Innovation Trends in E-commerce and Customer Service

Online shopping already is one of the most popular online activities worldwide, and its popularity will continue to grow with more and more people around the world gaining access to the Internet. In 2016, there were around 1.66 billion global digital buyers around the world. In 2021, more than 2.14 billion people globally are expected to buy goods and services online.

With this many people who are spending money online, it shouldn't come as a surprise that global retail e-commerce sales totaled up to more than an astonishing $4.28 trillion in 2020. Further, e-retail revenues are projected to grow to over $5.4 trillion in 2022. For comparison, in 2019, global e-retail sales amounted to around $3.5 trillion.

Because this industry is so massive, there is a lot of competition. Additionally, we are living in a fast-paced world, which means that consumer and market sentiments are constantly shifting. Consequently, businesses need to innovate if they want to stay on top of the game.

For example, one of the most apparent trends in the world of e-commerce is the ever-increasing amount of mobile devices that are being used for shopping around the globe. In 2021, smartphones accounted for almost 70 percent of all retail website visits worldwide.

Innovative solutions to traditional problems

Since customer service is a major aspect of e-commerce, company's need to look for ways to improve the customer experience. This means that businesses need to enhance the experience that mobile users have when they buy something or use a service.

Now, there are many ways to accomplish that. However, one of the more innovative approaches is to use AI.

A study that was conducted by Juniper Research found that annual global retailer spending on artificial intelligence (AI) will reach around $7.3 billion by 2022, which would be a massive increase from an estimated $2 billion in 2018. That being said, considering what benefits AI can bring for e-commerce, this investment is bound to be worthwhile.

One company that used AI for its innovative solution to a longstanding problem is novomind, a German software company based in Hamburg. The company is one of the international innovation leaders in customer service and commerce and deployed a service called novomind iAGENT.

iAGENT is a holistic AI Customer Service solution including a WhatsApp chatbot for example. To have a deeper look into what this multichannel solution is capable of, one case from Abu Dhabi underlines novomind's international approach and innovative solutions.

Thanks to novomind iAGENT, all public hospitals in Abu Dhabi are now able to offer a way for patients to schedule appointments through WhatsApp. The service went live in June 2021, and it has facilitated over 65,000 appointments since then, with around 2,000 appointments being managed during a busy day.

On especially busy days, the chatbot that manages the appointments holds around 20,000 conversations, with the average being around 5,000 conversations a day on a normal day. There were a total of over 39,000 new appointments that were booked through WhatsApp since novomind's service went live, with about 84 percent of them being new COVID-19 appointments.

Selling e-commerce success

Another innovator in the e-commerce sector is AMZSCALE, which is a company that provides entrepreneurs with a unique combination of services to enable the fastest possible growth of their Amazon brands. In its "Done4You" full service, the company's experts take over all processes and build a successful Amazon FBA business for the clients from scratch.

However, not only the conception, implementation, and launch of Amazon products and brands are taken care of. AMZSCALE also provides SaaS (Selling-as-a-Service), which enables instant international scaling of brands to all Pan EU marketplaces thanks to the company's already existing sales tax structure.

Further, to solve the biggest that comes up when scaling a successful Amazon brand or product, the company also offers CaaS (Capital-as-a-Service), which means that it provides its clients with access to growth and commodity capital. With this unique and innovative combination of services, the company is able to facilitate growth, enables the possibility for investors to invest in successful brands so that they can benefit from their success.

Recognizing new trends and opportunities

Another relatively recent trend in the e-commerce world is voice shopping, which has grown in popularity since Amazon launched its first smart speaker in 2014. According to The Smart Audio Report from NPR and Edison Research, around 52 percent of voice-assistant users say that they use voice technology several times a day or nearly every day.

In 2018, just 67 million smart speaker units were shipped globally. However, the number of global smart speaker unit shipments is expected to reach up to 409.4 million units in 2025.

Further, according to a survey, a total of around 7 percent of connected device owners in the United States made a purchase using a voice-activated device in 2020, which means that over 20 million U.S. consumers bought items using such devices.

So, over the last two years, the number of U.S. consumers using the voice shopping method nearly doubled. This trend also brings new opportunities for companies to innovate and come up with unique solutions.