Some of the coolest brands today were started by teenagers, have products adored by Michelin-star chefs, and create products that are sustainable and environmentally-friendly. They’re also operated as some of the best Shopify stores online.
As consumers continue to become less loyal to big brand names, it’s opened the door for a new breed of brand: direct-to-consumer, entrepreneurial, niche, global. Brands that typify this new model include Allbirds (shoes) and Harry’s (men’s grooming). Shopify’s ecommerce platform and tools are increasingly the online face of these new brands. The company’s growth has been incredible. Today, more than one million merchants worldwide use Shopify; their revenues spiked 97% in the second quarter of 2020.
Due to the COVID-19 driven leap in online shopping, Shopify CTO Jean-Michel Lemieux says the company now sees Black Friday level traffic….every single day.
Every Shopify merchant needs a chatbot
To turn new and casual customers into long-term loyalists, merchants need to prioritize customer service as much as their products. According to Forrester, customers who chat with a brand are 3X more likely to convert and have a 10-15% higher average cart value1. On the flip side, if a question arises during the online shopping experience, 57% will abandon their cart if questions are not answered quickly2. That’s why leading online storefronts deploy Shopify chatbots to provide convenient, effortless and quick resolutions to questions that arise along the entire customer journey.
The 8 Best Shopify Stores That Use Customer Service Chatbots
When you look at some of the most successful Shopify stores, there’s a common theme: they offer chat for customer service. In addition to innovative products and impeccable websites, these stores prioritize their customer service.
1. Taylor Stitch
Taylor Stitch is a hip men’s shirting and casual pants company, committed to building the best possible clothing while pledging to limit its environmental impact. Taylor Stitch founders wanted to create clothes without limitations – that could handle chopping wood or going fishing but fit right in at the office, too. The company’s live chat made clearly available across every website page. It only answers chats during office hours, however. (To be fair, during office hours, the company was very responsive). Customers don’t just shop Monday – Friday during the daytime when it’s convenient for a business. Today’s discerning consumers expect support when they need it. Taylor Stitch could leverage AI to provide around-the-clock support and make out-of-office hours a lot better for customers.
2. Gymshark
Founded in 2012 by a teenager and a group of high school friends, fitness apparel & accessories brand Gymshark today provides athleisure clothing to customers in 131 countries. The company uses chat to answer questions quickly throughout the pre-sale and post-sale journey. The chat connects customers with a live agent who can answer questions ranging from returns, deliveries or product help. If the company used AI to automate resolutions for repeatable, easy questions, Gymshark could eliminate the wait for a human agent to join the conversation.
Learn how to automatically resolve customer service inquiries at the industry’s highest rate over messaging, chat, email, and voice with our helpdesk AI solutions.
3. Verve Coffee
Verve has cafes along the West Coast and Pacific – from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Japan. The company also sells coffee online and has a subscription model, ensuring that their customers never run out of their favorite beans.
The company uses live chat on its website to provide customer support. Live agents immediately respond to every customer, offering amazing personalization. Customers can rate the conversation, providing immediate feedback about whether the experience was what they expected and if they got the information that they needed. However, for Verve Coffee to automate resolutions to the most common questions to ensure customers are never waiting in a queue.
Looking to maximize your CX? Discover what platform may be best for you in our comparison of Intercom vs. Zendesk.
4. Made In
Made In sells high-end kitchen and cookware. The company’s kitchenware is used in multiple three-Michelin-star restaurants (such as Chicago’s Alinea and NYC’s Le Bernardin) and is on tables and in the kitchens at dozens of other top-rated restaurants and hotel groups across North America.
The company uses a Zendesk chatbot feature to connect customers with live agents for anything from product recommendations to other key support issues. If the company used AI, though, live agents could focus exclusively on more complex issues – decreasing resolution time across the board.
5. Package Free
Package Free is an ecosystem of brands on a mission to make the world less trashy by reducing package waste. The founders believe that access to sustainable products and resources that positively benefit people and the planet is a basic human right. They sell everything from shampoo to kitchenware – all using sustainable materials.
The company uses Zendesk chat and live agents proactively reach out to see if the visitor has any questions or needs assistance instead of waiting for the customer to initiate the conversation. This level of proactivity is powerful especially in the low-waste category where education is key. Without the use of AI, though, this proactive care may be hard to scale as the company grows. After the initial proactive message from the company, there is a delay in response from a live agent. Package Free already does a lot to improve their conversion rate on Shopify. However, making slight changes, like removing this wait time, will be a crucial way to educate customers faster and improve conversions.
6. Beauty Bakerie
Beauty Bakerie sells cruelty-free cosmetics and beauty products. such as long-lasting, smudge-free makeup in stores around the world as well as via its online storefront.
An on-brand pink chat icon opens up a window in which a customer is prompted to provide their name, email and question. Instead of enabling a live chat on the website itself, a live agent reaches out via email with the sought-after information. While the gateway to support is easily accessible, immediate full resolutions are not available. The customer must move over to email, interrupting their online store experience.. If Beauty Bakerie was able to automate responses in the same chat window (at least for the high-volume, mundane questions), the company would see customer satisfaction (CSAT) rise, and likely see higher conversions driving greater revenue.
7. Velasca
Velasca sells hand-crafted, classic shoes made in Italy. The company’s founders believe that high-quality craftsmanship should be accessible to all. And, they cut out the middle-man and connect their artisans to the people.
The company offers a live chat feature on its site, but only during limited business hours (Rome timezone). During Italian business hours, the company appears to automate an initial message, letting the customer know that they will be helped shortly. A live agent then joins the conversation to answer questions. By leveraging AI to automate conversations, Velasca would be able to provide always-on support, regardless of when a person has a question, for at least basic-level questions.
8. Harris Farm Markets
Australian-based Harris Farms sources quality fresh fruit and vegetables direct from markets and farmers daily. Same-day or scheduled deliveries come to a home or office at a customer’s preferred time slot. All of their produce is sourced from Australian, family-owned businesses.
The company offers a chat window that pulls up related articles from a knowledge base. If a customer can’t find the information that they are looking for, they are prompted to fill out a form which will lead to a follow-up email reply. The company should use live and AI-powered virtual agents to try and resolve a higher percentage of tickets within the chat itself, eliminating response delays.
Shopify Stores With Chat Can Use More Smart Chatbots
These top Shopify stores have a few core things in common. They have aesthetically pleasing and easily navigable online storefronts. They prioritize customer service and have some form of web-based chat. That’s a great first step as customers today expect immediate support.
We compiled a list of the “Best AI Chatbots” by solution providers — many of which integrate seamlessly with your existing Shopify store.
Beyond the basics – immediate, effortless resolutions are the new standard in customer support. In order to scale as their customer base grows, fast-growing Shopify-based merchants need to use AI-powered chatbots to automatically resolve mundane queries like, “What is your return policy?” or “Are your clothes cut large or small?”.
AI chatbots can seamlessly integrate within agent desk platforms like Zendesk or Freshworks, working alongside live human agents. With AI managing the simple queries, this frees up human agents to focus on more complex questions or specific customers. The result is higher customer satisfaction (CSAT), lower resolution time and reduced customer service costs. AI is also always-on, responding to customers 24/7 and can scale to handle an infinite number of tickets simultaneously.
While the Shopify stores above have taken a great first step to improve customer service with chat, there are opportunities to further impact the customer experience with AI.
Are you ready to explore how AI can help your Shopify store convert more customers and build long-term loyalty? Get in touch today.
For more information on customer service, visit:
- The 7 Best Ecommerce Chatbot Solutions and What Makes Ecommerce Bots Succeed
- Automated Support – 10 Ways Customer Service Automation Works Today (Updated March 2021)
- Retail Customer Service: Everything you need to know about what it is and where it’s heading
- Customer Experience Tools to Elevate CX
- Best Help Desk Software Platforms In 2021 [Features, Pricing, and More]
- Best Chatbot for a Website in 2022 and Beyond [Review and Key Features]
- 7 Ways to Provide Personalized Customer Service (Plus Benchmarks and Stats)
- The Key Questions To Ask When Scheduling a Chatbot Demo
- Measures of Success: Our Top 10 Chatbot Evaluation Metrics