Personalization through a proactive live chat in an e-commerce: The case of Byside’s client, a multinational retail company

Retail e-commerce companies currently struggle in managing and optimizing the performance of a proactive live chat software application. It is assumed by companies present in the sector that providing personalized assistance to online visitors brings positive outcomes, however, there is no scientific evidence in this field to prove this assumption. This research aims to bring new insights into the contribution personalization can have regarding the performance of this app. Specifically, it investigates whether increasing personalization on the provided assistance to the online visitor has an impact on the number and value of influenced checkouts. To test the hypothesis that providing more personalized assistance to the online visitor through this application leads to increased sales, the performance results of this app in the Croatian market of a multinational retail client were analyzed. Two five-month periods were observed, one providing nonpersonalized assistance and the other with personalized assistance for online visitors, the results of both periods were analyzed using three independent samples t-tests. The outcomes showed a statistically significant positive effect of the personalized assistance in the application performance results. These results suggest that online visitors who received personalized assistance are more likely to proceed to the checkout funnel and complete the purchase and to perform checkouts with a higher value. On this basis, personalization should be considered when managing or optimizing proactive live chat campaigns in retail e-commerce. The thesis is finalized by outlining its limitations and proposing new avenues of research