this type of ‘conversational commerce’ is that it not only improves the customer experience but also allows businesses to identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior, enabling them to predict demand more accurately and plan their inventory levels. By analyzing past sales data and using machine learning algorithms, businesses can ensure that they have the right products in stock at the right time.
Generative AI can also analyze historical data and external factors like weather patterns and holidays to predict seasonal demand, enabling businesses to fine-tune their forecasting and adjust their inventory levels and promotional strategies. This helps minimize stockouts or overstocks during peak seasons.
By using customer data and market trends to optimize product assortment decisions, generative AI can also help businesses identify the most profitable products and adjust inventory levels for better management. While integrating generative AI into inventory management processes can bring efficiency and accuracy, it’s important to consider human expertise and carefully evaluate the reliability of AI models.
Reducing Risk in Fulfillment Operations and the Supply Chain
Generative AI can communicate with logistics providers and warehouses in real time, which is critical to ensuring an effective multi-node fulfillment strategy. By analyzing a variety of factors, from order destination to inventory on hand across distribution points to optimal carrier selection, AI tools make it possible to intelligently select the best fulfillment route for each order.
Finding the fastest delivery method, or the lowest cost option, or even the most sustainable route is easily done when incorporating these powerful AI tools. Efficiency of delivery will always remain a top priority for both retailers and consumers, and by using generative AI machine learning algorithms to develop new data, efficiency of fulfillment operations can be sustained and improved.
As the AI market continues to evolve, and with the introduction of advanced chatbots and other automated systems, generative AI has the potential to bridge the gap between online and offline shopping experiences and take the ‘premier’ customer experience to new heights. Despite still being in its infancy, generative AI appears set to make a significant impact on the ecommerce industry by driving an increasingly personalized experience — transforming the way brands and retailers will operate and interact with customers in the future.
Kamran Iqbal is an expert in all things commerce, pre- and post-click. As Commerce Strategist at PFS, he shares his extensive industry knowledge with brands and retailers to help drive digital transformation and omnichannel excellence. Iqbal has spent over 15 years as an end-to-end ecommerce solutions expert, working closely with brands across verticals to execute and grow their DTC and B2B ecommerce channels.
