Five9 Shopping Cart Rescue Tackles an $18 Billion Leak in the E-commerce Experience

The tribe has spoken. Add to cart.    

These seven words became a mantra of sorts during my long, locked-down days of 2020. Some people made sourdough and danced on TikTok; I watched old episodes of Survivor while window shopping online. This pastime led to some random but satisfying purchases, my favorite being a fold-up mini trampoline (perfect for any New York City apartment). But I also left a great deal of the merchandise in online carts--stranded and forgotten, like an early 2000s reality-show contestant on an island in the South Pacific.   

I’m certainly not alone. Though online retail sales increased 32% from 2019 to 2020, shopping cart abandonment also became more prevalent during the pandemic. One study found an abandonment rate of 95.5% in 2020--up from 85.1% the previous year. Recent research has also shown that about $18 billion is lost to cart abandonment every year.   

Customers wander away from their carts for various reasons, including cumbersome check-out processes, unexpected shipping costs or extra fees. Many shoppers also have a specific last question that holds them back (“What is the return policy?” or “Can I ensure that the package will arrive on time?”).   

So, what if retailers could have more insight into their customers’ online buying journeys, proactively reach out to shoppers who have left items in their carts, and address concerns with a personalized approach? They could offer a discount or inform the customer when an item goes on sale. Or they could wave an expedited shipping fee and share helpful information to close the sale. Five9 has made this type of engagement possible. We call it Shopping Cart Rescue, and we are providing it in collaboration with Five9 ISV partner Lucency, a platform that transfers contextual customer website data to the contact center.  

Lucency monitors online shopping carts in real time and can trigger a potential “rescue” based on business rules (for example, the value of items in the cart or the length of time a high-end cart sits idle). To enable the rescue, Lucency sends an alert to the Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center along with contextual data about the customer and their shopping cart. A contact center agent can then provide educated assistance to the shopper via inbound voice, web chat,  or a scheduled call back.   

Unlike similar solutions, Shopping Cart Rescue combines seamless contact center integration with real-time omnichannel engagement, facilitated by API connections between the retailer’s website, the shopping cart rescue tool, and Five9.  

You can find out about how Five9 and Lucency are helping businesses eliminate expensive leaks in the final stage of the e-commerce sales journey at our Oct. 28 webinar: Shopping Cart Rescue and the Contact Center: How to solve E-Commerce's #1 problem. This is a must-attend event for any business with an e-commerce shopping cart.   

Register here, and we’ll show you how to help more of your e-commerce sales survive beyond “Add to Cart.”