The Magic of Messaging
Cart abandonment is an e-commerce brand’s worst nightmare. But, thanks to the power of chats and SMSs, there has been a paradigm shift in how brands interact with customers. The rise of technology driven conversational commerce has had a huge impact on overall customer experience and inturn transformed a user’s “Add to Cart” journey.
SMSs have been around for ages but have now become more conversational, targeted and quick. SMSs range from being informational like order and delivery status, new launches, to transactional like price drop alerts, due dates, to service oriented messages like help desks. They are not just convenient but also boast to have one of the highest open and engagement rates among communication channels.
The Conversation Commerce commencement
If communication is the key, then chatbots are the ultimate keyholders that hang on multiple online conversations with customers on websites and landing pages. This is the part of the deeper level sales funnel that converts the customer with real-time query resolve and enhances sales lastly.
All of this combined from a mere conversation to a converted sale is termed as ‘Conversation Commerce’. It has more dimensions to it like Live chats on messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Chatbots on websites, and voice assistant tools like Alexa and Google.
But, how do these Chatbots convince the customers?
Yes, after all, it’s just a robot speaking to humans based on its pre-installed data. But, it’s the consumer experience that’s taking the edge here. Talking about numbers, consumers are ready to spend 16% more on products and services if they get a good customer experience and remain loyal to the brand. And the Chatbots add on to the viability of the online consumer experience of the brand.
Since online is a lonely place for a customer to shop, brands came up with the concept of Chatbots and Live Chats that assist the user through the whole process of the product and keep them engaged with the products and services. And believe it or not, this has proven to be one of the feasible usability features that has benefited users like no other feature ever. As a result, numbers started rolling for brands like crazy.
Bots sailing the brand’s boats
1. TATA Cliq:
A TATA group’s e-commerce initiative with a $100 plus revenue improved its chart addition rate 2.4 times within 3 months by adopting ‘conversational commerce’.
It got affected badly by the Covid just like any other business. To improve the condition, it decided to transform its existing e-commerce strategy. It tried to imbibe the offline personalization experience into an online mode with the help of Chatbots that assisted the users with their shopping experience. This offered a more welcoming and engaging online buying experience that increased the number of total visitors.
2. Cars24:
Nearly ⅓ of this second-hand car reseller brand’s sales are generated via conversational commerce.
The reason? It automated its customer support by deploying a Chatbot for the Cars24 mobile app and Whatsapp. This fastened the process of resolving customer queries through an automated system. But before that, due to a rush in customer traffic, it struggled to answer all customer inquiries timely which made them lose a lot of potential clients. And since a Car is an expensive consumable which requires due diligence to convince a sale, its one-to-one consumer interaction helped in a great way for convincing customers to buy. Additionally, it decreased the customer service cost as a Chatbot strategy can provide a quick and trustworthy response to the customer’s query.
3. CEAT:
This Indian tire producer used Chatbots to increase its lead-to-conversation rate to 20%.
Since CEAT has a wide variety of product catalogs and each product caters to a specific need of the customer, it tried to understand the user intent to serve it accordingly. And for this, it resolved to a Whatsapp Chatbot and live agents that attended to the customers 24/7 and suggested the product as per the need. It also helped the brand in collecting leads through AI-powered interactions which increased the conversion rates. Not only this, but it also facilitated easy complaint tracking and redressal with the help of these Chatbot forums by redirecting difficult customer queries to live agents to enhance customer satisfaction.
4. Mondelez:
An international confectionery producer which produces biscuits, chocolates, gum, candy, and other types of sweets increased its sales by 67% during Valentine’s day.
It ran a campaign called “Valentine’s Day Special Store” which included a Chatbot that,
1. Offered romantic tips
2. Gave personalized gifting options
3. Ensured ease of payment for customers by easy checkout procedure.
This campaign targeted the technology-savvy audience of the age group of 25 to 40 and increased the sales and conversions way more than expected. It reached a sale conversion rate of 13% by engaging with more than 5 million people within a week.
The Bottom Line
Owing to such exceptional conversions, it wouldn’t be incorrect to quote that conversation commerce has revolutionized the marketing strategy. It proved that there’s no growth hack more effective than easing the customer’s life by providing them with quick response and redressal support.
And the metaverse is going to have more of it. Chatbots and Live chats are going to play a pivotal role in bridging the communication gap between humans and digital brands in their virtual stores. Marketing geeks will surely have to come up with unusual but creative ideas to leverage this powerful tool in order to capture the maximum share of the consumer’s wallet.