ChatBots
October 25, 2021 at 2:50 pm
The pandemic has reshaped the way people work, study, shop — and that’s just scratching the surface. With more consumers relying on virtual resources for everyday things, their expectations of the businesses they frequent have changed. When online, people want user-friendly, self-service options to solve issues, gather information, process returns, schedule services, and more. This…
July 27, 2021 at 3:58 pm
Traditional chatbots have become commonplace on e-commerce sites, yet too many are becoming unreliable and are alienating consumers due to their limitations. This is because many retailers rely on what's called "rule-based" chatbots when instead they should be implementing conversational artificial intelligence (AI), two terms often used interchangeably, but which are actually very different. Conversational…
May 10, 2021 at 2:34 pm
New data from the 2021 Adobe Digital Economy Index makes it clear: online spending is surging and shows no signs of stopping. In fact, Adobe expects that by 2022, e-commerce will become a $1 trillion market. To stay competitive and efficient in this increasingly critical space — and to enable a more robust customer experience…
March 9, 2021 at 1:21 pm
2020 was a decisive and divisive year for retailers. Those that had already embraced or were quick to embrace e-commerce were able to capitalize on the accelerated shift toward digital spurred by the pandemic and leverage its infrastructure competitors. Those that were slower off the mark are either still playing catch-up or have shuttered entirely.…
February 25, 2021 at 6:40 pm
In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Melissa Campanelli and Kristina Stidham discuss the latest trends impacting retail customer communication methods, drawing on key insights from a recent survey conducted by NAPCO Research, sponsored by Podium. The subsequent report, "A Message for Retailers: Go Digital," details what retailers should be considering as they…
February 15, 2021 at 8:16 pm
Many national retailers began announcing their 2020 holiday season plans and shopping promotions much earlier than in years past. The holiday shopping season was particularly different considering the COVID-19-induced drastic shift from a traditional brick-and-mortar shopping experience to an even more robust online environment. While stores ponder their physical store operations, retailers understand that 2021…
February 10, 2021 at 12:21 pm
Customer service has become a competitive differentiator for retailers — on par with quality and price. When a person reaches out to a company with a question or issue, the experience has an immediate and direct impact on whether they will do business with a company again — now or in the future. Retailers like…
February 9, 2021 at 2:54 pm
Like everything else last year, retail brands were forced to learn to live with a new reality. Since the beginning of the pandemic, as consumers adapted to quarantines, social distancing and masks, they also adapted how they interact with brands. More than ever before, they took to conversational artificial intelligence (AI) — the technology that…
January 21, 2021 at 5:31 pm
In this episode of Retail Right Now, Total Retail's Joe Keenan and Kristina Stidham discuss an article recently published by Total Retail titled, “5 CX Trends to Help You Win Customers’ Hearts and Wallets in 2021,” authored by Jean Shin, director of strategy and content at tyntec. The article discusses how in 2020, we learned…
January 21, 2021 at 12:00 pm
In today’s retail world, the reality is that everything can change within months, weeks or even a day. While creating an effective customer self-service portal has long been a priority for many, recent world events have made it infinitely more imperative. We’re talking, of course, about the COVID-19 public health crisis. The pandemic has affected…
