Three years ago, we wrote a blog about artificial intelligence (AI) and how it’s being used to both enhance user experience and to make the lives of content managers just that little bit easier. This has continued apace.
At that time, we said that Sitecore was at the forefront of embracing the potential of AI and all that it had to offer. This has continued to be the case and at the beginning of September, Sitecore announced the acquisition the US company Reflektion. This is an AI-powered digital search platform that understands and predicts patterns, context and needs, in order to convert shoppers into buyers.
Sitecore says this acquisition will enable the organisation to ‘engage, educate and empower shoppers to make purchase decisions faster – increasing buyer confidence, long-term revenue, and overall customer satisfaction and loyalty’.
According to Sitecore, 93% of all online experiences start with search, making it an integral part of the customer buying journey. It explains that Reflektion, launched eight years ago, elevates search into a conversational, guided experience that provides more personal, accessible and tailored answers for the customer.
Steve Tzikakis, CEO, Sitecore explains: “With Reflektion, a brand can add various types of search including personalised search, preview search, conversational search and voice search. This reduces customers’ effort and anxiety to find exactly what they need – with more convenience and speed – and leads to increased customer satisfaction with more conversions and revenue.”
Adds Amar Chokhawala, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Reflektion: “Our technology uses AI to adjust each consumer’s digital experience, in the moment, based on diverse data from multiple channels.”
Our previous blog about AI talked about the role it plays in quickly analysing images – and also videos, by capturing frames - which reports on meta data and delivers results about what the image contains. However, it is increasingly being utilised to enhance customer experience online. This continues to be particularly relevant in online stores – where, using AI, customers are experiencing an increasingly personalised visit. It can feel like you’ve got your very own personal shopper, virtually covering the retail ‘floor’ to present you with items that you might like to purchase. AI makes semantic search a reality, meaning that it’s possible to determine the contextual meaning and intent of a particular search.
Increasingly, using AI or machine learning, profiles for customers can be built up based on an individual customer’s personal preferences and actions – making websites work better for those consumers and increasing engagement along the way. It isn’t just about customers being able to find what they are looking for, it’s about delivering personalised product recommendations based on their behaviour. This not only makes the whole experience for a customer much more pleasant at the same time but will most probably result in more sales.
Today, AI is helping businesses to understand the behaviour of their online customers based on the journeys they take on a website and the digital footprints they leave. AI is able to analyse this data and make super-fast decisions, while personalising the experience for customers. While visitors don’t see this happening, the more they visit a particular website and the more digital footprints they leave, the more each returning visit will be increasingly personalised.
In our previous blog, we talked about chat bots already being at work in forums and in online retail stores. As time moves on, we have all noticed them becoming even more skilled at predicting customer reactions and adapting the website experience for customers in real time. Sometimes it’s hard to believe there you’re not communicating with a real person behind the keyboard.
While some organisations are concerned that using AI chat bots might mean them losing an element of the human touch in their business, most website visitors report that they appreciate the quick responses.
If you’d like to discover more about how AI can benefit your website, then get in touch with our team at Lake Solutions today on tel: 020 3397 3222