The decision-makers know demand & supply well and competition in the eCommerce Industry.
To meet the needs, it became a de rigueur for the businesses to stand out from the crowd and reach and engage customers like never before.
Conversational commerce is not an option for businesses anymore. You must implement conversational AI in more than one communication channel and automate the overall interactions with the customers.
Recently, covid -19 accelerated the adoption of automated conversation through a communication channel. Most entrepreneurs(80%) said the pandemic transformed their technological demands, and 73% noticed its effects on how they interact with customers.
By 2040, 95% of purchases will be held using e-commerce. People will depend more on eCommerce stores for everything from daily groceries, kitchen appliances and all other ordinary goods.
One of the primary factors for the surge is better customer experience. With the ease of searching, comparing, ordering, tracking, and checking status, customers are more inclined toward eCommerce. Even now, eCommerce is advanced so that customers can interact, order, and do all other activities on their favorite social media channels like WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook by directly acting on their choice on chat instead of visiting a particular website.
As we have discussed many things about conversational commerce. Let’s know first what it’s.
What is Conversational Commerce?
Conversational commerce is how businesses perform sales to customers via natural conversations through AI tools like chatbots and voice bots on your preferred social media platforms like Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, and more.
Whatsapp is the most preferred communication channel by more than 2 billion users worldwide and has opened many business opportunities. Whatsapp is regularly updated with exciting features for businesses that can help customers interact and get the information they need easily. With 175 million+ users sending Whatsapp messages to companies daily and 90% of Instagram users following at least one business, the opportunity for businesses to increase sales is enormous. And to leverage maximum from this opportunity, companies need to implement conversational commerce.
Conversational commerce helps customers to acquire a personalized experience. For instance, it helps get product information, customized suggestions of products, gift advice, shop location, delivery status, making reservations or booking, and many more to list. They are similar to store helpers who understand customer preferences and walk them through the entire sales funnel.
People initiate chat with businesses for many more reasons, and conversational commerce helps meet those needs.
Research also determines that close to 53% of potential buyers prefer companies that can be reached through direct chat.
Businesses can implement conversational commerce through the most popular and active audience channels: WhatsApp and Instagram. Whatsapp and Instagram both have updated to API, which opens up lots of options for businesses to interact with customers automatically.
To understand how Instagram and WhatsApp are transforming eCommerce business, let’s look at some of its benefits:
10 Ways Instagram and WhatsApp Have Transformed E-Commerce
1. Enabling End-To-End Conversational Commerce
Businesses can enable the overall sales process on Whatsapp using Whatsapp business API. While conversing, customers can order, edit, track, and even pay through WhatsApp.
Businesses can use Whatsapp API to automate and ease the overall sales process by integrating their billing and invoicing software with the Whatsapp CRM.
Whatsapp and Instagram both hold API features that can help businesses to automate the overall conversation with customers.
Plus, with Whatsapp and Instagram’s APIs, businesses can build chatbots and integrate them with other apps. It handles communication issues, can answer FAQs, provide customers with purchase options and instant information about orders, and gives an easy transfer between chatbots and human interaction.
2. Promoting Through Chatbot Moderated Groups
To promote any new products, updates, or launches of events, businesses can use WhatsApp or Instagram chatbots to run mass promotional campaigns and update their customers.
All you need to check out is the latest trends available in marketing and advertising on Instagram. The endless scrolling that Instagram users spend every day exposes users to hundreds of ads. Though Amazon is the leader in eCommerce, customers come to amazon with a plan to buy. At the same time, Instagram depends more on impulse buying and provides easy purchase options to users by being on the same platform.
Businesses can market their WhatsApp channel by revolving the WhatsApp QR code through all the collaterals. Whether it’s invoices or packaging material, a QR code can be printed to make the users reach out to the business on Whatsapp.
It is compulsory to do as Whatsapp is GDPR compliant and allows businesses to send messages only when they have the customer’s consent. The customers are required to initiate the chat, and only communication can be established.
Sending Instagram and WhatsApp automated messages has limitations, but you can send this without human intervention.
Whatsapp chatbots for eCommerce save customer agents time, help them work on more complex tasks, leave all the repetitive and mundane tasks, and engage with customers using conversational AI.
3. Go with the Customer Behavior and Trends
On average, WhatsApp users spend 38 mins a day and 24 mins on Instagram. These are the most popular messaging apps where you can find most of your targeted audience active. Moreover, about 70% of online shoppers check Instagram for new products and reviews.
During this time, brands can guide the customer, make a smooth customer journey, and provide them with the right recommendation based on their requirements, resulting in higher conversions and fewer drop-offs.
4. Gives Presales and Post-Sales Support
- Accessing Whatsapp and Instagram is easy for customers; they don’t need to switch to a website for assistance. Whatever the issue you have can easily get through in a chat, such as-
- During the presales process,
- To get additional information about the product, Genuine reviews of the product,
- Comparison charts,
- And many more that help customers to feel confident about their decisions made.
And also, during post-sales, there may be cases where customers want to-
- Exchange the product if they received a damaged one,
- Raise for a refund,
- Like providing a review of the products and many more.
During this, WhatsApp and Instagram chatbots can greatly help customers get a timely response to their queries and concerns and thus help build loyal customers.
5. Reduce Cart Abandonment
The efforts businesses make to bring the customers to add that item to the cart will completely get ruined if they don’t purchase the products and leave them in the cart.
There might be many reasons why customers leave products in the cart. For example, they may-
- Find other more valuable products,
- Find cheaper somewhere,
- Not need the product at that moment, Find bad reviews,
- Have low purchase intent,
- Or get discounts and offers on competitive sites.
In all such cases, the efforts of marketers get ruined.
Conversational commerce is the solution to bring back customers and make them purchase. Using WhatsApp or Instagram AI chatbots, you can offer customers discounts if they are not taking the next step. And remind them about their pending carts that can recover by 20-30%.
All you can perform in a single personalized purchasing experience within the same communication channel.
6. Generate and Nurture Qualified Leads
Instagram shoppers generally check Instagram to get reviews of the product, and even influencers provide reviews of the product, making it seamless for the shoppers to make a purchase decision.
Even after purchasing the product, Instagram chatbots help customers solve their issues and concerns in the same chat.
It allows the brands to generate more leads and nurture and retain existing customers for a long time.
The customers most trust Whatsapp for performing any actions as it’s a highly secure social media channel where all the contacts are genuine and hold qualified leads.
It saves lots of time and investment for the customer agents to handle every customer with complete dedication by offering personalized support, thus improving conversions.
Customers also find it highly secure to share their personal information and make payments online through WhatsApp on the same chat.
7. Support Customers 24×7
With WhatsApp and Instagram automation features, businesses can assist customers 24/7. On WhatsApp, they use message templates, and it’s easy for companies to send instant responses to customers.
Chatbots can redirect the question to the customer’s agents without waiting if the query is complex or doesn’t have a proper response.
Agents can provide instant responses as they can access the chat history; based on that, they can diagnose the problem and are ready with the appropriate answers.
Even agents have the message templates in advance based on various situations and just click to send the proper response to the customer.
When there is a nonavailability of the customer support team due to any reasons(off-hours, busy due to season, or lack of staff), chatbots send a message to the customer to notify them about the next available time.
Whatsapp is the most effective channel to keep customers in the loop and engage on a timely basis.
Most customers are active on WhatsApp, and it’s easy for them to check their messages. It helps maintain a proper understanding between businesses and customers.
8. Gather Actionable Feedback and Insights
The eCommerce industry is where the customer agents must deal with thousands of customers simultaneously, and the agents can’t ask for and take feedback from the customers manually.
Conversational commerce helps brands to collect actionable insights from the customer.
You can collect the customer’s basic information in a single chat and gather feedback on their interest and behavior.
Ecommerce brands can use these insights to understand customer demand, supply trends, gaps in offerings, user behavior, and many more details to improve data-driven decisions.
Also, this information helps the brands to gain a competitive edge and plan better for the future.
9. Upselling and Cross-Selling Opportunities
Whatsapp and Instagram chatbots are great for upselling or cross-selling products.
As businesses have information on the recent purchase of the products or services, they can suggest-
- The frequently bought together items.
- Existing items in the cart,
- Products they searched for,
- Products back in stock,
- Offers from their preferred brands,
- New collections,
- Seasonal sales and other products that match the interest of the customers.
With cross and upsell, brands can engage more with the customers, improve their sales, improve their overall future decisions, and build campaigns.
10. Build Customer Loyalty
Maintaining customer loyalty and retention rate is a daunting task for brands. In a highly competitive market, where every day, customers get lots of offers and discounts from brands that can easily distract your customers from your brand.
To make customers stick to your brand, you need to do something extra from what your competitors do.
You can assign an agent to customers to build a personalized experience and assistance throughout their customer journey.
However, this won’t work when you are in an eCommerce business. As in an eCommerce business, you have thousands and even lakhs of customers, so you can’t provide such personalized assistance.
Conversational commerce can help you give automated round-the-clock service to customers throughout their purchase journey.
Brands spend a good percentage of their business budget on building customer loyalty and end up with unsatisfied results or take time to show results.
Whereas using WhatsApp or Instagram chatbots helps you show results in less time, customers are more inclined toward your brands. As getting replies and greetings and all other assistance, customers get instantly on WhatsApp and Instagram even if they don’t have to shift to other platforms to ask for help or queries, everything they can get in a single platform.
Conclusion :
Conversational commerce is the new trend brands follow to reach their customers; prior, it was websites than mobile apps.
Whatsapp and Instagram are platforms where businesses can easily reach their customers, as most active customers are on these platforms.
Apart from the benefits stated above, there are so many things that conversational commerce helps brands in building customer loyalty, engagement, and retention rates.
If you’re also planning to deploy conversational commerce in your business and leverage maximum from WhatsApp and Instagram chatbots, do contact our SmatBot team. We are happy to help you in every step, from providing a piece of information to deployment and getting results.
You can also go with our 14-day free trial to understand better what you can achieve and how we can help you with that.