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Black Friday is an epic event around the world: people look forward to the pre-Christmas season of promotions and discounts, and companies are getting ready to sell more. With consumption skyrocketing, physical and online stores are struggling to cope with high demand and attract customers in the middle of fierce competition.
Related article: Black Friday 2021: tactics and strategies to be a true sales champion
Trends 2021: early holiday shopping and increased online sales
In 2020, Black Friday and Cyber Monday broke records for online sales. And despite some physical stores opening up, 2021 doesn't look to be much different. According to a survey by Publicis Sapient, 74% of consumers plan to shop online this year.
On the other hand, based on a survey by the site Black Friday, 52% of consumers said they’re likely to take advantage of promotions and discounts on this date (either in-store or online). Plus, online shopping on Cyber Monday is expected to increase by 61% this year.
66% of shoppers are anticipating delays in their products shipping this year, so they plan to get their holiday shopping done as soon as possible. This will have an impact on when purchases are done, with Black Friday weekend and Cyber Monday looking to be a busy time for online sales.
This trend has been setting in since 2020: according to a Salesforce report, between the last week of November and the end of the year, worldwide retail sales were $1.1 trillion, 30% of annual turnover.
How do these numbers affect companies?
One obvious upshot of these big dates is more traffic to retailers' websites. Online sales grow in a matter of days, and so do customer inquiries and complaints. If agents and salespeople don’t have the right tools to manage the situation, they may get frustrated and even lose some customers along the way.
It’s important to be ready beforehand, because increased traffic during the holiday season isn’t going away. According to Forbes magazine, online shopping will continue to grow in Latin America, and by 2024, the number of people buying products and services over the Internet is projected to increase by 31%, reaching close to 351 million users throughout the region.
Related article: Black Friday: How to Offer Better Experiences and Sell More
How do you prepare your business for this season?
Aivo's client service solutions will let you make the most of high demand. Based on Aivo data, AgentBot has helped many companies with their online sales.
For example: General Motors was innovative in the auto industry by implementing Aivo's conversational bot. How? With Chevy, the virtual assistant that let them optimize customer service, increase sales and respond to all prospects accurately and in real time.
Meanwhile, TAG Livros, a book club company in Brazil, has already experienced something similar to the Black Friday crush during its anniversary month. Automating customer service helped it achieve an 80% retention rate on nearly 9,000 conversations.
There’s a good reason for this: AgentBot's features are really great for streamlining communication with customers:
- Automatic response: instant, fast, and efficient customer service. AgentBot will answer FAQs in much less time than a human agent and reduce customer service time and costs.
- High availability: it doesn’t matter when you get a query, our conversational AI chatbot will solve it anytime, 24/7.
- Omni-channel experience: you can connect AgentBot to a web window or mobile messaging apps. The bot automatically adapts to each digital channel and offers the same quality service.
- Empathy: you really need a close relationship with the customer to create a lasting connection. Long-term memory, recognizing regionalisms and emojis, and understanding natural language make AgentBot an expert in fluent conversations.
"The virtual assistants that companies incorporate into their customer service department must be distinguished by friendly and personalized treatment, just as if they were human teams," says Martín Frascaroli, CEO & Founder of Aivo.
Is your company ready for Black Friday? Our Marketplace is.
With Marketplace, you can access content packages that will help answer your customer queries right away. They’re specially designed to enrich your virtual assistant's personality and add questions for special events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. They already include ways to ask questions, so you just need to focus on creating amazing answers.
If you already have AgentBot, you can import them from the platform. If you don't have it yet, get started today! Contact one of our representatives and boost your Black Friday sales.
