When you walk into a neighbourhood store, you are welcomed by a pleasant salesperson. They are there to listen to your needs, answer your questions, and ultimately assist you in making the best decision possible. Since the beginning of barter, there has been conversational trade or chat commerce. It’s how retailers brought in purchases, and it’s how you ask the sales assistant to assist you with your purchase, even if the sophisticated phrase wasn’t used. Conversation, at the risk of seeming fragile, encourages conversion. The conversation has always been a part of the business. Humans bartered for items long before carts, catalogues, and even currency came to define how we purchase and sell goods through discussions and personal interactions.

Online shopping has changed for the better, thanks to the Internet, mobile devices, and now chatbots. It’s hard to see consumers swarming real businesses to compare prices and shop when they can have everything delivered to their house with just a few clicks.

What is Conversational Commerce?

Conversational commerce, also known as chat commerce, is a growing business trend that involves interacting with businesses and doing business transactions using messaging and chat applications. It is the intersection of messaging apps and shopping that allows companies and customers to communicate with each other using natural language interfaces such as chat or texting or even voice-based technology.

Simply said, conversational commerce employs natural language to connect with clients along with their purchasing experience, delivering tailored assistance and recommendations while cultivating long-term relationships.

Conversational commerce aims to duplicate the one-on-one, in-store salesperson encounter with your buyers in order to provide a superior customer experience. Conversational commerce is likely to transform the way business is done, from buying products to ordering a meal at a restaurant to financial transactions.

What’s the Big deal about Conversational or Chat Commerce?

App burnout has resulted from the overabundance of smartphone apps. Simply unlock your phone and you’ll be bombarded with alerts from your favourite restaurant, e-commerce store, news site, and so on. According to a survey, people spend 85 per cent of their smartphone time on only five applications, most of which are social networking, chat, or other media apps. More than 2 billion individuals now use messaging applications. Whatsapp, Facebook messenger, Telegram, etc have a combined user base of well over 4 billion, surpassing the 4 major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn). Besides that, around 40 million people own a voice assistant, with that figure expected to rise exponentially in coming years. The widespread use of messaging applications, along with the emergence of conversational or chat commerce, has made it possible for companies to have a one-on-one discussion on a large scale.   Conversational commerce is anticipated to make an impact in the next few years, as users shift away from clicks and taps towards chat owing to the simplicity of connection.

Conversational Commerce in Practice

Conversational commerce allows e-commerce retailers to communicate with clients at every stage of their purchasing cycle. Unlike pushy pop-ups and banners, this type of marketing initiates a conversation between you and your potential consumers, allowing you to build far stronger relationships. It includes 5 steps of the customer journey map: awareness, evaluation, selection, retention, loyalty, and advocacy. You can interact with your consumer at each of these stages, improve the commerce experience, and transform each encounter into a long-lasting connection by employing the right conversational commerce tools and methods.

Steps where you may meet your consumers at each level.

• AWARENESS: When a consumer discovers that they have an issue, this stage begins. They begin to seek solutions and in the process, they stumble across you. This stage is regarded as the most crucial step of the funnel. You can offer excellent things and have amazing web pages, but without knowing you a client cannot purchase from your page. Conversational technologies enable you to connect with clients who are just starting their journey and looking for suppliers. You may use these techniques to demonstrate to consumers that you understand their concerns and know how to address them.
• EVALUATION: Customers have already done basic research and learned a little bit about you at this point. Their search for knowledge, however, has not yet come to an end. They’re still gathering information, comparing you to others, and checking customer reviews. At this point, you may leverage the power of communication to present clients with even additional information to assist them to understand your offer.
• SELECTION: This is the point at which the consumer can place orders. Even if they choose you, you can’t sit back and relax. You must reassure the consumer that they are making the correct decision for them not to alter their minds. At this point, you must keep the conversation flowing to consolidate the customer’s choice. Provide social data and fix any difficulties that arise
• RETENTION: If the consumer has reached this point, it implies you’ve met all of their needs thus far. That doesn’t mean that you must not give it your all. Taking extra care of consumers who have reached this stage is, in fact, incredibly helpful. According to data, retaining a current client is five times less expensive than acquiring a new one. To have a strong relationship with your consumer, send messages on a regular basis and reply to their messages, even if they are critical.
•  ADVOCACY: This is the final phase in the consumer journey and  is also challenging to achieve. At this stage, the consumer has turned into a brand ambassador, happily recommending your items to their friends and family. It’s a well-deserved treat for you. Customers would not have climbed so high if you hadn’t done an outstanding job during their whole journey. However, there are additional perks. If you keep the discussion going with consumers, you may ask them for testimonials or product evaluations, making them feel like they’re a member of your team. You will undoubtedly enhance such ties as a result of your actions.

SHUPPLE Chat Commerce

Conversations are at the heart of the origins of commerce, and we think they will always be at the centre of developing good customer connections. Messaging systems like Line, WeChat, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Facebook Messenger have evolved into platforms that enable business users to get dedicated identities and accounts, manage group conversations, set up businesses, and communicate with bots. On SHUPPLE Platform we have introduced “SHUPPLE Chat Commerce” where you can convert your consumer chat conversations into commercial opportunities. Sell via Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram Chat. Distribute product catalogues that include integrated payments and real-time order progress. It essentially adds commerce functionality to various messaging apps, allowing businesses to communicate with consumers and sell products more effectively.

With SHUPPLE chat, you can provide suggestions, discounts and generate orders straight within a conversation with a few taps, allowing you to stay personable and prompt with each and every client. In many respects, live chat facilitates a much-needed return to the human relationships we were accustomed to when buying in-person.

Many tremendously beneficial improvements for buyers were celebrated by e-commerce, but one unexpected consequence was a widening of the metaphorical countertop—as it grew simpler than ever for businesses to reach their consumers, it became more difficult to contact them directly. One thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of discussions in creating client loyalty. Live chat enables businesses to deliver exceptional service by leading consumers from conversation to purchase.

Feedback assists you in refining your business for more sales.

When a consumer asks a question or reports to you about a bad experience, they are typically acting as the loud minority representing a much broader group of individuals. Because most dissatisfied customers prefer to remain silent, after you’ve heard about a problem a few times, it’s probable that many other customers are experiencing the same difficulty. As a result, feedback, especially when harsh, is a gift. Live chat provides a low-barrier method for receiving feedback from any page on your business, allowing you to answer inquiries in context and in real-time. However, the ability of live chat to provoke this input can also assist reveal the main cause of an issue you’ve heard about several times. For example, if some customers delay their purchase to inquire about one of your goods, you may alter that product’s description to provide more specific information for future customers.

Chat and messaging provides you with a direct route to your consumers, allowing you to communicate with them at the appropriate moment and in the right context to facilitate or save a sale—or to solve an annoying problem—all through channels they already use and prefer. And, with SHUPPLE Chat, you can combine the benefits of one-on-one interactions with the efficiency and convenience to share product catalogues, new product launch information, promotional coupons and discount offers and enable customers to order through their favourite chat applications.

Start Communicating, Build Customer Relationships & Grow Your Business with SHUPPLE Chat Commerce.