What Is Conversational Commerce And How Does It Influence Customers?

Conversational commerce is a new form of ecommerce marketing that involves brands and consumers directly communicating with each other through online chat channels.

It typically uses conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, such as chatbots, to drive sales and increase customer lifetime value. But some brands also recruit agents to add a more personal touch to their communications and deliver a high-end customer experience (CX).

This interactive approach aims to bring a human touch to the world of e-commerce. It’s similar to having a trained sales rep behind the desk in a brick-and-mortar store, but everything happens online.

This technology may be used to respond to customer inquiries, facilitate transactions, or provide information about your products and services. It’s a key way for consumers to quickly and easily find what they need.

What Are The Benefits Of Conversational Commerce?

Conversational commerce provides brands with a powerful tool to communicate personally and online with their customers. This can increase satisfaction and increase the chances of making a sale. Below, we describe its main benefits:

1) Conversational Commerce Drives More Sales

Because each conversation is personalized to fit the customer, conversational marketing is optimized for sales.

Approaching consumers are about to buy something, so it’s essential that brands give the final push they need to convert them into trusted customers. This is definitely an area worth investing in.

A recent Forrester study conducted for Google found that 68% of shoppers prefer to choose brands that offer online tools like WebChat.

Data from Facebook also shows that 83% of consumers message a business for product information, while 75% use chat commerce to make a purchase or reservation. Therefore, brands need a presence in this digital channel to capture these types of leads and sales.

2) Improve The Consumer Experience

The Forrester study also mentioned indicated that consumers, particularly younger ones, want to send messages to companies. This is largely due to the speed and accessibility that chatbots provide.

This convenience, coupled with the ability to personalize, means that conversational marketing can enhance the experience for shoppers.

Of consumers who have purchased a product through chatbots, 81% said they would do so again. Therefore, making conversational commerce channels part of a company’s omnichannel approach will improve customer satisfaction.

3) Brands Can Scale At Lower Cost

The cost of implementing conversational commerce strategies will vary depending on whether you need a custom bot or an out-of-the-box solution. The number of agents required to manage these channels also affects costs.

But once a system is in place, the company will provide reliable support to shoppers and drive sales, even as the brand expands into new markets and inbound messaging grows. Chat tools can be expanded with minimal investment.

4) Increased Engagement And Interaction

Because conversational trading tools provide real-time interactions, they are very attractive. And there is research to prove it.

A Reckless study claims that push notifications have a 20% open rate across all industries. However, that same study shows that in-app messages have a massive open rate of 75%.

All of this makes the two-way communication provided by conversational commerce highly impactful.

5) Collecting Valuable Feedback

Chatting with customers is the best way to collect insightful feedback and qualitative data for your business, as web surveys don’t get the same level of detail. However, conducting market research interviews can be very expensive, but conversational tools like chatbots offer a cheaper alternative.

Facebook Messenger, for example, can contact followers based on past interactions with content. This is a great way to submit specific feedback questions. Furthermore, the potential for conducting one-on-one interviews will only improve as AI and machine learning (ML) improve.

In conclusion, in recent years, live chat has consistently been chosen as people’s preferred customer support channel. And as consumers become more accustomed to technology and its capabilities grow, there are no limits when it comes to conversational marketing and sales.