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How to Use Conversational Commerce in Your Business

January 30, 2017 No Comments

Featured article by Brian Heikes, Vice President of Product Management at 3Cinteractive

Shopping online is easily one of the most popular methods of buying products today. In fact, about 70 percent of U.S. adults shop online monthly according to Mintel. But even with personalized content recommendations, personal shoppers, and a host of other technological improvements, online shopping can still feel very impersonal.  Many millennial customers value the experience as much as they do the price, and brands that are focused on the experience have found a new tools that help them create a personal relationship with their customers at scale.

Enter conversational commerce and the era of the chatbot. A new breed of customer interaction that allows brands to connect with their customers on a personal level while creating a more natural interaction that mimics the physical world. Although still relatively new to the scene, this technology is bringing businesses and consumers closer together by bridging the communication gap between a brand and its customers.

Defining Conversational Commerce

The term sounds quite complex but it is actually a fairly simple concept. Conversational commerce enables transactions to occur between brands and customers via messaging interfaces like SMS or through WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other mobile messaging platforms. Think of it as a conversation with the butcher at your local meat counter. In the bricks and mortar environment, you stand on opposite sides of the counter and chat about what you want.  When you are done, he cuts your meat and hands it to you.  When you add technology to the mix, the same thing occurs, however instead of chatting across the counter, you are chatting across text messages.

The challenge is doing this at scale.  It’s easy to serve one or two people at a time, just like the traditional butcher does.  However, when you want to scale that to hundreds or thousands who want to browse and order, you need to leverage the benefits that technology bring to the table.  Chatbots, or bots, and artificial intelligence (AI) software is used to tailor the conversation toward each individual customer’s needs. This can be based on historical data patterns for the user, preferences they’ve expressed, recommendations the brand has, or any number of other criteria. With the proper design, the result of using these chatbots is a customized experience that improves the customer’s experience and eases customer service options for the company. Chatbots allow brands to respond more quickly to customers while reducing their spending on customer service associates.

How Chatbots can Reinforce your Brand’s Strategy

Chatbots are changing the way brands communicate with their customers and this trend is catching like wildfire. Increased customer satisfaction, reduced costs to scale, and improved ability to engage customers across mediums (from social media, websites and apps to messaging) are just a few of the reasons that this technology is being adopted globally. The WeChat platform in China has stood out for a number of years as a leader in enabling businesses to engage with customers in this fashion.  Now the rest of the world is catching up. Popular brands are starting to implement conversational commerce into their marketing and customer service strategies.

This is in part because the experiences are now more robust than was possible a few years ago.  SMS and MMS were limited in what they could communicate.  But times and technology have changed and new opportunities have emerged.  Facebook, Kik, WhatsApp and others have now enabled users to interact with businesses on their platforms.  This is known as Application to Person (A2P) messaging. Companies have deployed chatbots which can assist customers with tasks such as simple questions about a brand or product, scheduling appointments and even making payments for products and services.

Starbucks, who has been an innovator in mobile commerce, has shared its plans on joining the conversational commerce revolution. In early 2017, Starbucks is planning on rolling out a new feature for its mobile app. My Starbucks Barista will be an AI-enabled conversational ordering feature that will allow customers to place orders by voice command or messaging. This will complement their existing interface where you have to browse through menus to select the coffee you want to buy.  The expectation is that it’ll be easier to tell your phone you want a “Grande Non-Fat No Whip Iced Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha” than it is to pick all those options from menus covering the infinite choices available to you. The coffee and beverage brands hope that this new feature “will improve ordering efficiency and encourage stronger customer loyalty and engagement” according to Retail DIVE.

Should Your Business Utilize Chatbots?

While chatbots are revolutionizing the way brands engage with shoppers, this technology may not be right for every business. Here’s the thing with chatbots, they are a relatively new technology when it comes to the marketplace. Like any new technology, most consumers have never interacted with a bots and therefore may be hesitant when it comes time to engage with one. But the more chatbots engage with customers, the more accurate and efficient they will become, improving customer’s overall shopping experience.

Customers across all age groups are now utilizing technology such as SMS messaging to connect with brands. And while over 50% of consumers are interested in interacting with businesses via messaging, only about 25% currently do so. Whether it be text messaging, Facebook Messenger, or some other messaging app, consumers have become comfortable having electronic conversations with a business. In addition to being confident enough with current technology, shoppers are now looking to solve their own problems through self-tutorials and FAQ pages.  With that in mind, think about how a chatbot could assist both you and your customers.

If you are looking for a way to start using bots to interact with your customers, an easy entry point may be through automating some of your routine customer service queries.  Take the frequently asked questions that your customers commonly ask, and set up a bot to handle those.  This will give you a feel for what your customers’ reactions will be before you invest in building more complex tasks that require the development of new software.

Conversational commerce with the help of AI just might be the future of customer interaction. Soon more consumers will be turning to their mobile devices to ask questions or buy goods as opposed to seeking out a sales associate. With proper planning, some integrations into their existing systems, and a little help from technology, brands can delight their customers and increase their sales, just chatting with them.

Communicating through technology is the future.

About The Author: Brian Heikes is Vice President of Product at 3Cinteractive. Through mobile marketing services, 3C deepens and extends the connection between customers and brands, driving increased loyalty, brand awareness, and results. Leveraging 3C’s expertise connecting mobile to business results and its Switchblade™ platform’s multichannel capabilities—including SMS and MMS messaging, mobile coupons, mobile wallet, mobile web, location based services and more—marketers can deliver timely, relevant engagement at the customers’ moment of need. For more information please visit www.3c.com.

 

 

 

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