What is Conversational Commerce?

Conversational commerce, also known as conversational marketing or chat commerce, is a way for businesses to sell their services and products through conversation.

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For customers, it's a simple and interactive way to shop. For businesses, it's an excellent way to improve the customer experience through conversations, using tools such as:

• Chatbots
• Chat apps
• Messaging
• Voice assistance
• Human representatives

With personalized communication, customers can get the help they need to move through the sales funnel seamlessly. Read on for a complete rundown of conversational commerce and learn how companies like yours can make the most of it.

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How Does Conversational Commerce Work?

Conversational commerce is where shopping and messaging apps connect, enabling  businesses to interact with their audience through services like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, or voice assistant technology like Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant. Through conversational commerce, customers can get support, ask questions, and click to buy entirely within these apps.

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Types of Conversational Commerce

Common types of chat commerce include voice assistants, chatbots, live chat, voice assistance, and messaging apps.

Chatbots and live chat can help with customer inquiries, while voice assistants and messaging apps help answer customer questions. Overall, tools like messaging apps and voice assistants can help connect and direct customers to the right place and person within the business. Here are some examples of chat commerce in action:

• A chatbot that offers a greeting and sometimes a promo code to help visitors simplify their purchases.
• A messaging app that answers customers’ questions.
• A voice assistant that helps customers book or reschedule appointments.
• An automated text message that serves as an appointment reminder or provides updates about an appointment.

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The Benefits of Conversational Commerce

To reap all the benefits of a conversational commerce strategy, brands need to create a comprehensive plan that considers the different types of conversational commerce platforms available. Also, they must consider what their prospective customers might search for on their websites and what could make online shopping effortless.

Since conversational marketing allows brands to meet customers where they are in their purchasing journey, it helps create an experience that is beneficial to both the company and the customer.

Conversational marketing strategies can be used in multiple ways:

Improve customer experience: By offering customers personalized, user-friendly assistance, you can quickly give them what they want and increase customer satisfaction.

Reduce customer service workload on employees: Automating part of your customer service duties can free up more time for employees to concentrate on urgent tasks.

Enhance customer engagement and loyalty: With customized recommendations, you can enhance customer engagement and loyalty, building a positive and deeper relationship with your customers.

Gather valuable feedback: Customer communication via messaging or chat can provide important information about what’s going well, what's not going well, and what you might want to change.

Increase availability to customers: By automating some parts of your customer service, you increase your availability to your customers.

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Conversational Commerce Examples

Conversational marketing leverages several channels to connect with shoppers, improve customer satisfaction, direct consumers through their purchases, and even increase customer retention.

Some examples are:

• Using a chatbot to get help choosing the right product.
• Adding items to an online shopping cart using voice command.
• Requesting a rideshare service (Lyft, Uber, etc.) via Facebook messenger.
• Responding to a DM (direct message) on social media about costs, services, and prices.

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Leveraging Conversational Commerce for Your Business

Conversational commerce is essentially about leveraging technology to create engaging customer experiences, which in turn enhance brand satisfaction and loyalty. It is an efficient digital marketing strategy for e-commerce.

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Decrease Cart Abandonment

Online retailers often face the issue of consumers abandoning their carts before completing a purchase. Chat commerce provides solutions to remind shoppers to complete their purchases and decrease cart abandonment rates. You can inspire your visitors to finish their purchases with conversational chatbots, sending friendly, personalized messages that can improve the shopping experience, resulting in satisfied customers and more sales.

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Enhance Customer Engagement and Loyalty

Conversational marketing has the power to boost customer engagement while fostering loyalty. By incorporating live chat and chatbots into your social media and websites, you offer convenient ways for your visitors to search for products and get their questions answered.

Identifying and providing consistent support to loyal customers through conversational commecreates trust and reinforces your brand-customer relationship.

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Boost Sales

Chat commerce offers a way to engage customers via web widgets and chatbots, enabling personalized discounts, product recommendations, and promotions. Customized product recommendations encourage purchase decisions, while fast responses and real-time feedback to customer inquiries boost sales.

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Social Media - The New Mall

With the increase in social selling and shopping, brands can directly connect with shoppers via features such as live streaming, transforming the way products are found and enabling immediate customer interactions.

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For example, Instagram offers verified business profiles, creating an enhanced chat commerce experience. This approach allows consumers to search for products, have real-time conversations, and share their experiences. The result is a seamless and successful social selling and shopping journey for your customers.

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Integrate a Conversational Commerce Platform into Your Business Today

As the number one video commerce platform for the retail, fashion, consumer electronics, automotive, and beauty industries, Bambuser can  help your brand boost engagement and inspire customers to complete their purchases while providing a positive shopping experience.

Contact us if you have any questions, or visit our website to book a virtual consultation with one of our sales representatives.