AI is becoming increasingly popular with each passing day. It wasn’t long ago when people used to do all things by themselves. There are two aspects of becoming a master at something:

• You need a full understanding and a lot of hard work to learn something.
• You can use the experience of others or think artificially.

While we are living in the early days of AI, the impact is already quite significant. It has been penetrating into many fields; for instance:

• Writers are using AI to improve their writing.
• Digital marketers are using it to implement strategies in a better way.
• Businesses are using it to maximize their ROI.

And many other things. OpenAI led ChatGPT has started all this revolution.
As AI is impacting many fields, and that too for good, I have been observing its effect on shopping and where it will lead customer experience as well as targeting.
In this article, I will discuss what the 8 things an AI shopping assistant must have in 2024 are. This article is going to be helpful for all businesses that are considering using AI in their marketing campaigns. So let’s start.

8 Things an AI shopping assistant must have in 2024

AI shopping assistants basically work as chatbots, and there is already a lot of demand for custom chatbots for specific business types. Let’s discuss some of the main things an AI shopping assistant must have.

1. Ability to understand language

Run away from a shopping assistant that can’t understand human language. As the demand for chatbots and AI assistants is pretty high, many companies are creating them without considering this option.
Natural language processing allows a bot to understand human language. This is the same technology that Google has been using for understanding content.
If your shopping assistant doesn’t have the ability to understand human language, it isn’t going to work for you.

2. Trained on specific data

Practically, the best way for a company is to use its own data for training. For instance, a brand focused on “clothing” tends to have its own audience.
A shopping assistant that’s trained on that data will tend to perform better than those trained on generic data.

3. Understanding of user interest and behavior

A shopping assistant who’s trained on specific data will always have the capability of understanding the interests and behavior of customers.
It will look at the journey of the visitor or potential customer and understand which options they are selecting and which products they are purchasing.
This ability further enhances the capability of the AI shopping assistant to read and understand data that will be very crucial for future targeting.

4. Relevant product suggestions

An AI-based shopping assistant that understands user behavior and is specifically trained on such data will have the capability of suggesting relevant products to customers.
For instance, when a user visits a website or a store, it quickly observes their behavior and compares it with its existing database. Afterwards, it will show relevant products based on user interests and not just on product type.

5. Inventory management and analysis

If you’re a mid- to high-range company, your shopping assistant must have this feature to manage inventory and make decisions based on existing data.
It should suggest when and what type of further products are required based on interest and when to split-test in terms of price and other features.

6. Customer support

This is perhaps the most crucial aspect. Customer support is really important for a company if they want to make a name for themselves.
While your competitors are sending generic replies whenever someone contacts them, this is your chance to outsmart them with your AI shopping assistant.
It should act like a proper human in terms of responses. Generic replies affect user experience, and a person always wants to talk to someone who can address their queries.
Your AI assistant should be trained in a way that a person will find it difficult to tell whether they are interacting with an AI assistant or a human.
Normally, shopping assistants lack this feature, but it is something that can help you grow from a company to a brand.

7. Chatbot integration

It is a bit different from customer support. A chatbot is ideally built for people so that they can ask AI questions about a specific product or service.
For instance, if you sell hoodies, you can integrate a chatbot that can assist customers with their queries.
Just like a person can ask, “Will that specific hoodie work with a specific type of pant or in a different temperature?” This way, a person can build a strong bond that can help you increase your sales.

8. Voice, data, and continuous learning

An AI-based shopping assistant must support voice search as well as text. A lot of people prefer to speak instead of simply typing. Besides this, it should manage data for the user as well as for the e-commerce store.
These are some of the main things a modern AI assistant must have. In addition to all these, it should keep on understanding more data and continuously learning to improve itself. This way, it will become better and help your company skyrocket sales.

Wrapping up

I used 39+ shopping assistants before writing this article. As I discussed earlier, the majority of those shopping assistants are using a basic level of AI. This means people aren’t leveraging AI in this particular domain the way they should.
It is your chance to outsmart them using AI. In case I missed a key point, do let me know to further improve this article. Cheers!