The Rise of Conversational Commerce: How Chatbots and Voice Assistants are Transforming E-commerce

We’re in a time when “going shopping” has an entirely different meaning. The days of driving to a shopping mall, dragging shopping carts, and checking out items are fading fast. Instead, we have an all-new experience of ordering online and having whatever we want delivered to our doorstep. This is the age of e-commerce, a.k.a shopping online, and it’s here to stay.

 

Undoubtedly, e-commerce is amazing, thanks to the seamless experience of buying and selling online. But sometimes, it’s not so seamless. Most online shoppers dread a moment when they can’t conveniently find what they’re looking for online, and it’s even worse when payment doesn’t work smoothly. Sometimes, you get debited only for the checkout page to break, and you’re stuck repeating the whole process. Trying to get a refund or rectify an error on the e-commerce website quickly becomes a nightmare.

 

What is Conversational Commerce?

 

Due to the challenges of technical glitches that make shopping online difficult, e-commerce platforms have devised a new means of making online shopping work. Taking a cue from traditional commerce, most shoppers enjoy interacting with shop staff who’re always at hand to assist in any way. E-commerce platforms have tried to replicate the same experience by making shopping online more interactive. Using interactive technologies to make the e-commerce experience richer and more personalized. This is what conversational commerce is all about.

 

How Does Conversational Commerce Work?

 

In commerce, the journey between shopping and checking out items on sale has key thresholds that must be crossed. While attracting customers through marketing and product appeal is great, converting such attraction into actual sales takes a lot more. And one of the best ways to ensure market conversion is through interaction.

 

Interacting with customers through entering a store, browsing through product catalogues, weighing options, carting, and finally processing payments is highly important. While customers may feel like they simply want one thing, marketing psychology has shown that sometimes, it’s never really about buying one thing. Some products go with others, just like bread and tea. But you won’t be able to convince customers to buy such paired products without interacting with them. This is why physical stores often have marketing staff ready to assist with shopping, as they can always recommend something extra for a customer to buy.

 

Customer interaction is the idea behind having marketing and customer support staff ready to assist with enquiries and complaints. It’s all part of the process of knowing the customer a little more and being able to provide personalized services.

 

What conversational commerce does is replicate the idea of customer interaction on e-commerce platforms? Though direct human interaction is cut off, conversational commerce helps online shoppers feel seen and connected to the online stores they patronize. This is where chatbots and voice assistants come in.

 

 

E-Commerce Chatbots and Voice Assistants And How They Work?

 

Social interaction is at the core of every human activity - including shopping as online shopping cuts off access to human interaction while shopping, voice assistants and chatbots are designed to bridge the gap.

 

By definition, chatbots are computer programs embedded into e-commerce websites to simulate human interaction. They’re usually programmed with answers to many possible questions an online shopper might have in mind. When a shopper encounters any difficulty, the chatbots are live 24/7 to respond to enquiries or need for assistance.

 

The chat process is automated such that once an online shopper clicks the chatbot icon, it responds with a programmed text. Usually, the chatbot comes with a programmed list of possible scenarios that reflect a customer’s current experience. Once the shopper clicks an option that portrays their experience, the chatbot progresses by providing list after list of possible scenarios until it pinpoints the customer’s experience and recommends a solution. In rare circumstances when the solution given by the chatbot doesn’t work, the shopper is connected to a live customer service assistant for a more personalized solution.

 

Like chatbots, voice assistants are interactive audio-based computer programs that assist shoppers. Just like Siri and Alexa, voice assistants assist with making online purchases. By design, voice assistants serve two purposes: automate online purchases through voice commands or assist with navigating technical issues on an e-commerce website.

 

With a voice assistant, a shopper only needs to speak to place an order, while the voice assistant handles finding and checking out the desired product. A voice assistant could also assist with product or service recommendations based on a shopper’s need description.

 

 

Benefits of Conversational Commerce

 

On the surface, conversational commerce builds a strong sense of authenticity and business-customer relationships thanks to improved interactivity. But that’s not all it’s benefits. Other benefits of conversational commerce include:

 

• Customer Retention: Interacting with customers makes businesses feel authentic and more personal. That sense of trust makes it easier for companies to retain customers since they’re more likely to patronize a recognisable and familiar store.

 

           While a seamless online shopping experience is great, interacting with customers through chatbots and voice assistants makes it even better. As a rule, the greater the customer experience, the more likely a customer will return and even be patient during downtimes.

 

• Generating Leads: Chatbots and voice assistants are beneficial for generating leads. Rather than having marketing or support agents on standby, responsive chatbots could be deployed to help capture leads on marketing campaigns.

 

           For instance, some Instagram ads are embedded with responsive chatbots that curate a personalised experience for each user who clicks on the ad. With a few thoughtful questions and responses through chatbots and voice assistants, businesses enjoy a cheaper generation of market leads.

 

• Higher Lead Conversion: Besides generating leads, chatbots and voice assistants help convert market leads into actual sales via interactions. Simply displaying products and taking notes of customer enquiries help to curate personalized catalogues, which are more likely to convert to actual sales. Voice assistants are especially useful in this case.

 

• Recommendations and Cross-selling: This uses chatbots and voice assistants to recommend paired or batch items for sale. By documenting customer enquiries, these interactive tools can recommend products that could be paired together at a reasonable discount. This way, customers don’t just buy a single product but multiple products across different catalogues to serve their needs. It’s the best win-win scenario for both businesses and customers.

 

• Improve Insights and Customer Data: Marketing data is great for generating leads, but one of the best deals for businesses is retaining customers. To do this, businesses need to gain insights into each customer. Rather than offering generic customer experiences, voice assistants and chatbots could be deployed to gather customer data through enquiries. Businesses can now curate personalized e-commerce experiences for each customer based on the data gathered. Think of it like curating personalized music playlists but for online shopping.

 

• Lesser Rates of Abandoned Shopping Carts: A popular challenge for e-commerce platforms is customers abandoning items in their shopping carts. Sometimes, when they finally remember the items in their carts, they lose interest and refuse to complete the purchase.

 

           Chatbots and voice assistants handling customer interactions greatly reduce the risk of abandoning shopping carts. This is achieved through personalized notifications about items in carts, discounts and special offer recommendations. Thanks to the quick response time of these interactive tools, customers can get answers on time and are proactively engaged till the sale is concluded.

 

 

How To Adopt Conversational Commerce?

 

The golden rule in conversational commerce is to maintain interaction with customers. Seeing as keeping customers engaged 24/7 is humanly impossible, it’s important to adopt tools that can automate interaction. Here are two things to do to evolve your e-commerce store into a powerhouse of interaction:

 

• Build websites with interactive automation: To replicate conversational commerce on an e-commerce platform, building with interaction in mind is impossible. Rather than building a website that merely displays products with a complex checkout page, you need to build for quick response and maintaining interaction. Your online store should have chatbots and voice assistants to assist with customer enquiries and transactions. Platforms like Wix and Squarespace offer easy-to-use website builders that integrate smoothly with automation tools, allowing you to add features like AI-driven chatbots and voice assistants.

 

• Personalize messaging and notifications: Conversational commerce is all about giving customers a unique experience. From product recommendations and special offers to sending out notifications and greetings, you must tailor each message to suit each customer. Use your gathered data to curate relatable messages for marketing and lead conversion.

 

• Always given room for human supervision: As amazing as AI chatbots and voice assistants are, there are some enquiries that they cannot handle. Think of a scenario where a customer needs a product but cannot describe it in the way that a search engine or chatbot is programmed to recognise. Peculiar experiences need special intervention, so you need to have dedicated customer support agents on standby.

 

Conclusion:

 

Online shopping is here to stay; you must stay ahead of the curve. By adopting conversational commerce, you can create a unique customer experience for online shoppers to make your e-commerce store stand out. It’s all about engaging your customers through personalized recommendations and responses. You can do this with little effort with AI chatbots and voice assistants.