Within the AI community, we consistently explore the cutting edge of automation and efficiency. The application of AI in customer support, particularly within e-commerce, stands as a prime example of its transformative promise – envisioning an end to the operational friction of manual tasks.
Who wouldn’t want that, particularly when it comes to customer support, which is seen as a critical yet costly function ripe for AI transformation.
It’s no wonder that over the next three years, 92% of businesses are poised to increase their AI investments, with 80% specifically earmarking these funds for improving the customer experience.
AI is alluring. But choose the wrong option at your peril. While many promise to be the silver bullet to your problems, they can instead add another layer of complexity, leaving leaders pulling their hair out as they work out why it isn’t working and questioning the ROI.
I’ve seen this firsthand countless times when speaking to eCommerce retailers. The fundamental issue isn’t with AI itself. It’s that we’re deploying sophisticated systems into fragmented environments, where data is siloed in disparate systems.
What this means is that their AI Helpdesk is essentially operating in the dark.
The Operational Cost of Fragmented E-commerce Data
Let’s take a step back and consider a common customer query in eCommerce: “Where is my order?”
What appears to be a seemingly simple request is actually a maze of time-consuming tasks for customer service agents. Let’s break it down.
First, the agent must confirm the contact request’s legitimacy, checking the Helpdesk or CRM for the customer’s details. Then, they retrieve the customer’s order number and navigate to the specific platform where the order was placed to locate it. This is further complicated if sales occur across multiple marketplaces, often requiring the customer to confirm the purchase channel. Only once the order is found do they then need to access a separate courier system for the tracking information. Finally, they can return to the customer with an answer.
This simple request can result in multiple separate customer interactions just to gather the details. A frustrating experience for many, one that I’m sure a number of you have experienced yourself.
Now, multiply this query by hundreds and you quickly realise how this one simple query could be a time sink for your organisation.
Worse yet, it can impede growth, as every minute an agent spends navigating disparate systems is a minute lost from engaging with complex customer issues, identifying upselling opportunities, or addressing pre-sales queries.
The data doesn’t lie – a third of customers will abandon a beloved brand after just one poor experience, a direct hit to repeat business and lifetime value. Furthermore, numerous studies indicate that speed is the top component for an excellent customer experience.
The answer: let’s get AI to automate this.
Data-Starved AI will Fail in Customer Support
When reports from powerhouses like McKinsey project that up to 50% of customer service tasks could be automated by 2030, promising substantial cost savings and increased efficiencies, the impetus to invest in an AI-powered helpdesk is undeniable.
The problem is that you cannot simply bolt on an AI module to a conventional helpdesk and expect transformative results. This is only one system in the complex web that is the eCommerce tech stack. Which means the AI remains isolated, trapped within the confines of the helpdesk and devoid of any live, contextual connection to the underlying eCommerce data that truly matters.
So what happens when that “Where is my order?” query arrives? Does it fulfil the promise of e-commerce customer support automation? Not a chance.
The AI, lacking connectivity to the comprehensive information it needs, defaults to educated guesswork. It pulls generic, pre-canned responses from your knowledge base or directs customers to an FAQ page that often fails to provide the personalized and tailored support they seek. The query then inevitably gets triaged to a human customer service agent, who still needs to go through all the manual rigmarole that AI had promised to automate.
This isn’t intelligent customer service for e-commerce. It’s just elongating an already bloated process and masking underlying data architectural flaws.
Let me put it another way: you cannot ‘AI’ data you don’t possess.
If you starve the AI of the information it needs, you’re just paying for an expensive, exceptionally intelligent system to do dumb things and exacerbate your problems. Because now you are confronted with the challenge of having to find a way to connect all your different systems so that you can actually receive the benefits of AI.
The Imperative of Unified Data for Intelligent CX
You do not want to invest in an AI helpdesk only to have to invest in creating a ‘data lake’ or a custom orchestration layer. For one, it’s expensive. And two, your core business is e-commerce, not building enterprise data infrastructure.
Furthermore, general helpdesk platforms are designed to support a variety of industries, not exclusively e-commerce. Which means their solutions aren’t specifically geared to solve the nuanced connectivity problem inherent in the diverse e-commerce tech stack.
So, how do you achieve real AI ROI in e-commerce? You need to find an AI helpdesk that is built from the ground up to support e-commerce through data unification. This means looking for platforms that offer robust API integrations with the marketplaces you sell on, the communication channels you use with customers, and the fulfilment providers you use to track shipping – to name just a few critical touchpoints. These are platforms that don’t just display customer, inventory, and order data, but rather seamlessly ingest and connect it to forge a single, unified view.
Now your AI can see everything. So when you receive a customer query, it will know their identity, their purchase history, the precise timestamp of their order and its delivery status. And this is where the power of AI comes into its own. Because AI can process large quantities of data in milliseconds, it can provide customers with almost instantaneous answers to their questions. Whether it’s about the status of their order, or if you have a product in blue that meets their dimensional requirements.
As I said: you can’t AI data you don’t possess. However, when all these elements are connected, the power of AI is genuinely invaluable to businesses, increasing efficiency and enhancing the bottom line.
From Support Tickets to Sales
While the efficiency gains are significant, the true ROI of an all-seeing AI helpdesk is the strategic liberation of your greatest asset – your people.
They no longer need to deal with the drudgery of mundane support requests; AI can handle that. But don’t interpret this as a directive to replace your workforce with AI. In my view, it’s far more impactful to redeploy them into higher-value activities.
This includes empowering them to address more complex and nuanced customer issues that demand human empathy and problem-solving skills, as well as playing a more active role in customer acquisition and loyalty.
Suddenly, your support team transcends its traditional designation as a cost centre and becomes a front-line revenue generation engine. One that can utilise human empathy and touch to deliver exceptional customer experiences that cultivate loyalty, increase average order value and generate new sales.
So don’t let your AI investment be an overzealous, superficial chatbot that serves your customers with vanilla responses. Invest in eCommerce platforms that inherently unify your data, enabling your AI to operate with true contextual intelligence. Only then will your AI-powered helpdesk transcend its perceived cost-centre status and become a strategic driver of revenue, efficiency, and sustained competitive advantage, rather than waking up with yet another headache.
