The document discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the e-commerce sector, enhancing customer interactions and optimizing business operations. By 2020, a significant portion of customer engagements are expected to be managed by AI, allowing companies to provide personalized experiences akin to in-store shopping while also improving efficiency. The case study of Nearbuy exemplifies the benefits of AI in increasing customer engagement and revenue, highlighting the importance of adopting these technologies for future competitiveness in the market.

1. Ajay Kashyap,
Founder @ Boxx.ai
How AI is transforming the e-commerce
sector.
“The Internet has become a wizard of sorts who can predict your demands based on the
requirements and is due to the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Deep learning algorithms
have already started working their bit to forever uplift the world of automated ads, to that extent
that they can now predict the online behaviour of an average user.”
Jan 24, 2018, 05.06 PM IST
E-commerce has emerged to be one of the giant role-playing industries in the business
market with a global presence. As a consequence of huge past transformation, the
competition amongst the e-commerce brands has intensified, not just in terms of the
business generated, but more so in terms of customer acquisition and retention. With the
number of brands, customers & other factors having multiplied exponentially, the e-
commerce players are in a cut-throat hustle to get ahead in the competition. A study by
Gartner reveals that by 2020, around 80-85% of customer interactions will be handled by
Artificial Intelligence. The same research also shares that 67% survey respondents believe
that AI will help them enhance their organization’s efficiency and AI will be a top five
investment priority for more than 20% of CIOs.
This implies that the e-commerce companies would have to serve every single customer with
increased, customized personal attention, much like the attention they receive in the retail
outlets. In a report about the future of A.I., Accenture predicts that A.I. could boost
profitability rates by 38% in the wholesale and retail industries by 2035.
Whether it is to create such highly personalized experiences that combine the personal feel
of an in-store experience with the ease and convenience of online shopping, or to reduce
their ROI by optimising their operations, e-commerce players have now begun to adopt
artificial intelligence and data analytics, as the sophisticated tools, to achieve the desired
results.
Algorithms that pay heed
The Internet has become a wizard of sorts who can predict your demands based on the
requirements and is due to the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Deep learning
algorithms have already started working their bit to forever uplift the world of automated
ads, to that extent that they can now predict the online behaviour of an average user.

2. Bots, VPA’s and platforms
Bots are usually programmed to find the quickest, most effective way to achieve a goal and
they optimize their process by gathering data and information from the customers. Artificial
Intelligence controlled bots can easily reach millions of customers, find the apt leads, write
follow-up emails as well as automate the entire sales sequence more effectively. By
minimizing their marketing expenses with these smart solutions, even small and medium-
sized businesses (SMBs) can now compete with the big players, who are already ruling the
market, and their enormous budgets. This will help in reducing workload by up to 90% in
order to save resources as well as time.
Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) will also transform how consumers interact with
ecommerce companies. In fact, by 2020, Garter Research predicts end-user spending on VPA
speakers will reach $2.1 billion, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 43% from
2015 through 2020, while by 2018, 30% of our interactions with technology will be through
“conversations”.
Re-target potential customers
According to research, almost 33% of the marketing leads are not followed up by the sales
team. Often this also happens when most of the businesses are overloaded with customer
data. There needs to be a lot of planning which goes into understanding the cycle.
Timeline of AI in E-Commerce
Example of Nearbuy :

3. Nearbuy, earlier named as Groupon India, is one of the few prominent names in the hyper-
local e-commerce marketplace that has successfully served more than 4 million customers
across 33 cities to connect. It has helped its customers to connect, discover, buy, and save on
nearly 50,000 products, offered by the local merchants in the respective cities.
With the AI solutions by Boxx.ai, Nearbuy observed an overall increase in the click-to-open-
ratio (CTOR) by 35.7%, in response to the email notifications that were communicated to the
customers. As a response to the app notifications, an overall increase of 51.6% was achieved
in the revenue generated.
CONCLUSION
The future of e-commerce seems very much married to analytics & the growth of AI based
tech to optimise this relationship – the number of products, transactions are only expected
to grow and the time spent on shopping & delivery are surely expected to go down, and for
such a reality to come to fruition the implementation and investment into smart technologies
is critical.
Whether you run an e-commerce business, big or small, or you’re a consumer, mainstream or
niche, exciting times lay ahead of us, where you may potentially be presented with the
products/services you need and want automatically based on your day to day activities.