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If 50 years ago, someone told you there is no need for a physical store to sell your products, you would have called them crazy. But today, this is the norm. So the question is, will AI and the new technological advancements we are witnessing today become the norm 50 or even a couple of years from now?
If so, then should we already start utilizing ChatGPT in retail to increase sales and revenues? Or is it still a far-fetched dream?
In this blog, we will lay out the facts, so you can deeply understand the effect of the new AI-driven tools like ChatGPT in the retail sector and how your eCommerce business can gain and lose from using them.
Table of Contents:
- What is ChatGPT?
- ChatGPT in retail.
- Usages of ChatGPT in retail.
- How can ChatGPT positively affect the retail industry?
- How can ChatGPT negatively affect the retail industry?
- ChatGPT vs Automation.
What is ChatGPT?
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past couple of months, then you must have heard about ChatGPT, but do you actually know what is it?
To put it in the simplest way, ChatGPT (Chat-based Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI to provide human-like interactions and perform tasks. These tasks include answering questions, writing blogs (even this blog can be written by ChatGPT, and you will never know!), and writing code.
We are just kidding; of course, we have a real person writing this for you. We wouldn’t want ChatGPT writing an article about itself after all that’s a bit arrogant!
Back to our topic - ChatGPT makes use of Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand and answer requests. This can save businesses hundreds of hours in research, creating content, and providing customer care. However, this is a double-edged sword that can have many downfalls and negatively affect your eCommerce business.
How does ChatGPT work? Image source: Openai
A study shows that 30% of professionals started using ChatGPT at work. Does this mean you are left behind? Of course not, but if you wait too long, maybe you will! So let’s take a deep dive into ChatGPT in retail and figure out if it's for you or not.
ChatGPT In Retail
Key retail players around the world, including Shopify and Amazon, are starting to integrate AI tools into their business plans. So the question here is not can AI tools, and specifically ChatGPT help the retail industry but it is; how can ChatGPT help in retail?
To answer this question, we must take a deep dive into the usage of ChatGPT in retail and the pros and cons of it on your eCommerce business.
Usage of ChatGPT In Retail
The world still has a lot to learn about AI and the usages of AI-driven tools like ChatGPT in retail can go above our wildest dreams. But for now, there are a number of usages that ChatGPT can help your eCommerce business with; these usages include:
- Market research
- Translation and localization
- Personalized email campaigns
- Product recommendations (personalized according to customer’s purchase and browsing history)
- Social media posts
- Customer service
- Proofreading
- SEO content
- Products’ descriptions
- Keyword research (for SEO)
- Simple data analysis
Like any new technology, using ChatGPT has its pros and cons. So yes it can do all the previous tasks for you, but will it give you better or worse results than having an employee do them is a question you have to consider.
Discover more in ChatGPT In E-Commerce: 7 Ways Can Help Your E-Commerce Business Grow
ChatGPT In Retail Pros & Cons
How Can ChatGPT Positively Affect The Retail Industry?
At the moment, it's safe to say that ChatGPT has more positives to offer the retail industry than negatives. As it can help your eCommerce grow by terminating many repetitive and creative tasks. This allows your employees to focus on other complicated jobs and saves you tons of money.
Also, ChatGPT can help you enhance the whole shopping experience. Through ChatGPT you can provide your customers with a virtual assistant that guides them through the whole process from the home page to the ‘thank you for shopping with us landing page!
And technically speaking, all the tasks it can do for your business should be considered when counting the pros of ChatGPT. Because even if it won’t be performing with the same quality as employees, it will definitely be faster, and to be honest, the quality is not that far off.
To sum up, by enhancing customer experience and allowing your employees to focus on more complicated tasks, using ChatGPT in retail can be a game changer!
How Can ChatGPT Negatively Affect the Retail Industry?
On the other hand, ChatGPT’s main disadvantage is losing the human touch. Although it offers a human-like experience, customers still many times need an actual human for a bit of comfort and familiarity.
This might not be a long-lasting issue, as ChatGPT is programmed to learn from each interaction. This basically means it's getting smarter and more human-like every second. However, to this day, many people and tools can easily identify content created by ChatGPT.
The identification usually comes from a lack of new ideas. Let’s use this to make you walk a mile in our shoes (of course here we mean the nation of tired content creators)!
Each content creator puts a piece of themselves in their content. Even if there is no primary research done, they must have insight or even a personal experience that adds new aspects to the topic.
Bearing in mind that this can cause issues in blogs or social media posts, but in something straight to the point like a product description or generating code for your platform, it won’t be an issue.
Another major disadvantage to ChatGPT in retail, and any other industry, is its uneven factual accuracy. Since it learns from human content and interactions, there is a lot of room for it to get the wrong information. So ChatGPT is not a reliable source of information, and that can surely negatively affect your eCommerce business.
ChatGPT vs Automation
We know you must be wondering by now that many of the previously mentioned tasks can be done by automation tools, so what’s the difference? And more importantly, which is better?
As always, there is no sheet cheat for running a successful online store, but we can highlight the difference, and you can make the right decision for your business!
Automation tools and AI tools like ChatGPT may perform many of the same tasks, but the real difference is the how.
AI tools do all the work themselves; there is barely anything from your end to do. However, automation tools need to be pre-programmed before conducting any task. To put that into perspective, let’s take a look at 2 scenarios and see which speaks more to you;
- You are looking for someone to pick up the slack and finish work for you, even if it's with slightly worse quality. Keeping in mind that it will save you money, time, and effort.
- Your eCommerce business needs a human touch, and you want real people at the end of each funnel, but you don’t want to lose time in repetitive tasks.
If scenario 1 speaks to you, then you can benefit greatly from integrating ChatGPT into your online store. Whereas if scenario 2 resembles your situation more, then automation tools can be a better choice for your eCommerce business.
Additionally, ChatGPT can perform new tasks, but automation tools only come in handy for old repetitive tasks.
It is also worth noting that one doesn’t cancel the other; you can always use automation tools for some tasks and ChatGPT for others.
In the end, whether you believe automation or ChatGPT is better for your eCommerce business, marketing operating systems like ConvertedIn can help you out!
Book a demo now to speak to a HUMAN consultant and become the number one online store.
