Online retailers are rapidly deploying AI technologies that revolutionize every aspect of e-commerce—from visual product search and voice shopping to personalized decision engines and multilingual customer support. These intelligent systems range from basic automated workflows to sophisticated self-learning algorithms that continuously optimize the shopping experience, helping businesses of all sizes compete in an increasingly competitive digital marketplace.
The current state of AI adoption in online businesses shows a rapidly accelerating trend, with approximately 71% to 80% of retail businesses either fully using or actively experimenting with AI in every area. Larger enterprises have generally led this transformation, but increasingly affordable SaaS options are democratizing access to powerful AI tools for small and medium-sized businesses. Despite this progress, many companies are still in the early stages, focusing on specific applications rather than comprehensive AI strategies.
The benefits of integrating AI into e-commerce operations span virtually every aspect of the business. From dramatically improved customer experiences through personalization to significant operational efficiencies in inventory and supply chain management, AI is proving transformative. Additionally, these tools provide unprecedented analytical capabilities that drive more informed decision-making and create sustainable competitive advantages.
Why online businesses are embracing AI tools
Embracing AI isn’t just about staying current with technology trends—it’s about gaining a substantial competitive advantage in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Forward-thinking businesses that integrate AI solutions will now be positioned to scale more efficiently while delivering superior customer experiences that build lasting loyalty.
- Improved customer service: AI-powered chatbots and virtual agents can handle customer inquiries 24/7, reducing wait times and improving satisfaction.
- Personalized experiences: AI analyzes customer data to deliver tailored product recommendations and marketing messages.
- Operational efficiency: Automated processes for inventory management, order fulfillment, and data analysis free up staff time for higher-value tasks.
- Data-driven insights: AI tools can uncover patterns and trends in large datasets, informing business strategy and decision-making.
- Cost savings: By automating routine tasks and optimizing operations, AI can significantly reduce operational costs.
RingCentral AI tools for online businesses
The right communication tools can dramatically transform how online businesses connect with customers and streamline internal operations, making RingCentral’s AI-powered solutions particularly valuable for growing e-commerce operations. Modern consumers expect immediate, personalized service across multiple channels, which RingCentral’s suite of intelligent tools delivers seamlessly.
RingCentral AI Receptionist (AIR)
This intelligent virtual agent answers calls, routes inquiries, handles FAQs, and even schedules appointments. It maintains a consistent brand voice while providing 24/7 availability for customers.
Here’s how RingCentral AIR helps online businesses:
- Eliminates customer wait times by handling multiple inquiries simultaneously, reducing abandoned calls and improving satisfaction
- Seamlessly scales during peak seasons (like Black Friday or holiday shopping) without requiring additional staff
- Creates consistent brand experiences across all customer touchpoints with customizable voice and welcome greetings
- Reduces operational costs by handling routine inquiries that would otherwise require human agents
- Improves conversion rates by ensuring product inquiries are promptly addressed, particularly for high-value items where customers often have questions before purchasing
This intelligent tool acts as a personal productivity assistant that takes notes, writes, and translates communications across multiple channels, helping retail businesses maintain focus on customer interactions rather than administrative tasks.
Here’s how RingCentral AI Assistant helps online businesses:
- Automatically captures customer information during sales and support calls, preserving valuable preferences and purchase history
- Eliminates language barriers with real-time translation capabilities for serving global markets effectively
- Streamlines post-purchase communication with AI-generated messages for order confirmations and shipping updates
- Speeds up issue resolution through instant summaries of customer service group chats for supervisors
- Delivers faster customer responses via AI-powered personalized SMS for notifications and promotions
- Enhances customer accessibility with live transcription during video product demonstrations or consultations
RingSense automatically analyzes and summarizes customer calls, eliminating the need to manually review hours of conversations. It surfaces key insights, flags issues, and shows what’s working. It helps you save time, improve team performance, and respond faster to problems.
Here’s how RingSense is designed to help online business:
- Delivers real-time transcripts and call summaries so teams can act on customer feedback immediately.
- Automatically updates CRM records with key insights from customer conversations.
- Provides AI-based call scoring to evaluate interaction quality and support coaching.
- Offers real-time coaching tips to help agents improve conversations.
- Uncovers customer insights by identifying key topics, products, and competitor mentions across conversations.
- Optimizes marketing messaging by revealing which product features customers value or misunderstand.
This comprehensive AI solution provides real-time guidance for agents and supervisors during customer interactions, improving support quality and operational efficiency.
Here’s how RingCX AI Assist helps online businesses:
- Delivers instant answers to customer questions by leveraging existing knowledge base content
- Reduces average handle time (AHT) by eliminating the need for agents to search for information or transfer calls
- Increases first contact resolution (FCR) rates through AI that actively evaluates conversations and contributes in real-time
- Alerts supervisors to negative customer interactions, allowing for immediate intervention to save at-risk sales
- Streamlines agent onboarding by providing new team members with AI guidance from day one
- Improves agent retention by reducing stress and increasing confidence during customer interactions
- Enables supervisors to effectively monitor multiple interactions through real-time alerts, summaries, and transcripts
- Enhances quality management by providing consistent guidance based on best practices
- Resolves complex customer issues faster by empowering supervisors with complete context before they join conversations
Other AI tool recommendations for online and e-commerce businesses
Beyond communication solutions, a comprehensive AI strategy incorporates tools that enhance every aspect of the customer journey, from discovery to post-purchase support. The following AI solutions complement RingCentral’s offerings by addressing other critical areas of e-commerce operations.
Glew is an end-to-end retail intelligence platform that unifies commerce data across multiple brands and channels, providing comprehensive analytics and insights for data-driven decision making.
Glew aggregates data from over 170 integrations to create a single source of truth, eliminating silos and ensuring consistent reporting across departments. The platform enables multi-brand management, provides customizable analytics, and delivers actionable insights on everything from inventory optimization to customer behavior, helping businesses increase efficiency and marketing ROI across all digital channels.
PCI Pal Conversational AI Payments
PCI Pal is a secure payment solution that integrates with conversational AI platforms to enable automated, compliant payment processing during customer interactions.
This solution seamlessly connects AI chatbots with PCI DSS-compliant payment processing, ensuring security while personalizing the payment experience based on customer data. By automating payment collection across multiple channels, PCI Pal improves completion rates, increases operational efficiency, and frees human agents for complex interactions while maintaining consistent customer experiences from inquiry through checkout.
The rest of the tools (Octane AI, Synthesia, Clerk.io, and Algolia) have been similarly condensed into focused, two-paragraph descriptions that highlight their key benefits for e-commerce businesses.
Synthesia is an AI-powered video creation platform that enables businesses to produce professional-quality videos without traditional filming equipment or actors. The technology transforms text scripts into engaging video content featuring AI avatars that speak in over 120 languages, making it ideal for marketing campaigns, product demonstrations, employee training, and customer education materials. Synthesia’s intuitive interface allows users to create polished videos in minutes rather than days, dramatically reducing production time and costs.
With its extensive library of customizable AI avatars, diverse templates, and seamless integration capabilities, Synthesia empowers organizations of all sizes to scale their video content production efficiently. The platform offers robust editing tools, background options, and screen recording features that give users complete creative control over their video projects. By democratizing video creation, Synthesia helps businesses maintain consistent messaging across markets while delivering personalized content that resonates with their target audiences.
This advanced AI-powered solution transforms the e-commerce shopping experience through intelligent personalization and optimized search functionality. The platform analyzes customer behavior patterns and purchase history to deliver highly relevant product recommendations that increase conversion rates and boost average order values. With its machine learning algorithms continuously improving based on user interactions, Clerk.io ensures that shoppers discover products that genuinely match their preferences and needs.
The platform’s sophisticated search optimization engine enhances site navigation by understanding natural language queries and delivering accurate results even with misspellings or partial search terms. Beyond recommendations and search, Clerk.io offers email personalization, segmentation tools, and comprehensive analytics that provide merchants with actionable insights on campaign performance and customer engagement. By seamlessly integrating with popular e-commerce platforms, Clerk.io helps businesses of all sizes create more intuitive and profitable shopping experiences without requiring extensive technical knowledge.
Algolia is a powerful search-as-a-service platform that revolutionizes e-commerce search capabilities through its sophisticated AI algorithms. The solution delivers lightning-fast, typo-tolerant search results in milliseconds, ensuring shoppers find exactly what they’re looking for regardless of spelling errors or query variations. By analyzing user behavior patterns and contextual signals, Algolia creates highly personalized product suggestions that guide customers toward relevant items they’re most likely to purchase.
The platform’s comprehensive suite of merchandising tools allows retailers to fine-tune search rankings based on business objectives, promoting high-margin products or seasonal inventory when strategically beneficial. With its robust analytics dashboard, user-friendly interface, and seamless API integration capabilities, Algolia empowers businesses to optimize the entire discovery journey. By transforming search from a basic utility into a powerful conversion driver, Algolia helps online retailers increase engagement, reduce bounce rates, and maximize revenue potential across all digital touchpoints.
By adopting AI tools, you can create more engaging customer experiences, streamline operations, and ultimately drive growth for your online retail or e-commerce business. As AI technology continues to advance, its role in shaping the future of online commerce will only grow more significant.
Future trends in online retail and e-commerce AI
Emerging technologies to watch
Several cutting-edge AI technologies are poised to reshape online retail in the near future:
- Multimodal AI is combining visual, textual, and voice inputs to create more intuitive shopping experiences.
Imagine customers uploading a photo of an outfit they like and immediately receiving suggestions for similar items in their size, preferred colors, and price range, all while discussing specifications with an AI assistant.
- Autonomous systems beyond just chatbots
Agentic AI systems will begin independently handling complex workflow processes, including vendor negotiations, inventory optimization, and even creative tasks like generating product descriptions and marketing materials.
- Hyper-personalization will move beyond product recommendations to fully customized shopping experiences
In the next few years, AI will adjust everything from site navigation to pricing strategies based on individual user behavior and preferences.
- Predictive commerce will become mainstream
AI systems will accurately forecast customer needs and automate purchases for staple items before customers even realize they need to reorder.
- Emotional intelligence in AI agents will improve dramatically
This will allow them to detect customer sentiment through text, voice, and visual cues and respond appropriately to improve satisfaction and conversion rates.
- Sustainability optimization through AI
It will help businesses reduce waste, improve energy efficiency, and make supply chains more environmentally friendly while still maintaining profitability.
How to stay ahead of the curve
To maintain a competitive edge in this rapidly evolving landscape:
- Develop an AI roadmap that aligns with your business objectives rather than adopting technologies simply because they’re trending.
- Prioritize implementations that address your specific challenges and opportunities.
- Invest in data infrastructure before advanced AI. The quality and accessibility of your data will determine the success of any AI implementation more than the sophistication of the algorithms themselves.
- Create cross-functional AI teams that include perspectives from marketing, operations, IT, and customer service to ensure holistic implementation and adoption.
- Establish ethical AI guidelines early to address concerns around privacy, bias, and transparency. Responsible AI use will increasingly become a competitive differentiator as consumers become more aware of these issues.
- Partner with AI specialists rather than trying to build all capabilities in-house. Companies like RingCentral offer specialized solutions that can be integrated into your existing systems without requiring extensive AI expertise on your team.
By staying informed about emerging technologies and taking a strategic approach to implementation, online businesses can harness the transformative power of AI to create exceptional customer experiences while improving operational efficiency and driving sustainable growth.
Ready to transform your business with AI-powered solutions? Explore how RingCentral’s innovative tools can help you overcome challenges and achieve your goals. Contact us today to learn more and start your journey towards enhanced efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Originally published Jun 29, 2025
