Botnation, a French platform for scalable chatbots, conducted a survey of 3,859 people to determine the types of e-commerce where users would like to have the support of a chatbot to guide them in their purchases. The study shows that the welcome and advice provided by chatbots are important to online shoppers and the use of chatbots is relevant to some e-tailers.

Founded in 2017 by Emmanuel Françoise, Botnation is a chatbot creation platform based on a proprietary AI. The team’s ten employees, split between Paris and Rennes, have developed a freemium, ergonomic and “nocode” offer including free tutorials and templates.

The company already has several hundred customers, including renowned major accounts such as Cdiscount, Enedis, Keolis, Société Générale, Facebook and hundreds of SMEs… In just 5 years, Botnation has generated tens of millions of conversations and billions of messages exchanged.

Botnation.ai makes it easy to create chatbots, without any development knowledge. This multi-channel service allows you to create chatbots for a website, a dedicated landing page, but also to integrate them on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Google Home. The platform also offers the implementation of callbots. Emmanuel Françoise states:

“Users are always making the tools evolve. It is the same for chatbots. With this survey, we see that conversation is important at all moments of the customer journey and perhaps more at the end, when the customer needs to be reassured and to obtain a clearer follow-up of his purchases. Botnation has been established for more than 5 years on the French market of conversational agents and has collaborated with hundreds of companies and organizations.

The observation is simple: the chatbot considerably increases the accessibility of sites and services by answering users and prospects 24/7, but also by identifying new user needs by detecting questions that were not previously considered (questions without answers). It’s a real winning duo with the marketing and customer service teams for the company but most importantly for its users.”

Where is a chatbot useful?

Question 1: What are the three types of sites for which you like or would like to have the support of a Chatbot?

The 3 types of sites where the French want more chatbots:

• 71%: Reservations for accommodation, stays (Airbnb, Booking, etc.)
• 65%: General marketplaces (Amazon, Target, AliExpress, etc.)
• 62%: Fashion, clothing, apparel (Veepee, Vinted, etc.)

Come next:

• 57%: Online ticketing (Ticket Master, Billet Réduc, etc.)
• 52%: Beauty, health, care (Yves Rocher, Sephora, etc.)
• 51%: Furniture & decoration (Ikea, Gifi, etc.)
• 51%: Electronic products and household appliances (Cdiscount, Darty, etc.)
• 42 %: Cultural products (Fnac, Cultura, etc.)
• 28 %: Food & FMCG (E.Leclerc, Carrefour, Auchan, etc.)
• 22%: Games and Toys (Oxybul, JoueClub, etc.)
• 3%: Other

When do the French want chatbots’ help?

While the French need automated support, they don’t want it at any time. In fact, 27% of respondents prefer to use a chatbot at the end of their shopping experience to get more information and insight into the delivery of their product and how to receive it.

Second question: When would you like to have the most support with a chatbot?

• 27 % : At the end of my purchases for delivery and reception arrangements
• 27 % : For my technical problems, after sales service, etc.
• 25%: For information on selected products
• 24% : During the entire customer journey
• 13% : At the time of payment
• 5% : At the very beginning of my research
• 3%: To discuss new offers, changes, etc.
• 1%: I don’t know
• 1%: Other

The French are in favour of chatbots

During their research and browsing, 47% of French internet users clearly prefer sites that now offer chatbots, 28% do not give them any importance and 25% are reluctant to use this kind of tool.

For 62% of the French, websites do not yet offer enough tools to communicate and converse with their customers. Conversation is therefore very important and needs to be improved and diversified to meet all needs. 23% consider that there are enough conversational tools, and 15% too many tools.

Translated from Botnation présente les résultats de son enquête sur l’utilité des chatbots aux yeux des Français