As predicted, conversational commerce is here

In January, Chris Messina of Uber and inventor of the hashtag, asserted “2016 will be the year of conversational commerce.” If you’re unfamiliar with the term, Messina describes 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.”

Conversational commerce allows consumers to engage in a conversation with a company representative or chatbot (or both) over the device of their choice to ask questions, obtain product recommendations and comparisons place orders and track deliveries seamlessly - all without ever having to leave the app environment. This conversational-like experience is far more personal, richer and simpler than the tap or click functions dictated by traditional ecommerce apps.

Major players such as Facebook with its Messenger App have already jumped on the conversational commerce bandwagon and new companies such as Conversable have introduced platforms to run on a range of mobile app and social media platforms. Just last month, Ernst & Young announced its investment in the technology with the creation of new service designed to bring the benefits of conversational commerce to its clients.

Transforming the sales experience

Demand for conversational commerce is expected to continue to rise, providing consumers with a much more satisfying experience. It provides a simplified approach to interacting with companies thus easing the purchase decision. It will benefit the retailers and service providers as well, eliminating online shopping frustrations and obstacles that result in abandoned purchases. Conversational commerce also enhances the opportunity for upselling and cross selling products by better understanding a consumer’s need. And it enhances customer service via automated messages to confirm an order and provide shipping and delivery information.

Conversational commerce is the next step in enabling consumers to interact with brands in a highly personalized and more convenient way and the revenue-generating potential for brands and channel partners is significant. The more spontaneous the buying experience, the more likely the sale.