What is conversational commerce? Why is it such a big opportunity? How does it work? What does the future look like? How can I get started?

These are the questions I’m going to answer for you right now.

Ready? Let’s do this.

First off, people have been using conversation to drive sales and make customers happy since humans first began trading. From asking the store owner about which wine you should buy to messaging a boutique on Instagram to find if they still have that custom necklace left, conversation has always been — and always will be — a core part of commerce.

Today, conversations can be automated, and it is this automated experience that we are referring to when we use the term “Conversational Commerce”.

Conversational experiences can add value to every part of the customer journey, ranging from when a customer makes their first order to answering a product-related question instantly.

Conversational commerce is possible on any platform that supports chat or voice bots (Facebook Messenger, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Business Chat, SMS, WeChat, LINE, Telegram, etc).

Conversational commerce will even be able to read your thoughts. (… We’ll talk about this later.)

If you haven’t wrapped your head around conversational commerce yet, don’t worry. Here’s an example to help you visualize what conversational commerce is.

If you were to purchase something from Nordstrom online, after a week or two, you would receive an email encouraging you to leave a review about the product you purchased.

In order to successfully leave the review after being emailed, you will have to:

It’s a lot of work.

If Nordstrom were to use conversational commerce, which I’m sure they will, this experience would be 10x easier:

Instead of sending you a bloated email, Nordstrom could simply message you on Facebook and ask what you thought of your new boots.

Conversational commerce is powerful not only because it makes the automated interactions between the brand and the consumer feel so much more human, but because it reduces the number of steps the customer has to take to complete an action.

“This all looks cool Matt, but how big of an opportunity is it really?” you might be thinking. “Why should I be paying attention to this now?”

Great questions. You’re going to want to know the answers.

Conversational commerce is a huge opportunity. MASSIVE. Scroll down and I will explain.

I know, ecommerce has been built on the back of email. It’s used for marketing, customer support, sales, retention, all of it. So…what benefits could conversational commerce possibly have over email?

I’ll tell you right now.

This is why high growth stores are implementing conversational commerce:

These stats are amazing, and they are only the beginning. The future of conversational commerce is very bright.

Why? I’ll tell you right now.

Over 2,000,000,000 people are using messaging apps.

The massive distribution of this technology, and the emergence of conversational commerce, gives businesses the ability to communicate with each of their customers in a private, personalized, and two-way environment

This is huge shift from the non-personalized mass marketing that social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have popularized over the past decade.

On top of the adoption of messaging apps, did you know that over 40 million people own a smart speaker (like an Amazon Alexa) and that that number is expected to double in 2018?

Voice-enabled devices don’t stop there. 2.5 billion people are expected to be walking around with smartphones by 2019.

Conversational platforms are exploding, and it makes perfect sense. Conversation as an interface is the most natural way for humans to interact with technology.

Conversational commerce represents a paradigm shift in how brands and customers interact, and it will have major impacts on the entire customer journey. This is why conversational commerce is such a big deal.

But how exactly does conversational commerce work? What are all the possibilities of conversational commerce?

I will explain that right now. Better yet, I will show you.

Scroll down to see.

When thinking about conversational commerce and how it will apply to your business, you need to think about four different types of experiences.

Now that you know the four ways in which conversational commerce can be included in the experience, you need to figure out which parts of the customer journey would benefit from a targeted conversational commerce experience.

Here’s a brief example of a customer journey (Challenge: Can you imagine how you could pair these steps with conversational commerce?):

⏰ Take a second to think about how you could use conversational commerce to improve the customer experience during each of these steps.

Done? “No Matt, I want to see some real examples of conversational commerce!”

Okay, OKAY, I hear ya!

Here is a list of conversational commerce experiences, and integrations, every store should have.

Ready? Scroll down for examples of chat and voice based conversational commerce.

These are a few examples of chat-based conversational commerce. (“I’m looking for voice based examples, Matt!” well alrighty, I hear ya, just scroll down a bit more to see the voice examples!)

Index of chat-based conversational commerce examples:

The first thing you are probably wondering is, “How the heck do I message my customers on Facebook?”, the answer is quite simple: You need to implement the Facebook Messenger Checkbox.

What does the checkbox do? Here is the high-level explanation:

Most stores currently collect email addresses during the checkout process, meaning that most shoppers who add an item to their cart are never connected over email with the store.

An implementation of the Facebook Messenger Checkbox moves the ability to connect with a customer to the top of the funnel. You have the potential to increase the number of customers you can talk to by 2–5x.

When someone walks into your physical store, they can ask you questions, point out products, tell you about what they are looking for, etc., and an employee at the store can help in real time.

How do you provide this same level of service for customers shopping online? By installing an automated on-site live chat.

If you’ve never seen one before, this is what it looks like:

You can personalize the chat experience to send the customer messages based on multiple data points, like their purchase history or what product they are currently looking at.

By using conversational commerce, you can automate conversations about questions, deals, and product discovery, helping the customer throughout their journey.

“But Matt! What if they need to talk to a human?!” Great question my dear reader! In this situation the customer can automatically be connected to a human support agent or directed towards a phone number or email where they can get in touch with a real person to solve more advanced inquiries.

When a customer adds a product to their cart and then doesn’t complete the purchase, the store can send a private message 1–4 hours later to the customer asking if they would like to complete their purchase or if they have any questions.

By using the Facebook Messenger Checkbox, and an abandoned cart conversational commerce experience, stores have already started increase revenue by 7–25%.

Making sure that the customer knows the status of the order is important. After spending money online, customers want to know that the order was made and that it will be shipped soon.

By sending customers messages on conversational platforms like Facebook Messenger, you can keep them in the loop and enable them to request future notifications related to their order.

Similar to the order confirmation message, the shipping message keeps the customer in the loop and reduces the amount of times they will need to ask a human at the store for the status of their order.

After a person has completed their first purchase at a store, it is a good idea for the store to send out a personal note thanking them for their business.

Doing this over conversational platforms enables the interaction to be more personable and meaningful than over email. Not only does the language sound natural, similar to how a friend or family member would talk to you, but it enables the relationship to immediately strengthen by allowing the customer to continue the conversation.

This message can be sent after the package has been detected as delivered, or an estimated 14 days after an order has been made (depending on which data is available to the store).

Stores can collect data such as:

If a customer walks into a store, they can get help from an employee. They can tell them what they are looking for, their preferences, the purpose of the purchase, etc.

Replicating this type of experience online hasn’t been as straightforward, especially over platforms like email.

Conversational commerce makes this very easy. Instead of just getting sent recommendations based on what is trending, stores can message customers questions that enable them to make very precise recommendations.

There are certain types of products that customers will want to purchase over and over again, things like: hand lotion, face cream, food, and paper towels.

Using customer data related to each of these items, it is possible to predict how long it takes someone to consume a good, and then automatically send them a message asking if they need to reorder that item.

This is helpful for the customer and the business.

It is common for a customer to have questions about a product they recently purchased.

Instead of requiring a person at the store to manually answer each of these questions, conversational commerce can be used to automatically detect the question and immediately respond with the correct answer or guidance.

When a person walks into a store to look at a product, they have the ability to ask an employee questions.

Stores can use conversational commerce to answer this pre-purchase questions.

“But Matt! Show me the voice examples!”

Yes, great idea! Let’s do that right now.

Scroll down to see conversational commerce examples for voice platforms.

These are a few examples of voice based conversational commerce. Keep in mind that voice bots cannot currently send customers proactive messages; they can only talk to a user after they have initiated a conversation.

Index of voice based conversational commerce examples:

Stores can enable their customers to ask Alexa, or another voice bot, to check if there are any current deals that store is offering.

Stores can help their customers locate nearby stores, classes, events, and rentals.

By asking the customer a few simple questions, stores can help recommend products that the customer is likely going to be interested in.

Customers can ask their voice bot to check on their recent order.

Now that you have a pretty good concept of how conversational commerce can be used over chat and voice… let’s dive into something even more interesting.

Let’s look at examples of how artificial intelligence can be used to supercharge conversational commerce.

Let’s do this!

What is artificial intelligence? How can it be used to improve conversational commerce? What are examples of artificial intelligence being used with conversational commerce?

Don’t worry! I will answer these questions right now.

If you already have a good grasp of what artificial intelligence is, or more specifically machine learning, then you can skip this part. If you are new to artificial intelligence, and you’re not exactly sure how it works, then spend the next 9 minutes watching this entertaining and extremely educational video that has over 2 million views:

Artificial intelligence can be used to improve conversational commerce in two categories:

Artificial intelligence is one of the fastest growing fields in technology, and it is expected to improve rapidly over the next ten years.

If you feel daunted by the complexities and unfamiliarity of artificial intelligence, don’t worry. Not only is artificial intelligence going to become more advanced, it is going to become integrated into easy to use products that enables departments like customer support, sales, and marketing to apply artificial intelligence to their daily tasks and decisions.

You might even be using artificial intelligence at your business today and you don’t even know it.

But, forget about today! Want to hear what crazy things will be possible in the future?

I’ll tell you all about it right now.

“Matt, if all of this stuff is already happening, what could the future possibly look like? It’s going to be crazy!”. Yes! You are very astute in your observations, the future is going to be crazy.

Here’s what’s happening:

Yes, you read that correctly — computers will be able to read your mind. Instead of looking at your phone, or opening your computer, or even asking Alexa something out loud, you will be able to simply think “buy that jacket he’s wearing” as you walk by a stranger with a cool jacket, and the transaction will go through.

This is going to change everything.

The line where you end and the computer starts will disappear; It will be like your conscious being suddenly connected to an internet connection.

You will be able to think directly to a store. “What’s she wearing?”, “How do I wash this?”, “Send me new socks”, “What time is my package arriving today?”, etc.

You should start building the groundworks of your conversational commerce strategy now, because the immediate applications are hugely valuable, and honestly this future technology isn’t that far off.

And you know how I know? Because people have already started to build mind reading devices.

As an example, look at AlterEgo, a mind reading device MIT’s Media Lab.

How crazy is that?

The world is changing at a rapid pace, and as always the most exciting technology is right around the corner.

The stores of the future will be built on top of these platforms, the jobs of the future will be based on managing them, and this transition has already started.

The only question now, really, is are you going to put in the work to adopt conversational commerce and thrive, or are you going to wait until someone else shows you what success in this field looks like?

Not sure how to implement conversational commerce into your business? Again, don’t worry, I can point you in the right direction.

Let me show you how to start using conversational commerce right now.

This is no secret, but my team and I have spent the past few years building Octane AI, where we have been entirely focused on designing conversational experiences for brands like Kiehl’s and GoPro, and celebrities like Maroon 5, Poppy, and Jason Derulo.

And guess what? We are focused entirely on conversational commerce, and it’s been working very, very, well.

How well? Let me walk you through it.

During the first four months of 2018 we quietly ran an experiment with 25 up-and-coming ecommerce stores using Shopify. These are stores that individually make $10k to $1mil a month in revenue.

The article is written by Matt Schlicht. The content was originally published here https://chatbotsmagazine.com/the-complete-guide-to-conversational-commerce-e47059293efa