Conversational Commerce: Types, Importance, Ways to Integrate

Types of Conversational Commerce

What are the Different Types of Conversational Commerce?

Conversational commerce gives eCommerce the chance to connect with customers along every step of the way for the customer journey. The customer journey map can be easily divided into five stages which are awareness, advocacy, loyalty, retention, decision and consideration. In this article, we will take a closer look at the different types of conversational commerce.

Now, let us take a look at the different types of Conversational Commerce

There are four types of conversational commerce which are live chat, chatbots, messaging apps and voice assistants. Here is a brief look at the various types of conversational commerce:

  • Live Chat – Route Mobile

    Live Chat

    It is one of the most popular communication channels that lets customers easily let the customers know the answers immediately from the retailer’s website. One of its biggest advantages of this platform over phone or email is that it helps in enabling an agent to chat one, two or three customers at a time and because of this brands can significantly reduce the wait time by boosting the satisfaction of the customers in reducing the wait time and boosting the satisfaction of the customers.

  • Chatbot – Route Mobile

    Chatbot

    With a chatbot, businesses can chat with multiple users at the same time by providing information within seconds around the clock. By implementing them on the websites and messaging platforms, it helps in delivering a conversational experience at different stages of the customer’s journey through different channels at particular stages.

  • Messaging Apps – Route Mobile

    Messaging Apps

    Messaging apps such as Messenger or WhatsApp are fantastic as it can help you in exchanging instant messages, by eagerly using them because of private communication. It is possible to contact brands or for online shopping, the apps will also have different social media networks with more than 20% more users across social media platforms.

  • Voice Assistants – Route Mobile

    Voice Assistants

    A type of software gets activated through voice commands that can answer the questions of the users and there are various voice assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana and Siri which are becoming a much more popular feature especially in various electronic devices. Voice assistants have encouraged brands to use them particularly in marketing and customer service strategies as they can offer fast answers or direct searches to your website to help improve your brand awareness.

Benefits of Conversational Commerce

Conversational commerce will help recreate the experience that your customers would get in a typical retail store. It is possible to achieve your business goals faster and also gain further benefits through conversational commerce such as:

  • Reduced cart abandonment
  • It is important to reduce the overall cart abandonment rate to drive conversions and generate greater revenue for your business.

  • Helps closing in potential customers
  • Gathering collective feedback from clients
  • Building cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
  • Building overall customer loyalty
  • Also Read: Conversational Commerce: Everything You Need To Know

Why is conversational commerce so important

Embracing tools such as live chat and chatbots becomes a vital priority for ecommerce brands as conversational commerce always provides a massive competitive advantage. Here are a few reasons why we can employ conversational commerce and achieve success for your business:

  • Being available to your customers at all times

    Ecommerce brands are constantly selling to their customers across borders and time zones, and with messengers and bots you can connect with customers who have been shopping around the clock.

    Ecommerce brands are constantly selling to their customers across borders and time zones, and with messengers and bots you can connect with customers who have been shopping around the clock.Customers can disengage easily when brands do not respond to them within a short, specified amount of time.

    Conversational commerce can help empower you to provide 24/7 support and once you have mastered your brand identity and voice, you will have an idea of the right tools to successfully engage with customers.

  • Streamlining the entire customer experience

    When the customer has a particular question or concern it is important to help them out in real time with bots, responses and real-time messengers. The biggest result would be content and satisfied customers, who no longer would need long emails, calls thereby improving the customer experience by leaps and bounds.

Automating your business significantly

Conversational commerce helps put some tedious and time-consuming elements of your entire business on autopilot which includes:

  • Answering basic questions regarding specific policies
  • Providing certain updates that would need an email otherwise
  • Gathering customer information for products such as issues, complaints and feedback

You will ultimately have more time to talk to customers who will need your attention otherwise. In the next section, let us take a closer look at understanding the different ways to integrate conversational commerce into marketing activities.

Ways to integrate conversational commerce into your marketing

Here are some basic strategies that both big and small businesses can incorporate into integrating conversational commerce with their marketing:

1. Incorporating live chat on the website

There are numerous digital marketing tools that can help you connect with customers in real time which includes:

The best types of tools are fantastic as they can help you automatically integrate with your specific CRM of choice, especially in terms of pulling directly from the customer data. It will give you a greater comprehensive view of the customer’s relationship as you can also provide the best support possible.

2. Rolling out your very own chatbots

It is important to build customer service chatbots which requires you to be a tech wizard and it is possible to build out conversations and queries, and cover frequently asked questions. With just a few Twitter DMs or Messenger Chats it is possible to build out conversations and queries which help you with frequently asked questions that can inject the brand’s voice into responses.

Stepping up on the social media services and listening aspects

As social media becomes more central to conversational commerce, then more people flock to Twitter or Facebook and have additional questions for all the merchants. Stepping up your social customer care is mandatory and there are some actions that we can follow to get the right kind of results:

  • Recommending certain specific products to customers instead of providing generic advice Helping resolve questions that could result in a churn out of customers, such as coupon failure and shipping issues

  • Engaging with mentions with the sake of retention along with brand loyalty such as shout-outs and call-outs

  • Having the right kind of social customer care is helpful in personalizing responses for customers along with actionable advice along with a human-like tone

Use Cases of Conversational Commerce

There are many companies across the world that are leveraging conversational experiences in leveling up the commerce game. It is possible for the early adopters of conversational commerce in starting a text-to-shop service that helps in delivering product requests from various customers and helping in fulfilling the requests to customers.

Let us take a look at the various examples of how conversational commerce is revolutionizing e-commerce:

  • Facebook

    With messenger releasing its SDK in April 2016, the app helped carry out official communications with customers with more than 58% of people who feel confident in interacting with a business over messages as compared to other forms of communication.

    As the ads are displayed along with the messenger inbox, businesses will be able to send out sponsored messages to customers along with click-to-messenger ads that can help redirect users to the desired platforms. With Facebook Messenger for business it has become possible to automate all the user interactions with increased accuracy.

  • Amazon

    Amazon’s Echo is a phenomenal use case which acts as a voice recognition-based device that helps Capital One’s customers in successfully carrying out their banking transactions, accessing balance details along with bank statements from a set of voice commands.

  • WeChat

    WeChat has expanded into various segments by taking e-commerce to the next level by allowing users the chance to carry out banking transactions such as ordering food, taxis, clothing, entertainment and travel bookings.

How conversational commerce is driving user experience

As conversational commerce is helping to blur the lines between personal, consumer and business conversations messaging platforms have become increasingly popular in terms of enhancing the accessibility of the product along with scalability of the services.

Businesses can help reduce the number of steps that are involved in converting potential customers into a buying customer. It helps to eliminate the need for consumers by toggling between websites and messaging apps, hence simplifying the entire process of purchasing.

As AI-based chatbots are available 24/7, customers can actually benefit from seamless access to customer support with instant and accurate resolutions to queries through greatly personalized services. There are many big platform investments that would be integral in terms of accelerating the entire growth of conversational commerce by making the entire e-commerce process more customer-centric.

Ready for the future of conversational commerce?

As brands are constantly rethinking their image, they are on the lookout for different ways to successfully engage with their customers. By communicating in real-time with bots and messengers it becomes easier to serve different shoppers regardless of where they are coming from.

In terms of real-time communications with bots and messengers, it has become better for shoppers to serve regardless of wherever they are coming from. It has become crucial for the social strategy to go hand in hand with different aspects of conversational commerce by learning about the target audience and their respective needs.

To gain an understanding of how well conversational commerce works check out Route Mobile’s Payment as a Service solution, that can help you gain the necessary benefits for your business.