7 things you need to know on conversational commerce
Letsclap.io is a conversational commerce platform, enabling businesses to deliver commerce and customer service via popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger , Telegram or Wechat.
Since 2015 there are more monthly active users on messagings apps (like Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Wechat, Kik, Telegram, …) compared to social media networks.
Messaging apps have now surpassed social networks.
On top of that, Activate expects another 1,1 billion users will start using messaging apps by 2018.
Messaging apps have proven to be popular between consumers because they are private, personal, real-time and available on-the-go.
For businesses messaging apps have the same benefits when used to communicate with customers and prospects.
Messaging is now quickly turning into a service and commerce platform for conversations between consumers and businesses.
Consumers message with their friends daily via mobile messaging apps.
Reaching out to a business today remains far more difficult. Most business provide a number of fragmented and slow contact options. “I haven’t met anybody who likes to call a business” (Mark Zuckerberg on the Facebook F8 Conference 2016 on 12th April when launching the Messenger Platform)
Messaging creates a unique opportunity for businesses to change the way how they interact with their customers. Personal, fast and convenient.
Conversational commerce has been introduced to describe a trend where conversations and other natural language interfaces are used to interact with brands, services and bots.
Chris Messina defines conversational commerce as “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”
The commerce part clearly indicates the integration of services and commerce transactions into the interface and UI.
So what are the 7 things you need to know on conversational commerce?
1. From conversation to relation , 2. It’s commerce (like you don’t know it), 3. The end of Google as we know it, 4.(Most) Apps will disappear, 5.Use with caution, 6. The future is now (also for Facebook), 7. Messaging is growing faster than social media
Conversational commerce will help brands to connect to consumers within the right context (time, location, customer moment) and therefore to build meaningful relationships over time. Conversational commerce will not only be done by bots but mostly by a mix of human experts and bots.
Over time there has been a trend to introduce in-app messaging. Conversational commerce nevertheless turns that evolution around. Messaging apps will get more features (app like) and the UI will allow for much more than textual conversations. Completing payments or transactions will be support within a hybrid interface of conversations and action elements like forms, buttons and custom keyboards.
Today people search a lot to get their specific job done. Almost any customer moment includes using a search engine like Google to find options or information. When conversational commerce offers direct access to human experts, AI and integrated services the necessity for “search and trial” behaviour might drop. Google only recently announced their own plans to launch a messaging app and supporting tools for businesses.
Welcome to the post-app economy. Mobile App usage has changed substantially over the last years. The usage of apps gots concentrated to max. 5 apps where most of the time on our phones is spend. Messaging is one of these apps (Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Wechat, …).
Conversational commerce is not a turnkey solution for any customer moment or any business need. Nir Eyal summarized a few scenarios where conversational commerce makes most sense: too many options, no joy in browsing, analysis is hard, the interface is too complicated, the need for a trusted relationship and when there is no need for direct completion.
The recent move of FB Messenger to launch their Messenger Platform (Beta) is not the first move to create a conversational commerce network. The leading Asian messaging app Wechat has already implemented a lot of the conversational features in the past. Today their ARPU (estimated average revenu per user) is already at $7 USD , about 7x the ARPU of Whatsapp, the largest messaging platform over the last years. Facebook Messenger will need to speed up to keep in line with the evolutions on Wechat.
Overall the number of users on messaging apps has surpassed those of social media networks.
Get your business started on Conversational commerce today … Signup for your team inbox to handle your conversations with your customers via messaging apps – 14 day trial included on www.letsclap.io
We hope you enjoyed our view on conversational commerce. In need of support with our conversational commerce? Contact us to get you started.