However, although stores are opening again, it seems as though the future lies in what we might term ‘hybrid’ shops. Looking ahead, it’s now of prime importance that eCommerce businesses employ strategies that will help them continue to be successful as we move into a changed, post-COVID world.

Shift In Consumer Behaviour

The pandemic led to an unprecedented shift in consumer trends – one that has called for new ways of doing business – prompting bricks and mortar companies to adapt their entire business models and implement the necessary infrastructure by investing in tech.

People got used to online shopping during the pandemic and their habits changed. The variety of products bought online has increased. Take grocery shopping, for example, or hygiene products – as well as home furnishings, decorative items, and office equipment – which all gained momentum. Even discretionary categories such as skincare and makeup, apparel, jewellery, and accessories grew in terms of online

Impact On Return Policies

Another important issue worth considering is the newly-created demand for return policies – which can be challenging when it comes to the large items. Retail stores have to meet the changing habits and expectations of their customers if they want to stay in the game.

Overall, the growth in online shopping calls for more flexibility in terms of range of goods offered, delivery, and returns. All of this incurs additional costs retailers have to deal with. Moreover, the competition is increasing and businesses are urged to work with lower margins. To respond to these challenges, retailers have to come up with creative strategies to increase sales.

That said, improving customer experience and offering value in the form of logistics, guarantees, and services, will help them stay ahead of the competition. After all, people will still pay more for better service and retailers need to find their ways to keep their customers loyal.

If you are looking to implement what it takes to drive engagement with your target market, don’t hesitate to reach out to the team at Cursum who can help you respond to changing customer needs.

Het bericht Customer Value In A Time Of COVID verscheen eerst op Cursum.

In recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant increase in credit card fraud. The majority of customers are now shopping online which allows fraudsters to explore various means of financial scams.

For instance, according to UK Finance, in 2020 alone credit card fraud losses have reached £574.2 million.

Where eCommerce websites are concerned each retailer needs to implement strong security measures in order to prevent different types of fraud. Let’s take a closer look at how this all works.

Types of eCommerce Fraud

Some of the most common types eCommerce fraud include:

• Classic credit card fraud – when fraudsters steal a victim’s credit card through the Internet and use it to order items
• Return to Origin (RTO) – users claim to have never received an order, or use it and swap it with a damaged one and request a refund
• Ordering without paying – some users order goods with an empty PayPal account
• Chargeback fraud – instances when a customer makes an online order and after the item is being delivered to them, they request a chargeback on the grounds of a lost or stolen credit card
• Promo-code abuse – one individual creates several different accounts on the eCommerce website to use a single Promo code multiple times.

Rule-based Fraud Detection vs. AI/Machine Learning

To avoid payment scams, most eCommerce retailers use traditional methods of manual fraud detection. Quite often there are cases of multiple large orders on one eCommerce website to one address that occur at the same time – or an attempt to reset the account password 500 times which indicates a non-human endeavour.

For that reason, fraud analysts take various scenarios into account and use them to create a rule-based system of fraud detection.

The disadvantage to this rule-based system is that all these scenarios are manually written and they often need to be adjusted or even supplemented which requires additional manual work. In addition, the multiple verification steps that are incorporated in this system can harm the user experience.

Luckily, the machine learning-based system of fraud detection offers greater advantages – primarily in time and cost savings. It even finds hidden and implicit correlations in data that can’t be easily detected by rule-based systems and also reduces the number of verification measures.

The best part about the machine learning-based fraud detection system is that it functions automatically based on the user behaviour analysis.

Benefits of AI Fraud Detection

So, why should eCommerce retailers opt for AI-based fraud detection? What are the main benefits of implementing it on your website?

• Speedy Verification – when the verification is automated the entire process is faster and improves the user experience
• Behaviour Analytics – all machine learning algorithms will analyse the user behaviour and detect any deviant actions. Based on the analysis it will then prevent any other fraudulent activities
• Real-Time Data Processing – unlike the traditional rule-based systems which act after a fraud has taken place, AI fraud detection prevents such activities and acts before the attack
• Total Accuracy – there is no place for human error when it comes to machine learning, meaning businesses will receive consistent, round the clock security
• Locating Hidden Patterns– AI fraud detection can find different scenarios of fraud that humans can’t predict if they haven’t experienced them.

To sum up, eCommerce retailers can only benefit from implementing AI fraud detection. This will enhance their security, diminish significant losses that could occur from these types of fraud, and offer a better user experience.

If you are interested in enabling machine learning-based fraud detection in your eCommerce website don’t hesitate to contact the team at Cursum for more information and guidance.

Het bericht eCommerce & AI Fraud Detection: A Perfect Partnership verscheen eerst op Cursum.

Now imagine having this type of shopping experience online as well – that’s right being greeted immediately in a more natural way. Sure, the service is AI technology, but chatbots are continuously evolving and are now sufficiently advanced to offer a more human service to all customers.

AI Assistants vs Traditional Customer Service Channels

Essentially, an AI assistant is an innovative tool that integrates different communication channels and human interaction – to provide an automated service to customers that visit your website.

Consider the traditional methods of customer service – such as email, live chat, phone, or contact forms. Behind these channels, there’s a team of customer service representatives in a call centre that are answering each query personally.

What the AI assistant does is improve this service and help customers address routine enquiries – such as checking the status of their orders. Simply put, the AI assistant will understand the customer inquiry using NLP and then transfer them to a real customer service representative.

But the entire experience isn’t like speaking to a robot. In fact most customers feel as if they are talking to real people. In this way, using an AI assistant it’s possible to answer 500 people at the same time and process eg. 80% of their enquiries.

However, while many employees may be skeptical of AI technologies – fear that they’ll replace them with the human workforce, it’s important to point out that this solution can in fact benefit employees – giving them more opportunity to do more complex, meaningful tasks.

How Do AI Customer & Buying Assistants Add Value to e-Commerce Websites?

Incorporating AI assistants into your e-commerce website can only simplify and automate the process of interacting with your customers.

It’s all about implementing a more efficient customer service strategy. Here are some of the main benefits of implementing AI assistants on your website.

Automated process call centers + chatbots Chatbots allow you to achieve a higher response rate to your customers and resolve all enquiries easily and more efficiently – getting a better balance between automation and interaction. Your customers only receive human assistance when necessary.

Better customer service Not only will the customers receive a better service, but they won’t even notice the difference between the AI assistants and humans in the chat conversations.

Integrating different channels All customers have different preferences when it comes to communication. Some prefer calling on the phone, others prefer email, messaging apps, or even contact forms. An AI assistant can integrate all communication channels and – using Natural Language Processing – understands the enquiry and deals with it appropriately.

Lower costs for 24/7 customer service Using an AI assistant will allow you to be available 24/7 to your customers – without an additional cost. During out-of-office hours, all visitors to your website can be served by a virtual assistant – seamlessly, any time of day or night.

All things considered, as shoppers, we all get frustrated when we have to contact the customer service team – facing the prospect of being left on hold for hours – if, indeed we can even find the correct number to call! But all of these woes might soon be a thing of that past, thanks to increasingly sophisticated AI tools.

Think you could tell the difference? For more information about AI customer service and buying assistants, contact the Cursum team today.

Het bericht RoboShop: How AI’s Stepping Into e-Commerce Comms verscheen eerst op Cursum.

Luckily, machine learning comes to the rescue when it comes to automating these processes: in the form of assortment and price optimisation – which, when combined, can simplify and improve the shopping experience and lead to revenue growth.

How? By managing your products efficiently arranging them based on consumer demand patterns.

Assortment Optimisation

Assortment optimisation allows eCommerce businesses to prepare for supply and demand. Although this solution is similar to product recommendation – it suggests to your consumers which products to buy – there is one main difference: assortment optimisation analyses consumers’ behaviour as a whole and assesses certain patterns.

For example, during the warm summer season, when many people search for electric fans or air conditioners, this solution auto-arranges products according to the seasonal, rather than individual shopper preferences: by popularity, rather than single buyer behaviour.

From a sales perspective, assortment optimisation will urge eCommerce companies to stock up on the most in-demand products and prepare for production. Applying predictive analytics will help you anticipate sales and ensure the right products are procured.

What is Price Optimisation?

Another aspect is price optimisation – which ensures that eCommerce site owners make better price decisions – drawn from third-party signals gathered from competitors’ websites. In other words, price optimisation automatically collects and analyses the price difference from around the web and adapts them accordingly.

It also helps you to understand whether your margins are too tight, or your pricing is too static, and it enables you to adjust prices in the best way possible to reach your sales targets. This AI solution will evaluate your data to perform price optimisation based on demand.

Combined Benefits

All in all, what do you gain from assortment and price optimisation as an AI solution? How would it be beneficial for your eCommerce website?

• Effective pricing strategy. Saves you time in determining your prices and doing research on your competitors.
• Highly efficient retail planning process. It helps you plan your production and make sure you have all demanded products in stock.
• Revenue growth. Having a well-optimised eCommerce website will lead to more sales.

Ultimately, incorporating an AI solution into your eCommerce website that analyses trends, prices, and popular products can help your business to grow. It can also save you time and money, simplify competitor analysis, and determine your pricing – all while assessing consumer behaviour. So, what’s stopping you from trying it out?

For additional information on assortment and price optimisation, contact the team at Cursum.

Het bericht Optimisation + Automation = eCommerce Success verscheen eerst op Cursum.

While product recommendations are not a new feature – they’re common in most eCommerce websites – up until now, most companies have implemented this feature manually based on customer data.

But now, with the help of AI and machine learning, automation is completely possible.

A Useful Feature

One of the things that makes the online shopping experience more interesting for buyers is the variety of products available. When they have a wide selection of different products to choose from, people can spend hours shopping.

But in efforts to close the sale and add shortcuts to the customer journey, the marketplace displays similar products to the ones you’re viewing: products that were purchased by other customers who were also interested in the same item.

However, the way sites curated these involved a tedious manual process – using a product management section in the backend system.

But thanks to a new suite of AI solutions – such as Google’s Recommendations AI – eRetailers can earn even more customers’ trust and loyalty by proving how well they understand them.

Benefits Of AI Personalised Recommendations

Recommendations AI collects and processes user data, training machine learning models automatically, and delivering personalised recommendations to the customers based on their tastes and preferences.

Using this solution, retailers can even match similar products and create bundles for customers. Implementing an AI personalised product recommendation into an eCommerce website can be useful for both parties – consumers and retailers.

There are so many benefits:

• Better user experience – Customers can enjoy browsing through different products based on their search intent instead of browsing through different categories and unrelated products.
• Easier decision making – Getting a suggestion for a certain product or a bundle can help customers decide what they need.
• Customised recommendations – Customers will be more likely to buy more products when they get product recommendations tailored to their needs.
• Increased conversion rate – Reminding your customers what they need may urge them to buy more products.
• Customer Acquisition – This solution can bring you new customers who haven’t visited this page before and it would be able to automatically predict customer preferences.

How can Cursum Help in the Process?

The best part of the AI personalised recommendation solution is that you don’t have to set it up on your own. As a certified Google partner the team here at Cursum can help you set it up on your eCommerce website.

They are here to walk you through all the steps – writing the script and adding it to your website or providing a recommendation service that they can feed with data using Google Cloud as an infrastructure.

To find out more about the Product Recommendation Service, contact the team at Cursum today.

Het bericht ‘To Suggest & Serve’ – The Use Of AI In eCommerce Product Recommendations verscheen eerst op Cursum.

Quite often when using Google or other search engines, we expect to get the information we need with just a few words. We are so accustomed to using digital apps and programmes that we tend to forget that the language we speak is different from the one computers use.

Even though this may not seem possible, artificial intelligence can already help us in the process. One interesting solution that comes in handy for many businesses and brands that run ecommerce websites is Natural Language Processing.

What is Natural Language Processing?

By definition, Natural Language Processing (NLP), is an artificial intelligence-based solution that provides computers with a better interpretation of the human language. In other words, NLP gives computers and search engines the power to understand your query better without using additional filters. This AI solution allows you to also implement voice control over various systems.

Simply put, NLP starts guessing what you mean when you search using more than one word. For example, if you’re online shopping and want to buy shoes, you’d probably search for ‘shoes around €200’.

These three words are read by the search engine as three unrelated words – and you will most likely get an overwhelming number of results on various topics. Here is where NLP does its magic. By actually training the search engine to recognise these three words as a whole, NLP can understand your search query better and in a more human way.

Importance of NLP as a Technology

Having a machine learning tool incorporated in an ecommerce website is beneficial for both businesses and consumers. Most importantly, NLP improves the customer experience by recognising the consumer’s intent and by offering them the products and services that retailers provide.

In this way, NLP is a significant tool that can add value to brands and give consumers exactly what they are looking for. It also shortens the browsing time and spares the visitor from the tedious sifting through endless product information to find what they’re looking for.

Benefits of NLP for ecommerce websites

When visiting an ecommerce website, consumers expect to get instant results that are tailored to their needs. Incorporating NLP into your website will provide the following benefits:

• Improved site search. NLP understands your customers better and will provide relevant results from their search.
• Data Consumption. Using this AI tool you will be able to collect more information from your customers and apply it to your business – by adding more suitable products or product suggestions for your buyers.

Ultimately, talking to your customers in their language is crucial for your business growth. Understanding and serving them better is the key to success.

If you need additional information and guidance on Natural Language Processing contact the team at Cursum.

Het bericht NLP: Speaking Search’s Language verscheen eerst op Cursum.

That’s why it’s in your interests to enhance your website’s overall performance. Not only will staying on top of digital trends ensure everything’s working to optimum effect; doing so will improve your search ranking too.

That’s why it’s worth taking a closer look at a newly introduced Google Tag Manager option – known as server-side tagging.

In very simple terms, almost every website has a tag manager which runs all the trackers and cookies and essentially follows customer behaviour. All of these run in a local browser; which then connects to ad servers, Google Analytics, and other parties.

Server-side tagging moves this process from your website or app and into a Google Cloud server. But why should you consider incorporating server-side tagging into your eCommerce website or app? What would you gain from it?

Let’s consider the advantages.

– Improved Site Performance

Site performance is key. Revenue is often determined by how the website performs – which means that faster website performance the the higher the increase.

Server-side tagging moves up to 70% of the tagging traffic to the server to expedite the loading time. This means that pages will load much faster across all versions – especially useful on mobile devices.

– Accurate Customer Data

All website visitors and customers can choose to block ads that appear on the website and avoid these connections. By doing so, retailers won’t get the information that these specific consumers or visitors have demonstrated with visiting their website.

With the help of server-side tagging, this process is moved to the server – which means that you as a retailer can still get access to customer behaviour-driven insights: from a cloud-based data centre.

– Higher Google Ranking

Your Google ranking is largely determined by your website’s performance. Therefore, if your website loads slowly, you’re very unlikely to appear in the first pages of search results. Server-side tagging will help you make your website load faster, helping you rank higher, and get even more traffic.

– Increased Security

Server-side tagging also safeguards visitor data by collecting and distributing it in a environment managed by the retailer. The collected data is sent to a Google Cloud where it’s processed and routed by other tags.

Ultimately, if you’re looking for an improved website performance and increased revenue through your ecommerce website, take a closer look at incorporating server-side tagging.

Need some help getting up and running with server-side tagging? Talk to the Cursum team today.

Het bericht Server-Side Tagging: Enhancing Your eCommerce Engine verscheen eerst op Cursum.

If you look at the software and apps you interact with regularly, each has its own unique design, and yet, there are many familiarities such as navigation bars, contact forms, feature boxes – certain elements tend to be present no matter where you go. That’s because these elements play a crucial part in how users engage with the products that you’ve built.

By including these recognisable and predictable elements within the frontend structure, the user’s focus is on the content before them; not on trying to solve the mystery of the user interface. For software developers though, this is a pain. You know what kinds of components need to be included in a product. However, until now, you’ve had to build them from-scratch time and time again. Worse, any time something needs to be updated, it rides on you to implement the update and push it to the live site — and it all has to be done right this minute.

With FEaaS this all changes. The sources of content can be many and varied, from CMS’s, CRM’s or ERP systems, but they are combined to create a dynamic set of building blocks, ready to be used as needed. According to Gartner Hype Cycle for Software as a Service, 2020 “FEaaS is most useful where complex and interactive customer journeys are required, such as digital commerce. A challenge with FEaaS can be that some aspects of presentation management that have been traditionally in the hands of the business user can return to being developer tasks, unless careful technology choices are made. Vendors of “headless” content-centric applications are addressing this need.” Mike Lowndes, senior director analyst at Gartner states in the Hype Cycle for Digital Commerce, 2020 report that “Businesses should consider FEaaS if they desire to use such technologies but do not have the resources to develop, deliver and manage it. The impact is less transformational for purely content focused websites, but more so for fronting “web apps” digital commerce, customer portals, booking engines, communications and social platforms, forums, etc., taking advantage of the mobile-first approach and integration with native device capabilities.”

If you would like to understand the benefits of Front End as a service or talk about how to optimally digitalise your business, schedule a call with us today!

Het bericht Frontend as a Service (FEaaS) verscheen eerst op Cursum.

How can your business overcome these issues?

According to Gartner, more and more merchants are investing in a DOM. The DOM is a central hub where the order workflow combines with other systems that interacts with the order. Traditional order management systems are essentially configured to link a discrete number of specific manufacturers or warehouses, restricting inventory visibility and fulfilment flexibility. Without comprehensive visibility to internal and external inventory locations, including delivery and service requirements, it is nearly impossible to provide the customer an accurate ETA, maintain lithe inventory stock levels, or schedule orders for fulfilment from other locations.

The best way to overcome this is to provide a single, global view of all available inventory, to source the line-item components of each order with purpose and consideration, ensuring that the business can meet both current and future customer demand while optimising inventory, logistics, and asset utilisation. This must be done with powerful and configurable information systems, to avoid creation of a labour-intensive bottleneck to order fulfilment. That’s where the DOM comes in. Here are some benefits:

Multiple Fulfilment Processes: By adopting a central hub with the capabilities to handle all order fulfilment, it’s a smoother process and becomes far easier and more manageable, allowing for more defined workflows and extensive monitoring of results.

Cross-Channel Integration: Pulling together disparate sales channels and systems, making inventory sourcing across the organisation much easier, allowing precision and accuracy of fulfilment data.

The customer experience: Being able to track inventory across multiple channels means that you have far greater control over providing your customers with what they need when they need it.

Global visibility: Having your international warehouses and 3PLs connected to your system makes it easy for consumers to order and receive products from anywhere.

Marketplace integration: As mentioned in our previous article, Marketplaces are becoming commonplace for many retailers. A central Order Management system/DOM means process are harmonised and transparent, accessible and extendable. Thus, making it much easier to become a marketplace or sell on a marketplace.

Cloud / SaaS: Cloud-based systems gives brands the foundation that they need to grow. When updates are made to the DOM system, it is instantly available to customers without impacting the service and provides the flexibility for users to log into the system from any computer, allowing for instant data access from any member of the team.

Could your business benefit from these benefits? If you want to find out more about DOM’s or have a chat about other ecommerce and omnichannel options, please get in touch with Cursum today!

Het bericht Distributed Order Management system (DOM) – Omnichannel realisation verscheen eerst op Cursum.

Gartner defines the CEH as follows: “The customer engagement hub (CEH) is an architectural framework that ties multiple systems together to optimally engage the customer. A CEH allows personalised, contextual customer engagement, whether through a human, artificial agent, or sensors, across all interaction channels. It reaches and connects all departments, allowing, for example, the synchronisation of marketing, sales and customer service processes.”

In short, a system that connects all your channels with all your departments or functions to ensure a consistent experience across all your touch points. Managing different single-channel applications, and integrating them—with each other and back-end systems—while handling user profiles across many applications is awkward, error-prone, time-consuming, and an unnecessary expense. A CEH provides centralised administration of business and system resources.

The fragmented marketing stack and the data silos that result from it are two of the biggest barriers facing today’s marketing departments. By deploying a CEH that takes an open garden approach, marketeers are able to address both issues simultaneously, empower their teams to make better decisions with more complete data, and gain a flexible solution that will keep up with innovation of new technologies as they arise. By making it as easy as possible for your staff to deal with admin and data, you make it as easy as possible for your customers to do business with you, thereby attracting, surprising and keeping them fully engaged.

Along with the challenges of building a CEH such as getting the buy-in from all stakeholders and making sure the right people are on the build team to ensure a full picture of the customer journey, there are multiple benefits. The most obvious of those are gaining new customers through word of mouth and analysing social media data, retaining customers with more personalised content and broadening brand loyalty. Perhaps the most important benefit would be identifying opportunities for improvement. By scrutinising customer feedback through online forums, customer support interactions (e.g., chats and emails), surveys, website- and social analytics, you can identify sticking points in the customer journey such as disrupted delivery, bad customer service, etc. that lead to frustrated customers. Using these points as opportunities, you can improve on the overall service of your business.

Do you want to know more about Customer Engagement Hub technologies or are you considering taking the step to getting your own? Give Cursum a call today!

Het bericht The What and Why of Customer Engagement Hubs verscheen eerst op Cursum.