If your ecommerce business is growing fast, your inbox volume is probably growing faster. Customers reach out with questions about your shipping times, returns, and exchanges. As your tickets pile up, it’s no surprise your support team might get stretched thin. Inevitably, response times and customer satisfaction are affected.
Sound familiar?
Conversational AI tools can handle customer inquiries around the clock. They can help shoppers find the right products and handle basic support requests, like refunds or returns. Instead of hiring more agents or letting tickets pile up, you can use AI to scale your customer experience.
In this article, we’ll cover what conversational AI tools are, how they work, and the benefits of using conversational AI for ecommerce. We’ll also provide some real examples of using conversational AI within an ecommerce team.
What is conversational AI?
Conversational AI refers to tools that can have natural, human-like interactions with customers. Legacy chatbots follow rigid scripts and can only respond to specific keywords. Modern artificial intelligence tools understand natural language context. They can adapt their responses to customers’ needs.
For ecommerce businesses, conversational AI provides huge advantages over legacy chatbots. Salesforce reported that AI and agents influenced 20% of all global orders in the 2025 holiday season, which drove $67 billion in sales.
As you grow and attract more traffic to your site, you have to make sure your customers have a positive experience. Conversational AI can help you manage that volume.
Types of conversational commerce tools
Ecommerce businesses can use different types of conversational AI tools to engage with their customers. Here’s a breakdown of the different conversational commerce tools that are available:
- Generative AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT help shoppers identify products they’re looking for. A customer might say, “I need a gift for my sister who loves hiking and cooking,” and the chatbot can suggest products across different categories.
- AI copilots or online shopping assistants help customers browse products directly on a company’s website. For example, Amazon’s Rufus AI and Walmart’s Sparky agent help shoppers learn about their inventory and sort through available options. They also compare products and provide personalized recommendations.
- AI voice agents act as frontline customer support for your business. For example, Quo’s AI voice agent, Sona, can answer common questions, take messages, and complete tasks — all over the phone.
- Messaging chatbots on platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger offer AI-powered shopping experiences. Customers can go through the entire purchase process while speaking to an AI chatbot in their preferred messaging app.
How do conversational AI tools work?
Conversational AI tools rely on several technologies working together.
Speech recognition and text-to-speech tools convert audio into text so the AI can quickly process what’s being said. Natural language processing, or NLP, analyzes text to understand a customer’s question or request. It identifies the specific actions to take based on customer needs.
Complex reasoning allows AI agents to use various functions and APIs to determine the right response. They search the company’s knowledge base for relevant information. Large language models then generate a text response to customer queries. Machine learning improves these tools over time, by learning from past interactions with customers.
Conversational AI tools can generate responses quickly. They reduce customer wait times and create conversations that feel natural.
Benefits of conversational AI for ecommerce
To invest in conversational AI tools, you’ve got to know what you gain in return. Here are a few ways ecommerce businesses can benefit from using these tools:
- Increase revenue: Conversational AI tools provide personalized product recommendations to your shoppers. Customers can find the right products more quickly, leading to faster sales. Plus, AI tools can suggest additional products to complement a purchase, which can increase the average order value.
Amazon recently shared how its conversational AI assistant Rufus contributed to additional sales. It reported additional revenue of $10 billion, driven by Rufus AI. While Amazon’s sales are at the high end of the scale, the principle holds: faster, more helpful interactions lead to more sales. - Improve customer satisfaction: Customers don’t want to wait on hold to speak with your team. They also don’t want to wait days for a response to their ticket. They want immediate answers. And with conversational AI for customer service, you can give them faster responses.
For example, take Loop Earplugs, an ecommerce business that sells earplugs to consumers. It recently ran into issues with its customer support, with an average response time of 5-6 days. After it started using Ada’s AI chatbot, it reduced the average response time to two hours. Customers were also happy with the service they received, and Loop Earplugs has a CSAT of 80%. - Increase team efficiency: With conversational AI handling routine inquiries, your team can help more customers in less time. Customer service reps can focus on complex issues that need human involvement. AI can answer questions like “Where’s my order?” and “What’s your return policy?”
For example, nutrition supplement provider EHPLabs used Siena AI to improve its support team efficiency. Siena handles routine questions on their behalf. The team was able to handle 42% more tickets as a result. - Reduce support costs: Conversational AI tools cost a fraction of what it takes to add people to your team. You don’t have to choose between providing great support and managing costs. AI lets you do both.
Hiring, training, and retraining support agents come at a cost. Implementing AI often makes more sense for handling routine, high-volume inquiries.
5 ways ecommerce brands can use conversational AI agents
While the benefits are clear, how do these tools actually fit into your daily operations? Here are some specific conversational AI use cases that ecommerce teams rely on for customer interactions:
1. Offer 24/7 customer support
Your customers shop at all hours, but your team can’t work around the clock. AI voice assistants fill that gap by providing call coverage during and after business hours.
With Sona, you can provide always-on support. Sona is an AI voice agent offered by Quo, formerly OpenPhone. It handles calls when your team isn’t available.
24/7 availability: Sona is always available to answer incoming calls. You can set it up to take calls after hours or as a fallback if your team is busy with other customers. Businesses using Sona go from missing 70% of customer calls to less than 10% on average.
Answer frequently asked questions: During an AI phone call, Sona can provide basic information to your customers. It can answer questions about your products, shipping policies, and return processes. For questions about order tracking, Sona can send them a link to their order page. You can instruct Sona to do this with the Send SMS action.
Take messages for callbacks: When an issue requires human attention, Sona collects the necessary context from customers. Your team can then return their call with a solution to their problem. This is much more cost-effective than a traditional callback service or an ecommerce answering service.
Transfer calls as needed: Sometimes a customer has an urgent issue that needs immediate human assistance. Sona can transfer the call to the right person during or after business hours.
2. Provide personalized recommendations
Conversational AI helps customers discover products they didn’t even know they needed. Instead of browsing through hundreds of options, a customer can get tailored suggestions based on their preferences.
A shopper might type into ChatGPT: “I need comfortable running shoes for someone with flat feet who runs about 20 miles a week.” ChatGPT suggests specific brands and models based on that criteria. It also explains why each option might work, and even compares prices.
In this case, your company benefits from AI-driven product discovery. AI-powered solutions on a company’s website or within mobile apps can direct customers to your best products.
3. Reduce abandoned carts and increase conversion rates
Cart abandonment is a constant challenge for ecommerce businesses. Customers add items, get distracted, and never come back. Conversational AI can help recover some of those lost sales.
Simba Sleep implemented Ada’s AI agent and configured it to provide a Calendly link for a sales opportunity or product inquiry. Customers can book a callback with the sales team. This process freed up three of Simba’s agents to focus only on abandoned carts and sales carts.
As a result, the customer service team now generates approximately £600,000 per month in additional revenue. “It wasn’t about cutting costs,” said Graham Poddon, Head of Customer Experience. “It was about freeing up the team to do more of what matters for customers—and it’s paying off.”
Pro tip: Want to automate abandoned cart follow-ups? Quo integrates with Shopify through Zapier. If a customer abandons their cart during a Shopify checkout, you can use Quo to automatically send an SMS message.
Check out the Zap to send Quo SMS messages when customers abandon their carts.
4. Respond to customers faster with AI-powered emails
Email remains a critical support channel for e-commerce businesses. However, writing responses takes time, and a lot of them are repetitive. AI copilots built into email tools can help your team respond faster without sacrificing quality.
Front AI Assist, for example, automatically drafts replies based on inbox context. A support rep can review the suggested response, make tweaks, and send it in minutes.
5. Identify call trends to improve team performance
You can use AI-powered tools and metrics to help you understand what’s happening across all your support calls.
In Quo, AI call tags automatically categorize conversations. With call tags, you can surface recurring issues and opportunities to improve your customer support. You can also identify call drivers and use sentiment analysis tools to see which customers need a follow-up. This allows you to see patterns that might otherwise get lost in your call volume.
“Call tags have been a game-changer for efficiency,” says Brandon Ingram, Sales & Operations Manager at Environment Control. “They’ve made it super easy to sort through calls and quickly identify important conversations, which has significantly sped up my workflow. I also appreciate how they improve communication with my team by providing a clear context for each call.”
How to choose a conversational AI for an e-commerce platform
When evaluating conversational AI solutions for your ecommerce business, you should keep a few things in mind:
Features: Conversational AI tools have varying degrees of customizability for businesses. Consider the following questions to evaluate each option:
- Is the conversational AI agent a single-channel or multichannel tool?
- Is it customizable for your team’s needs?
- Can you train it with your company’s knowledge base and product information?
Pricing: Some voice AI tools charge by the minute for support conversations. Others charge per call or per interaction. Estimate which model works for you. Here are a few evaluation questions you can ask:
- Can the AI agent scale with your support volume?
- Does the product charge a flat rate or a per-conversation fee?
- Do you understand how your costs will increase as your usage increases?
Ease of use: Evaluate how easy your choices are to set up and use.
- Does the AI platform have a streamlined user experience?
- Do you need technical expertise to get started?
- Can your team make changes without developer support?
Integrations: Identify whether your chosen AI provider can connect to other tools you use.
- Can the platform connect with the rest of your stack?
- Does it work with other tools, like your helpdesk, CRM, and checkout platform?
Reliability: Conversational AI tools are fairly new, so it’s important to evaluate your providers reliability, security, and safety.
- Does the product have good reviews?
- Is it reliable, and does the company provide public uptime information?
- Do customer testimonials indicate that it’ll work well for your team?
Move faster using AI with Quo
Quo is a VoIP AI platform that ecommerce teams can use to scale their business growth. With our conversational AI tools, Quo helps you optimize your customer communications. You can reduce the amount of time spent on customer support and follow up faster on sales opportunities.
AI-powered call summaries and transcripts let you review conversations without listening to recordings. AI call tagging helps you spot trends and identify issues across your support operation. And with Sona, our AI voice agent, you’ll never miss a customer call.
You can also use Quo to collaborate more efficiently with your team members on customer needs. Work together to troubleshoot customer issues faster with internal threads. Plus, save customer details to contact profiles so that you can personalize every conversation.
You can try Quo with a free seven-day trial. Sign up here to get started.
FAQs
Generative AI models offer more dynamic conversations with customers compared to older chatbots. Legacy chatbots could only respond to specific keywords or follow predetermined scripts. Conversational AI understands context and generates responses based on the actual conversation.
Consistent omnichannel experiences: It’s difficult to create a consistent customer experience across your website, email, social media, and phone. You need to train each tool with the same documentation so it understands your products and brand voice. You should also test it extensively across the entire customer journey before going live.
Maintaining customer security and privacy: Choose providers with reliable data security to protect your customer data. Quo is GDPR-compliant, SOC II verified, and publicly publishes its service uptime.
Customer familiarity: Conversational AI tools are still relatively new, so some customers may prefer speaking to human agents for phone support. Make sure there’s always a clear path to reach a human when needed.
Quo recommends transparent disclosure. Being upfront about AI builds trust and sets appropriate expectations for the conversation.
For example, you can set Sona’s greeting to say: “Hi, I’m Sona, your AI assistant. I can help you learn about our products and services, shipping and returns policies, and more. How can I help you today?”
