E-commerce automation, how to improve online sales with the help of robots?

March 30, 2021 5 min read

One of the sectors that has drawn the happiest accounts in times of pandemic is e-Commerce. The numbers are varied, but according to the consulting firm Kantar Worldpanel, only in Mexico there was an increase in online shopping of 500% during the past year. Furthermore, eMarketer assures in its study “Latin America Ecommerce 2020” that this 2021 virtual buyers in LATAM will reach 38.4% of the regional population over 14 years of age.

An industry that continues to grow and that in this abrupt expansion has had to streamline its processes to reduce the rate of errors. In this way, RPA automation has become a great ally for online commerce. It has happened to many users of sales platforms that their package is lost or that problems occur at the time of payment, for example. Also, well-known are the most recorded price cases that generate confusion. In these cases, robots have come to avoid this type of situation to deliver a better shopping experience.

“One of the main processes that have been automated correspond to compensation for errors in purchases, for problems in the dispatch or for purchases that never arrived. In these cases, the robots are in charge of auditing and delivering a response to the client with a discount or compensation in the event that the company has made a mistake, ”says Rafael Fuentes, co-founder and Commercial Director of Rocketbot.

Although the past 2020 and what lies ahead has been challenging for the sector, eCommerce has had days of high demand for years, such as large online shopping events. On Black Friday and Cyber Monday, problems and confusion are usually reported by users through social networks, tarnishing the results of these dates. For this, the RPA is also aiming to improve these experiences through software robots that work doing stock analysis, product loads, price loads.

In practical terms, how has this technology improved the online shopping process? “Automation has allowed a client to have a response in less time and in the case of filing claims it has been possible to reduce telephone calls from 10 to three minutes, this now allows an executive to attend up to 3 clients in the same period of time. Another gain has to do with the error rates, which have reached a rate of 0%, in addition to having access to information in real time ”, says the co-founder and Commercial Director of Rocketbot.

Implement RPA projects in e-commerce

RPA technology is a tool that can be accessed by any company, of any size, which must review its processes, identify those that are a problem and discover if they are standardized to begin to analyze the feasibility of implementing a RPA project.

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“For an automation project to work, the processes must be standardized. Once you have this information, you must measure how much time per day you consume and how many resources you use or evaluate if the operations generate significant losses for the company. With all this information, a return on investment analysis is carried out and with this the decision to implement the RPA can be made ”, points out Fuentes.

Given the high and growing demand for online shopping, large, medium and small companies can acquire tools that improve the experiences of their users, which today is key to remain in the market. On the other hand, as technology continues to advance, the greater the opportunities for improvement for this service, which should put the happiness of the end customer first.

“The future of automation is going to be associated with buying without having to interact with a website, it is hoped to be able to buy only using voice and that with only that a customer can have total control of their purchases. On the other hand, e-Commerce companies will be able to have everything centralized based on automated processes, both with software robots and physical robots ”, Rafael Fuentes concludes.