Ada, the leader in Automated Brand Interactions, released ecommerce data that demonstrates a lasting digital shift in the relationship between customers and the brands they love. The report analyzes more than 200 million brand interactions that took place over Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2020 and found that nearly three quarters of customers (72%) expect a personalized customer experience from vendors, 83% expect regular communication about their purchases, and businesses that respond to customer chats within five minutes were 70% more likely to win the purchase.

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To help ecommerce and retail brands prepare for this year’s holiday shopping season, Ada is hosting virtual CX Bootcamp for Ecommerce on September 16, based on the top six CX lessons gleaned from the report.

Ada also announced new integrations for Kustomer, the top-rated CRM for modern customer experiences. Together, Ada and Kustomer will help fast-growing B2C brands interact and engage with more customers without compromising on quality, efficiency, or costs.

“In 2020 alone, Ada automated more than 1.5 billion customer interactions for hundreds of category leaders across the globe, and in analyzing the hundreds of millions of Black Friday and Cyber Monday conversations, one thing has become crystal clear: consumers today want to feel valued. We all want our interactions with brands to be easy and meaningful, especially as we continue to engage more digitally,” said Mike Murchison, Ada co-founder and CEO. “Positive engagement doesn’t actually require a human touch, but it does still require a personal touch. Ada provides a unified brand interaction layer that enables brands to be continuously available, completely consistent, and always helpful anywhere and at all times. And our integrations into platforms like Kustomer make this easy for brands to implement and show customers they’re valued at every touchpoint along their buying journey.”

A Platform That Can Scale To Conquer Black Friday and Cyber Monday

In the Forrester Tech Tide™: AI And Analytics For Retail, Q2 2021 report, Forrester analysts stated that AI and automation technologies “promise to reduce retailer costs and improve sales and customer experiences,” and are “increasingly critical to retailers’ ability to win, serve, and retain their customers.” As online shopping continues to grow, AI helps retail brands optimize and enhance crucial business processes at scale.

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Ada’s own data supports this. Eighty percent of brand interactions are simple, self-service inquiries that a robust, conversational AI can handle, and more than half of customers (55%) said they want a chatbot to provide support for finding specific products, in addition to customer service. More than one-third (35%) of total Black Friday and Cyber Monday interactions were “where is my order” inquiries at Ada’s top retail and ecommerce customers. Platforms like Ada offer the best of both worlds: they’re “always-on” to automate complex tasks and are intelligent enough to know when human intervention is needed, ensuring that retailers never miss an opportunity to provide support or make a sale.

Forrester analysts also recommend that retailers divest of “older technology categories that have reached a point where their business value has dropped.” Retailers should drop standalone product recommendation engines, investing in broader digital experience optimization solutions instead that take into account “shopper needs, touchpoints, and even inventory availability for a more relevant customer experience across a variety of touchpoints.”
An advanced AI platform like Ada puts the customer at the center of every interaction ultimately creates lasting loyalty and ROI.

Holistic CX is the Next Move For Ecommerce and Retail Brands

As retailers explore adding more AI and automation to their technology stacks, it’s important to seek out solutions that allow for deep integrations and empower more personalized customer experiences. Ada unifies CX across the customer journey by inviting marketing, sales, and support teams to collaborate in a holistic CX strategy, allowing businesses to scale valuable interactions across the end-to-end customer journey.

In the case of Kustomer, the integration offers a best-in-class CX solution for brands that want to deliver fast, efficient, hyper-personalized experiences at scale. Ada’s brand interaction layer automates simple, day-to-day inquiries as well as complex and personalized conversations. When access to a human agent is needed, Ada seamlessly transitions to an agent on Kustomer, who has complete customer visibility to deliver effective and personalized support effortlessly.

“2020 saw a decade of digital transformation in a span of a few months. Brands had to rapidly adapt and deliver instant service, contextual experiences, and personalized support across every touchpoint to win customers, inspire loyalty, and build trust,” said Gabe Larsen, VP of Growth at Kustomer. “Our partnership with Ada enables us to offer a comprehensive CX strategy that not only centralizes omnichannel operations and customer data, but empowers brands to effortlessly and cost-effectively meet customer expectations for fast, efficient, and personalized support at scale.”

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