How to use AI Assistants to Drive More Conversions on Shopify — Saumil Trivedi | How AI Improves the 4 Stages of the Shopping Journey, Why Customers Skip Reading Product Pages, How AI Reduced Support Tickets by 20% (#350)

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Welcome to the E-Commerce Coffee Break podcast. In today's episode, we discuss how to use AI assistance to drive more conversions in your Shopify store. Joining me today is Saumil Trivedi, Director of Product & India Operations at Asklo.com. So let's dive right into it.

This is the e-Commerce Coffee Break Coffee, a top rated Shopify Growth podcast dedicated to Shopify merchants.

And business owners looking to grow their online stores. Learn how to survive in the fast changing e commerce world with your host, Claus Lauter, and get marketing advice you can't find on Google. Welcome to the show.

Hello and eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we want to talk about how to use AI assistants to drive more conversions on your Shopify store.

With me on the show today, I have Saumil Trivedi. He's the Director of Product & India Operations at Asklo.Com. Claus has been a key player in eCommerce and AI space for over a decade. Joining Claus, a leading search and discovery platform for eCommerce in 2013 as one of its founding members. He has taken on a wide variety of roles.

range of roles from developer and business analyst to product manager and director of product and India operations. This diverse experience has given him a deep understanding of building and scaling SAS products and currently is part of an exciting new venture. We will talk about that as clue as standalone Shopify app developed by Asklo.

So let's dive in and find out more about how AI assistance can help you in your business. And let's welcome him to the show. Hi, Saumil. How are you today? Hi, Claus. I'm good. How are you? I'm very well. Great to have you on the show. Most of our listeners are using AI by now, but not everyone knows what an AI assistant is.

Can you explain it simply?

Of course, AI Assistant is a huge, uh, in itself. It covers many different aspects. Uh, either you are calling it a chatbot, or maybe some, some of the widgets which increase your efficiency. So, there are many different use cases of AI Assistants. It's not just one on the e commerce like a chatbot.

So, if I talk about the, Shopper's journey, uh, how the shopper's journey look like. So I would divide it into the four phases of, uh, shopping. One is the discovery phase. The second is the consideration phase, then purchase, then post purchase phase. So yeah, is basically everywhere. The discovery phase where shoppers looking for the perfect match when they are finding.

Or what they're looking for. And that's where our, uh, Asklo search and discovery platform excels that ensures that shoppers find exactly what they are looking for quickly. And of course, efficiently, then it comes to the consideration phase. So once you. Selected that, okay, this product I like, then I have to decide as a shopper, I have to decide that should I purchase it or not.

And, uh, that's the next step of decision making. And at this step, it's critical to provide the trust, the right product information and the real time interaction to help shoppers feel confident about their selection. And, uh, this is where we saw the opportunity of having live FAQ called AskGlow to enhance the product page with smart real time FAQ and customer support.

So let's dive a little bit more into, you gave this different stages. So it's all sort of kind of psychology of online shopping, the different stages of going through a purchase process. How does getting quick answers from a chatbot from an AI assistant make customers more confident decisions? How does that work?

So, of course, there are Gen AI behind the scenes for every chatbot or every AI assistant you see in the market today. So I would say how you process before you're sending the prompt to the Gen AI, that's where the, that's middleware. That's where the USB is for every company. And I would say the accuracy is important and how you make it accurate, how you make the response accurate, how you support the multilingual, how you give the end to end user experience to your bot, to your chat assistant, that's what

Okay.

Now, a lot of questions are obviously coming up when people are going to on the product detail page, um, when they're really on the last stage to hit the buy button. And usually it goes to customer support or in the past you had like a live chat with the customer support there. How does an AI assistant, um, help with that?

What kind of common questions are coming in? How does it work?

I, I would start from what kind of different domains, uh, we have covered and, and in every domain, there are different kinds of questions being asked. So for example, if you are, if you are selling any beauty product, then, uh, the questions are more on the ingredients that does it suit my scheme?

So there are, there are so much different ingredients in the beauty products and everyone has one or other kind of. reaction to that. So, uh, that's about the beauty product. That's where we receive questions. If I talk about the fashion store, then the size availability, uh, colors, material, uh, those kind of questions.

And the most interesting questions we receive are in the furniture stores. So for example, where the furniture stores were basically dimensions and, uh, material are matter that does it fit my Bedroom does it fit my living room or or what? So that's where let's say if my uh, bedroom size is Maybe 10 10 by 10 and if i'm looking the size into the feet but the size mentioned on the

So that's where, uh, people ask the question that how much, uh, fit this, uh, maybe companies about. So those kinds of interesting questions we receive, and that's where our ask low AI assistant respond quite well. And with the accuracy, let's talk about the electronic stores where there are so many different specifications for even for laptop or mobile, but the people do not, uh, read all the information people just if there are questions where you can just tap and get your answer you convert health quickly so people do not read everything people want that what is question in my mind if that question is there i would

tap on it i think you just highlighted a very important point there people are not reading so you can have the best Product detail page with all the information is on there and people still will not read or just scan the whole thing and then probably prefer having a chatbot and AI assistant there.

Now I'm curious to learn how do you train this AI assistant because every business, just gave some examples, has different information, different features, different benefits, different SKUs. What's the training process for an AI assistant?

Yeah, so it's a multi way, or there are many different attributes into this one is the domain itself.

So if we are in the. The story is on the fashion domain. Then fashion specific questions. So that is the domain. The third. The second is the personalization. What is the preference of the shopper on the product page? So there are many different ways We have, uh, built the algorithm to train our machine, um, behind the.

You mentioned earlier, um, language means different languages is a point now, a lot of stops are selling globally. How crucial is multilingual AI support in providing the service?

Yeah, that's an interesting part. So if I talk about India, then the Hindi is the national language here. Of course, the global language is English and our most of the stores are also in English.

But people even in Europe, so People, the local languages, uh, regional languages are different in Finland. Most of people use Finnish language in Sweden. Most of people use Swedish language in their routine communication. I, but if they go online, uh, the stores are in English, the global brands are in English and here, if, if they don't know the context in English.

But they, they have something in their mind, in their local language preference, and if they ask in their local language, in their Finnish language, for example, and if the AI assistant reply in their own language, that sounds like a wow effect. Wow. Even though the information in English, this AI assistant is helping me to find the information in my language.

So that, that creates the wow factor. And, uh, that's what I feel like globalization.

Tell me, how does it work? So is the the translation automatically? Um, so, or do I have to translate everything in other languages for the AI assistant to train them? That's automatic. You don't need to do anything about it.

Do you see a shift on how customers expect to interact with online stores? Um, or in other words, what's the right balance between using AI and a human person to get more sales?

Oh, uh, so that's also the interesting part. Um, you know, I would like to highlight some success story. Um, the people who are Already using some chat support on the store, and that's where the human is behind, behind the chat.

So for the product specific questions, what we have seen that, uh, one of the fashion brand in Europe, they literally seen a decrease in the support request, product related support request, because of having this AI taking care of all the answers. In chat, uh, the chat support agent do not receive only the order or stock related queries.

Uh, they also receive queries related to products and, uh, sometimes that chat agent also, uh, doesn't have the proper information about the product. They also read to read through all the product information before the response. So it's time consuming, isn't it? So it takes a lot of time. And if there is no chat agent available, then it creates the support ticket for them.

So basically the shopper do not get the answer at the same time. They have to wait for it. And having this assistant on your product page, you just tap it and get the answer. That's the interesting part.

Okay. Now, obviously, you're getting a lot of data from the assistant as a store owner, so you will see what people are asking for and so on so forth.

How can you use the data to optimize your store to optimize your marketing?

Now, we do not share. Data internally, uh, because of the GDPR guideline, of course, but We enrich the catalog to of the shopper. So if let's say we are on a fashion Uh, we receive the let for example 10 fashion stores and we receive catalog of 10 fashion stores Then we do not share data internally, but our algorithm uses the information to enrich catalog of each of the store, um, to make sure that if any shoppers looking for something which is not there in the product information that it answers in accurate manner.

Okay. Talk me through on, uh, how ask low works. How do you integrate this in your store? I understand you have a Shopify app. Um, what's the onboarding process or does it work?

Yeah. So, uh, it's quite simple. So It integrates directly with Shopify and, um, there is no coding skill required. You just install and you are done.

And, uh, during the installation, you, you have two different options. So one is the pop up assistant. So, and the second one is the embedded FAQ section. So on the product page, we offer two different layout and, uh, Uh, the positioning is also automated, but if you want to change the positioning, then of course, you go to your Shopify admin, open the product page, and you just set up the block, ask to block accordingly as per your need.

And of course, yeah, during the installation, we have a dedicated support team who is available to assist you with the integration and any technical queries you have for the installation. But it's very basic and plug and play setup we have.

Okay. So basically it works with every Shopify theme, probably also with custom built Shopify themes.

Doesn't make really a difference, does it? Yes, it works.

And if let's say there is some issue happening during the installation, then Custom integration is also available. So we just, uh, two liner script that you need to integrate on, uh, on your Shopify environment and you are done. Nothing else. Okay,

cool.

You already mentioned a couple of installation or some stores that can use it. Um, Can you share some success stories of stores that are using your assistant?

Yeah, of course. So one of the standout success stories is a large luggage retail brand in Europe, and it's a game changer for them. Since integrating AskGlow on their Shopify store, they are experiencing significant Decreasing the bounce rate from the product page and they, they have seen the increase in the engagement from the product page and on a daily basis, they receive 100 questions, 100 questions means people, the shoppers select the or click on the question, they ask the questions.

Now you imagine that how if they ask question to the support agent on the chat, then how much load they get. So they have also seen a very decrease in the support ticket and, uh, yeah, that's how it's a game changer for them. And more than 20 percent of the total conversion is happening after the, after shoppers having engagement with this ask low assistant.

That's also amazing.

Okay. Who's your perfect customer? Are there specific store sizes, specific industries that it works best with?

Our perfect customer is any retail store. Um, to be honest, uh, no matter the size from the small boutique, uh, shops to the enterprise, because everyone benefit from this FAQ assistant, isn't it?

So product page. For small boutique or a large enterprise product, which structure the information is always the same or very similar to do it. So I think, yeah, it benefits all, all the, all different size of customers.

Okay. As a merchant, as an online seller, do I need to do any kind of homework before I install it or can I just install and go ahead?

No,

you just install and it's

done. It's really plug and play for Shopify merchants. Okay. Excellent. Tell me a little bit about the pricing structure. How do you charge your clients? So we

offer,

uh,

two distinct pricing options to tailor different business needs, because as I said, our perfect customers are even a small boutique or a large enterprise as well.

So to gather this in mind, uh, we have two different models. One is pay as you go and other is fixed pricing. And pay as you go plan is basically a free that includes 30 requests per month, and it's ideal for a small store. Those just starting, starting out or providing a flexibility without any upfront cost.

So people, if people do not want to spend anything for this, then they can start with the pay as you go. And the fixed pricing is starting at 79 per month. Uh, with a thousand requests per month, and this option is recommended for a growing business that need a really reliable and predictable cost structure before they start.

And of course, for the advanced features such as the submitting additional metafield for more accurate results, customization Uh, they have higher volume of request like enterprise customers. Then we have, uh, the enterprise solution also available.

Okay. Okay. That sounds good. Before our coffee break comes to an end today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

Yeah, I would like to say that we should be stay adaptable for trying this new AI. Assistant and, uh, we have to try fast and fail fast. That's what I would like to say to everyone. And we should not hesitate to try new technologies, even though you are a small merchant or big merchant. So customer experience is the key in today's world.

So. This AI assistant will of course increase the efficiency, overall efficiency and offer the great customer experience to your shop.

That makes perfect sense to have a AI assistant who's always available. There's no waiting time. You get the right answers, definitely has a positive impact on your conversions, on your revenue.

And also on the other side, you will have less people on your side dealing with very repetitive customer queries. So I think it's a win win situation to have a AI assistant on your store. And I think most stores will have this direction. As you said, there's no way around AI. And, um, I think you have a good solution there.

And with your pricing, with the free testing, basically, it's basically a no brainer to try it out. Thanks so much for giving us an overview today about your new app. Um, where can people find out more about you guys.

Uh, it's askglo. ai. That's where you'll find more information.

Okay, I will put the links in the show notes and I also have a link directly to the Shopify app store so people can go there directly install and try it out and hopefully they will like it and become one of your new clients.

Thanks so much for your time today and I hope to talk to you soon. Thank you very much and thanks to our audience. Hey, Claus here. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the e commerce Coffee Break Podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show.

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