The ecommerce market is booming. Its global value is expected to reach $4.32 trillion in 2025 and achieve a CAGR of 8% to reach $5.89 trillion by 2029. But an explosion of online retailers and choice has also led to overwhelm among customers, with as many as 70% of shoppers abandoning their basket before they complete a transaction, often because navigating the sea of choices and comparing products has become more complicated than ever before.
The ecommerce experience as it stands
Complexity is especially visible in buying journeys for products like smartphones, where customers must consider not only the model but also several other important factors such as network coverage, features, plans, promotions, insurance, and accessories. According to data from 15gifts, three in five consumers struggle to compare multiple providers and products, while 56% find it difficult to access the detailed product specifications needed for informed decisions. As technology continues to rapidly evolve, understanding new features and their value becomes an even bigger challenge.
Retailers are turning to digital support tools to replicate the guidance of in-store sales assistants, offering customers the personalised help they need to navigate complex choices and make confident buying decisions. These AI-powered tools are set to reshape online shopping experiences.
The use of digital sales assistants
Digital sales assistants interact with customers and answer queries. They may provide expertise on product features or offer guided selling experiences, the two interaction styles most wanted by consumers (28% and 37% respectively). These figures are derived from in-depth discovery interviews conducted by 15gifts.
Many existing tools, like chatbots, often fall short. They are unable to answer specific questions from users, struggle to emulate the tone of the person they are interacting with, take a long time to respond and have a tendency to send irrelevant information or suggestions. Shoppers also have reservations about the security and potential misuse of personal data when interacting with these deployments.
Crucially, the limitations of chatbots prevent consumers from trusting them in the same way that they would a human salesperson. They may end up bypassing them completely in an effort to speak to a live agent online or via the phone, or head into a store to speak to someone directly.
Human interaction remains valued because salespeople attentively listen to customer requests and can tailor both their answers and product recommendations accordingly. And it’s this sophisticated interaction that digital sales assistants need to capture in order to be both valued and trusted by customers. Evolutions in AI are showing promise in this space by effectively learning from experienced human salespeople.
The next phase of AI-driven tools
To transform customer experiences in ecommerce, AI-driven tools must go beyond scripted responses and static behaviour, and that’s where the next phase of AI comes in. Agentic AI is the first piece of the puzzle to replicating the decision-making and communication styles of top-performing human salespeople.
Agentic AI combines natural language processing, reinforcement learning, machine learning, and knowledge representation to proactively make decisions and personalise conversations. Unlike traditional AI tools, it can act independently, providing context-aware, personalised advice without requiring human intervention. It takes customer engagement to the next level by autonomously listening to needs, offering tailored recommendations, and addressing objections with finesse.
The second element to bringing human sales techniques to the online space is by helping it learn directly from the top-performing salespeople. This is achieved by training an agentic AI tool with transcripts of digital sales conversations, alongside consumer psychology principles, to fully replicate human interactions with real-world expertise.
The end result is a platform that can actively listen to customer needs, provide tailored recommendations and handle any objections smoothly. For example, preferred features, pricing and any other relevant complementary services are incorporated into interactions. Consumers feel understood throughout the buying journey, and are also confident about the security of their data with compliance fully assured.
The path forward for E-commerce
As the ecommerce market continues to grow, so too does the pressure on retailers to create buying experiences that are clear, personalised and trustworthy. The complexity of product choice, affordability concerns and growing customer expectations mean that retailers are increasingly looking towards technology to solve these problems, but current solutions are still falling short.
The future of AI in the industry will be defined by advanced capabilities, such as Agentic AI, and the feeling among consumers about interactions with AI to complete transactions is generally positive. Further findings from 15gifts’ in-depth discovery interviews shows that 68% feel either positive or very positive about the prospect of interacting with an online AI-powered sales representative. It’s now up to organisations to tap into this next evolution and provide customers with what they want. In doing so, retailers can empower customers to feel more confident in their choices, thereby improving both satisfaction and conversion rates.
