How AI has become the backbone of the Ecommerce industry
In 1982 something called Boston Computer Exchange took shape in the USA. It was an online network for used computers. It is the first Ecommerce venture we can trace. Since then a lot of plastics have floated down the Ganges and the Ecommerce industry is a global phenomenon with limitless possibilities. This industry held a 25% CAGR from 2000 through 2014. The prediction was that the net worth of the E-commerce sector in the USA would be $638 billion by 2022. The revenue generated from the retail section of E-commerce in 2019 was more than $ 365 billion.
In the beginning
When it all started there were probably a few hundred thousand users around the world now there are around 2.15 billion people who make regular purchases online. Jeffrey Bezos started Amazon out of his garage with the savings of his parents in 1995 as he noticed that there was a 2300% growth in the number of internet users in the spring of 1994. The point is that things exploded at an unprecedented and unfathomable manner and intensity. With over 19000 E-commerce companies in India for more than 330 million customers in India alone it is a huge mess. Let alone analyzing consumer behaviour and increasing customer engagement, it must have been difficult to attend the most interested buyers. Artificial intelligence has changed things. Read more about the power of AI.
AI in the story
Somewhere between Eliza in 1960 and Alexa in 2015 the chatbots had become capable enough to take on the hard job of handling customers. As of 2018 there were around 300,000 business bots active on facebook messenger. These are AI based conversational agents that can stimulate textual or even aural speech acts. The more data you feed into them the more capable they become of engaging a customer and answering the trickiest of questions.
Apart from the chatbots AI is also used for making personalized product suggestions to the customers. This involves a thorough analysis of the customers buying and browsing (on that particular e-commerce site) history. And all of this happens without human intervention.
The pros and the cons
The cost effectiveness of using AI in the Ecommerce sector is quite obvious. A company uses one chatting robot to replace maybe a thousand human operators. It has taken a lot of time and research to happen but it is happening.
A lockdown is in place but most e-commerce sites are carrying on with business despite the labourer shortage thanks to AI.
However, I would not join a call centre at this point. So there you have both an advantage and a disadvantage. But what you must not fail to see is the opportunity created in the field of AI. The applications are ever increasing and the demand for skilled AI developers is on a rise. India is in some kind of a hurry to implement AI integration. This is the time for you to enrol in an artificial intelligence institute in India and get ready for the present.
