Online spending is surging and is expected to top $1 trillion by 2022. Retailers need more ways to stay competitive in e-commerce and make the most of their investments in online infrastructure. That's where chatbots and other AI-powered digital engagement solutions come in: to seamlessly engage your customers across touchpoints, channels and devices to drive results.

Too often, however, AI tools makes guesses about a customer's intentions or messages. The internet is full of screenshots of chatbot fails. They're indeed entertaining, but these failures can have significant consequences for brands in the real world. In other words, to be truly helpful, AI needs to fully understand consumer inquiries and then respond with informed, helpful answers across all of your customer engagement channels.

For example, imagine you recently found a pair of shoes online, but the color you wanted was out of stock in your size. But you really wanted those shoes, so you shopped around and found something similar on a competitor's site. Sold.

Whether we're talking shoes, groceries, or any number of goods we now order online nearly every day, this experience is a common one. Of course, as a retailer, you won't always have every shoe in every size available every day. But what if you could prevent your shoppers from shopping with competitors? 

Let's say your e-commerce site has deployed an AI-powered chatbot. So, when your shopper encounters the out-of-stock item, they can engage with the chatbot to find out when the shoes would be available. Instead of simply saying the item is out of stock, your customer would get a message to the effect of: "This item is expected back in stock on June 15. Would you like to pre-order?" Or, the chatbot could link the shopper to other, similar options to explore.

It's a customer experience (CX) journey that's more seamless, flexible and ultimately rewarding for customers and brands alike. Digital engagement solutions have become increasingly important in today's highly competitive e-commerce environment and they're creating more opportunities to boost conversion rates, reduce cart abandonment and drive upsell opportunities. 

The Nuance Intelligent Engagement platform can tailor customer experiences. By leveraging multiple data points and our proprietary prediction engine to provide shoppers with hyper-personalized recommendations – such as alternatives to the out-of-stock shoes – retailers can build brand loyalty and drive results. This is true regardless of which channel your customer wants to use (desktop, mobile, IVR, IoT, or messaging) through their buying journey to help retailers stay competitive.

At the end of the day, today's online shoppers have more choices than ever and their expectations are high. They want seamless, frictionless customer experiences that are consistent across every channel, whether in-store or online. AI-powered customer experiences, supported by chatbots and other digital engagement solutions, can transform CX and drive results.