Can AI make my ecommerce chat more effective?

PurpleFire CEO Daniel Chabert has done more than just improve ecommerce chatbots. He’s found that AI-enhanced live chat features can generate more sales and higher satisfaction than other customer support solutions.

In fact, the right implementation of tools like Intercom, Kommunicate, and Dixa can improve a brand’s bottom line in three ways: immediate engagement, proactive and personalized messages, and more efficient customer support.

⌚️ Timing

One of the biggest benefits of implementing an AI-powered live chat is the immediacy of the response.

For example, after a review of nearly 10,000 chat engagements, Daniel and his team discovered a conversion rate above 40% when the user received an answer in less than 15 seconds:
Live Chat Timing

The conversion rate still increased by 23% when questions took about 30 seconds to answer, but the research also showed a 38% decline in conversions when answers took longer than two minutes.

Put simply, timing matters for your live chat feature.

👤 Personalization

Another major conversion booster is giving live chat proactive and personalized responses that users can choose from to start their journey.

With this setup, you can make it easy for users to find out relevant information like shipping times or even quick access to sales and discounts — quite different from the formulaic chatbot “how can I help you?” prompt that most users ignore.

More importantly, this system created an 11% sitewide conversion lift for the brands that implemented it. A proactive live chat that asks relevant questions and provides quick results can give users an elevated service experience that reduces friction and shortens the buying path.

💨 Agility

Daniel and his team see live chat as the first layer of customer support for ecommerce shoppers. There will always be situations where customers need to be escalated to a human representative, but it’s adding prompts that address those scenarios is yet another trick in the live chat toolbox.

Also, after testing live chat with multiple brands, they found that live chat actually outperformed human responses in many scenarios, which allowed those brands to reduce their customer service costs by 50%.

3 Keys to Live Chat Integration 💬

If you choose to add live chat with AI to your ecommerce store, it’s important to keep an eye on the big picture. You’ll need to know what your goals are for the system, how you’ll measure success, and what tools you’ll be integrating with in order to succeed.

  1. What are your goals? Are you trying to increase conversions or simply provide better customer service by answering user FAQs and providing shipping information? Your answers to these questions will go a long way in determining your live chat experience.
  2. How will you measure success? We’ve established that live chat can provide a higher satisfaction rate than person-to-person interactions because of immediate responses, but success can also be measured in other ways. For example, live chat can reduce the need for support tickets, increase conversion rates, or even recommend relevant products with higher order values — the possibilities continue to grow.
  3. What will you integrate with? Your live chat will need to access and analyze information from multiple sources to provide a seamless customer experience. Practically speaking, this means integrating live chat with your order database, product filters, and customer support history to deliver personalized and relevant results.
Definging Goals