Conversational Commerce is Here to Stay: Is Your Brand Ready?

The four "biggest" messaging apps have now overcome social media with respect to use and popularity, according to a report from Business Insider. Ad Week's Jim Tomanchek pointed out that Facebook Messenger has around 800 million active users every month, while WhatsApp has 1 billion. Even more surprising, messaging apps dominate consumers' online time, representing 91 percent of their online investments, ComScore found.

What does that mean? Consumers are ready for the age of conversational commerce, a trend named by Medium's Chris Messina. If brands want to truly connect and form relationships with their customers, they can take to messaging apps. More broadly, they can start conversations with consumers on whatever channel they prefer.

In fact, conversational commerce is the new battleground of customer service, and Messina asserted that 2016 is the year that these strategies take off. But let's slow down. What exactly does conversational commerce entail?

According to Messina, "[it] largely pertains to utilizing chat, messaging or other natural language interfaces (i.e. voice) to interact with people, brands, or services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context."

In other words, conversational commerce is a strategy that brands can leverage to speak directly with their customers across a variety of channels in a manner that is consistent and personal. It's a focus on communication rather than completing a transaction. But for all intents and purposes, the goal is to get consumers to convert after connecting with them on a personal, more human level.

Humanizing Commerce

After all, consumers favor companies that form relationships and treat them as individuals, not dollar signs. An eye-opening article written by Christo Binder and Dominique Hanssens for Harvard Business Review explained that modern commerce is not about "strong brands" anymore. The game has changed, the duo wrote, and companies today must provide amazing customer experiences that are predicated on the relationship between shopper and seller.

Consumers' love for conversation and messaging apps paired with their express intent to learn more about brands make conversational commerce more than just a fleeting phase. It's the best opportunity that companies have to humanize their organizations as well as provide customers with consistent, worthwhile experiences in a crowded market of flashy, corporate advertisements.

In Practice

Here's how conversational commerce looks in practice: A shopper accesses a brand's website on his or her computer. A chat window appears, and the individual signs into his or her messaging service of choice. As the consumer browses, he or she can ask a customer service representative questions about products and services, while that rep recommends items or shares some insights.

That shopper can leave the website and still chat thanks to Facebook, WhatsApp or whatever service. And when the shopper wants to buy, he or she just tells the rep. Payment information is shared and a product is delivered - all the while conversations are still occurring. A chat message is sent confirming the purchase, and another when the product arrives at his or her front door. After getting the order, the consumer can share feedback on the experience. Then, a few days later, he or she can call or chat with a rep if there is an issue or if another product deserves attention.

Be Convenient and Human

Writing a guest post for Adrian Swinscoe's blog, Pascal van Opzeeland pointed out that these processes are "much more convenient than email." But more importantly, conversational commerce is about meeting the need for communication regardless of the platform that shoppers are using. Chat might be convenient for a tech-savvy millennial, but a baby boomer might want to order online, get an email and then call for confirmation.

It's not the medium, it's the consistent and personalized experience across channels that matters. And as Messina explained, consistency is often just "extreme personalization" - it's remembering the who, what, why and how whether customers are dialing brands customer service lines or interacting over Facebook Messenger.

In that regard, brands don't have to change a lot to keep up with the conversational commerce trend. They need a 24/7 committed customer service workforce, a CRM system to save and store customer data and a strategy for speaking on every channel that their shoppers communicate on. Most importantly, however, companies must humanize their conversations, a point highlighted by CustomerThink contributor Miles Hobson. They cannot rely on digital channels just because it's easier -  they must facilitate human interaction.

So the writer asserted that outsourcing customer service and contact centers is a solution for competing in the age of conversational commerce. How else can brands provide personalized customer experiences across all platforms without abandoning the human aspect of this trend or breaking the bank?