Conversational Commerce: The Ultimate Guide For 2022

Global giants are miles ahead in the race to market dominance. Does that mean other businesses are at a disadvantage?

Not necessarily.

Latest trends show that it’s not the prices or product that makes the difference but a positive customer experience. And conversational commerce puts a fresh spin on user experience. 

Engaging with your customers is an awesome way to 10X your customer experience and retention rates.

Many companies like Amazon and Uber have invested in conversational commerce and are reaping the fruits as we speak. 

If the stat $41 billion is spent in 2021 globally doesn’t scream opportunity, we don’t know what does. 

Don’t be startled by the term conversational commerce, you can also tap it to its full potential. But first, you need to know all about it. 

So here is an expert guide with all the information that you need to step into conversational commerce.

Let’s chat.

What’s inside

• A detailed explanation of conversational commerce and how companies use it to gain traction.

• How you can use conversational commerce and companies’ success stories to motivate you.

• Ways to leverage marketing with conversational commerce and the latest trends. 

What is conversational commerce?

“Hey Siri, what’s conversational commerce”

Conversational commerce is the term used to represent the technology used to interact with customers in real time with voice assistants and messaging services to improve the sales process.

The right intersection between sales and conversation is where conversational commerce enters the chat.

Through automated responses or real-time conversations, interacting with customers provides a win-win situation for both customers and the business. 

According to Juniper’s market summary for 2021-2025, $290 billion dollars will be spent by 2025 on conversational commerce. 

• One-third of Americans prefer live chat.
• Live chats and voice assistants increase the conversion rate by 82%.
• The rise of conversational commerce over the 4 years is 590%.

Source: Juniper’s Conversational Commerce Statistics

Asian countries like Japan, China, and South Korea are the pioneers of chatbots. With platforms like WeChat, LINE, and Kakao Talk establishing chat ecosystems for retailers, the market size is growing exponentially. 

Part and Parcel of Conversational commerce

Chatbots

Everybody’s familiar with chatbots. The instantaneous messaging feature of chatbots helps customers easily reach out to businesses for queries or other assistance.

If your customers want answers ASAP – get a chatbot; it’s as simple as that. The human-like conversations help customers easily analyze what they want. 

Statista predicts a market growth of $370 million dollars by 2024, and 68% of customers enjoy the speed at which they receive replies from chatbots.

Chatbots filter web traffic and give you high-quality leads. Funneling the traffic to leads that convert is 100 times easier with an automated chatbot. If you want to improve your productivity and leads, this is a viable option for you.

Our devs at NeoITO have created a super chatbot, Happilee, with cross-platform features that helps companies boost their conversion rate through the roof. So we have seen with a front-row seat how chatbots help businesses scale.

If you’re trying to build an e-commerce website with chatbot features or want to give Happilee a go, get started with a message to us.

Live Chat

Source: Econsultancy 

With over 73% satisfied customers, live chat remains the punchy platform in conversational commerce. Live chats are a common feature for websites nowadays. 

As a human drives the conversations, you can adapt your strategy according to the customer. This flexibility helps businesses to increase their conversion rate by 82% -even a single message increases the conversion likelihood by 50%.

And a live chat is undoubtedly cheaper than managing a telephonic process. 

Voice assistants

According to Statista 2025, there will be about 18.22 billion mobile devices by 2025, and the world population in 2022 will be 7.89 billion. 

Google Assistant and Alexa lead the race as customer favorites, and Echo shouts out recommendations and your past orders. And half the millennials are adding stuff to their Amazon cart via voice chats. Voice assistants are creating a sales channel on their own. 

Messaging and support tools

Using common messaging apps like WhatsApp or Apple imessage is a great way to connect with your customer. Meeting your prospective customers where they are will be trivial in forging a relationship with them.

The security features offered by these messaging apps will give a sense of safety for users. The end-to-end encryption offered by these apps protects user data from being scrapped.

How conversational commerce helps your business

One of the benefits of conversational commerce is always being “on” and available for your customers. Let’s take a look at a few more:

1. Saves time and money

You don’t need to hire humans to work 24/7, and you can use your available resources to build your business. With a chatbot that helps your customers anytime, you can leverage your human resources for other crucial tasks that drive growth. 

2. Customer satisfaction

Humans just love it when they get replies faster while shopping online. Conversational commerce helps people interact with businesses and shop seamlessly, giving them a hassle-free shopping experience.

Instant assistance and FAQs help customers get answers to their queries and make decisions quickly. 

3. Increase sales

With personalized recommendations, your customers see what they are searching for, and they are more likely to shop, increasing your conversion rates through the roof. Chatbots are ninjas of personalized recommendations; they subtly induce promotions and offers, and you wouldn’t know what hit you.

4. Helps build a brand

A strongly structured chatbot can turn out to be the voice of your business. This, in turn, will help you build a brand in the minds of your target customers. You’ll be surprised to see the way your customer retention rate grows.

5. Upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

With the right conversations, you can make your customers buy more premium products or spend more money than they were originally planning to spend.

6. Real-time feedback

Real-time customer feedback helps you solve problems faster. The value this gesture creates in customer mind’s helps you get more loyal customers.

7. No more abandoned carts

 A 70% cart abandonment rate is an area of concern for businesses. Products worth over millions are dropped in carts and stay there forgotten. But with bots and messengers, you can send reminders to your customers.

Trends of conversational commerce for 2023

We’ve already established that conversational commerce is growing like crazy. But you need to know the trends to capitalize on this.

1. Voice assistants are “hot”

The emerging trends in voice search and voice commerce prove to be positive signs that show its gaining momentum. With an expected 8 million consumers by 2023, voice assistants are ready to take over the tech world.

2. AI superpowered Chatbots

Chatbots are becoming more and more intelligent. The level of knowledge they will possess on a particular user is an Infinity Gauntlet all on its own. 

They will gain access to a vast level of knowledge on customer patterns. This helps it to redirect its queries and suggestions that hooks users to the conversation. Landing clients or collecting prospective leads will be a snap away.

3. Chatbots for enterprises

Chatbots are all set to equip enterprises with effective ways to plain-sail internal processes. Streamlining internal workflows with chatbots reduces the time consumed for each decision, and the delegation of work reduces tenfold.

For instance:

• Human Resource Bot– Personalize HR processes like recruitment, onboarding, and employee training.

• Workplace Bot– Enabling employees to handle daily tasks more effectively.

• Sales and marketing Bot– Schedule meetings and calls based on priority and never miss an opportunity to close a deal. 

4. Chatbots taking over call centers.

AI-integrated NLP (natural language processing) will help chatbots automate call centers, which is becoming a reality much faster than we know. Bots will help you lower customer abandonment rates and improve service, sales, and revenue without you losing an arm or leg.

A human working in the customer service sector knows how hard it is to handle calls during peak hours. The customer satisfaction levels stoop to the lowest point in the graph during this time.

Employ a bot, and you can see the difference in your productivity and customer retention rate. They handle peak traffic with ease.

Ready for the rise of conversational commerce?

Conversational commerce is no longer a gimmick to show your tech prowess. It’s here, and it’s powerful. 

You just read all you need to know about what, why, how, and more. It’s time to shift gears and use them to grow your business rapidly.

But wait!

Before you dive deep into conversational commerce, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

1. Try adding a personality flare to your conversational commerce medium.
2. Engaging media is always something your customers would love.
3. Integrate cognitive APIs, AI, ML, and NLP capabilities to power up.
4. Use experienced developers.

Connect with us to leverage the power of conversational commerce and AI to build solutions that scale. Our expert devs are ready to charge on your GO!