The arrival of artificial intelligence has allowed companies to take the digitalization of their customer service one step further. According to data from Salesforce, 79% of e-commerce businesses in Spain are already using this technology in 2024.
According to Wehumans, the digital humans solution developed by Abai, the increasing market demand and the advancement of new technologies have driven the evolution from traditional chatbots to more sophisticated artificial intelligence agents capable of maintaining conversations with a level of human interaction. In this context, 70% of e-commerce businesses, according to Statista, already recognize the positive impact of digital humans in customer service.
The areas of e-commerce where artificial intelligence can generate the greatest impact include personalization (70%), website search (54%), marketing (43%), customer service (34%), and sales (28%). This shift reflects how technology is transforming the user experience and optimizing key processes in the sector.
So much so that the impact of AI is becoming evident during peak online sales seasons, such as Black Friday and the Christmas campaign. In this regard, over 17% of all Christmas orders placed in November and December 2023 were influenced by AI, as analyzed by Salesforce, resulting in sales worth a total of $199 billion driven by AI. Furthermore, during Cyber Week of the same year, online sales influenced by AI reached $51 billion.
The retail sector drives the growth of the digital humans market
Among the sectors applying artificial intelligence, retail stands out for its growth potential. Specifically, as analyzed by McKinsey, the retail sector could gain a boost of $310 billion by automating various aspects of customer service, marketing, sales, and supply chain management with generative AI.
Thus, in the context of a frenzied digital transformation, the next step in the evolution of AI solutions for the retail sector involves enhancing personalized offers to customers and optimizing marketing and sales. Among these solutions, digital humans (AI avatars) stand out, with their market experiencing growth from $21.50 billion in 2023 to forecasts of about $454.75 billion in 2031.
Specifically, one of the main drivers of this expansion is retail and e-commerce, which leads the implementation of this technology (26.22%) ahead of other segments such as entertainment, education, and automotive, according to a study by Kings Research.
Digital humans transform the customer experience
In this context, Wehumans has developed specialized avatars for e-commerce and retail with the aim of transforming the sales process into intelligent solutions that help brands achieve their business objectives through the best end-user experience. Digital humans are powered by generative AI technologies that combine the best features of Large Language Models (LLMs) to achieve multimodal data processing and effective interaction with the avatar. Thanks to this technology, digital humans offer personalized product recommendations based on user data, perform smart filtering of products by colors, names, or prices, assist in selecting sizes and other variants, process orders and payments within the widget, manage the shopping cart and checkout, provide information about shipping and returns, and perform post-sale follow-up.
“We create digital humans to reinvent the user experience by ensuring personalized service 24/7, increasing the average order value and generating more trust by allowing users to ‘virtually try on’ products before purchase,” says Carlo Villegas, head of the Wehumans business unit. “One of our flagship projects is the clone of the legendary footballer Mágico González that we have designed for Cádiz CF. This avatar is capable of answering Cádiz fans’ questions related to subscription management or the match schedules and selling club products, such as jerseys.”