Conversational Commerce Platforms and Tools for Business

Conversational commerce is revolutionizing the way businesses interact with customers. This innovative approach combines messaging platforms, AI, and commerce to create seamless customer experiences.

Platforms like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp have become essential tools for businesses, allowing them to reach a vast audience.

Businesses can leverage these platforms to automate customer support, provide personalized experiences, and drive sales. According to a study, 67% of customers prefer messaging platforms for customer service.

With conversational commerce, businesses can also create chatbots to handle routine inquiries, freeing up human customer support agents to focus on complex issues.

Additional reading: Mobile Commerce

Conversational commerce refers to the use of chatbots, messaging apps, and voice assistants to facilitate online shopping and customer interactions. It enables businesses to provide personalized product recommendations, answer queries, and streamline the purchasing process through natural, conversational interfaces.

Conversational commerce has changed a lot in the last decade, and today it can refer to numerous ways e-commerce retailers use messaging and conversational technology, like artificial intelligence (AI) and bots, to enhance and support the shopping experience.

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Companies are now using conversational commerce to better understand their customers and offer them a better experience online by providing end consumers with a simple way to interact. This helps companies serve customers more effectively and collect valuable zero-party data.

The customer journey is complex, and conversational technology constantly creates new opportunities for brands and customers to connect. Brands need to enable the conversational experiences customers have come to expect.

Conversational commerce examples include:

With conversational commerce, consumers can chat with company representatives, get customer support, ask questions, get personalized recommendations, read reviews, and click to purchase, all from within messaging apps.

Conversational commerce simplifies the online shopping experience and shortens customer service response times. Consumers benefit from fast, personalized interactions while brands increase conversion rates and revenue.

Customers want interactions to feel authentic and personal, and conversational commerce makes this possible by weaving each interaction into a larger dialogue between the customer and the brand. This results in better customer experience (CX), seamless conversations across channels and touchpoints, and a better bottom line for the retailer.

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Conversational commerce can help boost sales when you engage your customer at the right time. A strategically placed web widget, a proactive notification, and a great AI chatbot can increase engagement by suggesting products and showcasing promotions.

The benefits of conversational commerce include:

By leveraging advanced AI chatbots, brands can offer one-to-one customer support without increasing headcount. This allows customers to get instant answers to their questions, resolve issues, and build a reputation for stellar customer service.

Conversational commerce drives increased sales by offering a seamless shopping experience that guides customers through their purchase journey with personalized recommendations and instant assistance. This personalized approach creates a sense of trust, convenience, and satisfaction that encourages customers to make informed purchase decisions, thus contributing to revenue growth.

Having a conversational commerce platform would enable your business to use conversational AI to generate an in-depth strategy to better serve your customers. This would create more meaningful interactions with customers, facilitating sales more quickly and easily.

Businesses can address customer queries in real time, offer product information, and facilitate transactions seamlessly, creating a more efficient and convenient shopping journey for users.

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Conversational commerce is more than just chatbots, and there are several types of conversational commerce that businesses can use to connect with customers. Messaging and chat apps are becoming increasingly popular, with 36% of shoppers making a purchase through a messaging app in 2023, a 227% increase since 2021.

Businesses can use messaging and chat apps to provide product recommendations, answer customer inquiries, and facilitate seamless transactions, all within the same conversation. A single agent can field multiple conversations at once, providing an edge over phone calls.

Voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri are also being used for conversational commerce, with 17% of consumers using voice assistants to reorder items and 60% of shoppers making daily or weekly purchases using a home voice smart assistant.

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Conversational commerce isn't just about chatbots, but also about the technology that powers them. One key player is AI.

Chatbots and AI use advanced natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to simulate human-like conversations, answer frequently asked questions, and assist with transactions. These systems let businesses offer cost-effective, 24/7 customer support while streamlining processes.

AI-powered chatbots are getting smarter, trained on product descriptions, sales data, and reviews to provide automated, personalized service that feels human. Over 55% of shoppers have used AI-powered chatbots to resolve self-service issues.

Generative AI takes this a step further with copilots and concierges, like Commerce Cloud Copilot for Shoppers, that can offer intelligent, custom solutions. These systems can even recognize customer preferences, track purchase history, and offer relevant suggestions to aid the delivery of a seamless customer journey.

Voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, and Google Home are also part of the conversational commerce landscape, with 17% of consumers using them to reorder items and 60% making daily or weekly purchases using a home voice smart assistant.

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Messaging apps are a type of conversational commerce, allowing customers to communicate directly with brands, ask specific questions, and receive personalized recommendations through platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and more.

These experiences are gaining traction, with 36% of shoppers making a purchase through a messaging app in 2023, a 227% increase since 2021.

Chatbots and AI are also a type of conversational commerce, using advanced natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to simulate human-like conversations and answer frequently asked questions.

Over half of shoppers (55%) have used AI-powered chatbots to resolve self-service issues, and 61% prefer this autonomy when dealing with issues that can be quickly resolved.

Voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, or Google Home are another type of conversational commerce, allowing customers to make purchases and reorder items with just their voice.

In fact, 17% of consumers have used voice assistants to reorder items, and 60% of shoppers make daily or weekly purchases using a home voice smart assistant.

Virtual shopping assistants, also known as copilots and concierges, are the next generation of chatbots, using conversational AI to understand and predict customer needs, provide guidance and recommendations, and adapt to changing preferences.

These advanced capabilities can offer personalized discounts and product recommendations, as seen in Commerce Copilot for Shoppers, which can reply to specific customer requests with links to top-rated products that fit their description.

SMS marketing is another type of conversational commerce, allowing marketers to have two-way conversations with customers via text, elevating personalization and the customer experience.

Building an effective SMS strategy should involve conversational commerce, enabling businesses to offer seamless customer journeys and improve customer satisfaction.

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Chat apps are revolutionizing the way businesses interact with customers. According to Example 12, "Messaging and chat apps" are being used by businesses to provide product recommendations, answer customer inquiries, and facilitate seamless transactions.

These apps allow customers to engage with businesses in a more personal and interactive way, creating a more efficient and convenient shopping journey. As mentioned in Example 13, "Social messaging apps" such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat are increasingly being used on ecommerce websites, enabling customers to ask questions, make purchases, and receive product recommendations.

Businesses can use chat apps to engage with multiple customers at once, providing an edge over phone calls. The proactive nature of chat apps allows agents to engage with website visitors who would otherwise quietly lurk on the page, creating extra opportunities for interactions.

Here are some key benefits of using chat apps for conversational commerce:

By leveraging chat apps, businesses can create a more personalized, efficient, and convenient shopping experience for their customers.

Conversational commerce is all about creating interactive dialogue between businesses and customers. It uses AI, machine learning, and natural language processing to quickly diagnose customer demands and provide the information customers need to solve their problems.

These tools can also be taken further with advancements like agentic AI, which uses AI agents to autonomously engage users and make decisions. This leads to more seamless and organic interactions on websites.

Conversational commerce tools gather key insights from customer conversations and use them to personalize future customer experiences. This leads to stronger brand loyalty among customers who engage with the AI.

Here are a few examples of conversational commerce in action:

Businesses need to have a presence on all important messaging channels, including WhatsApp, Viber, Telegram, RCS, WeChat, Apple Business Chat, Facebook Messenger, and SMS. Each customer has their own channel preference, so businesses can't just rely on one platform.

Chatbots and AI use advanced natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to simulate human-like conversations. They can answer frequently asked questions, assist with transactions, and recognize customer preferences.

AI enables businesses to understand consumer intent to purchase and guide them through the purchasing process with conversational AI. Two key aspects of this are natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning.

NLP analyzes and processes text or speech, making interactions with chatbots feel more like human conversation. Machine learning analyzes customer preferences, purchase history, and browsing patterns to make intelligent recommendations and guide customers through their purchase journey.

Businesses can use AI and automation in conversational messaging to intelligently triage interactions based on customer intent, sentiment, and language. This can route customers to the appropriate agent based on conversation priority, agent skill, agent capacity, and agent status.

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Bloomreach Clarity is a powerful conversational commerce platform that can help businesses deliver personalized customer experiences at scale.

To get started with conversational commerce, you'll want to choose a conversational commerce platform that fits your business model. Some popular options include Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, but you may also consider Shopify Inbox, which is a free messaging platform that lets you chat with customers as they shop across many channels.

Shopify Inbox is a great option because it has a seamless workflow in the Shopify admin and allows you to manage conversations from multiple channels, including online store chat, the Shop app, Instagram, and Messenger. You can also use it to quickly understand who customers are, send product recommendations, and automate greetings and FAQs.

Here are some key features of Shopify Inbox:

According to data, 70% of Shopify Inbox conversations are with shoppers who are ready to buy.

Mms allows for sending media files that SMS can't support, making it a valuable marketing tool for your brand.

Being able to have a two-way conversation after sending those multimedia messages to opted-in customers is even more valuable.

This means you can engage with your audience on a more personal level, which is a game-changer for building brand loyalty and customer relationships.

Ecommerce search bars are about to get a major upgrade thanks to conversational AI. Businesses may now offer two-way conversations prompted by a customer's search.

A customer searching for a bike may see conversation-starter questions directly in the search bar, and clicking on one will bring up a chat window so they can ask further questions. This is a game-changer for customers who want more information before making a purchase.

The traditional one-way use of search bars is still effective, but the addition of two-way conversations will make the shopping experience more engaging and personalized.

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Choosing a conversational commerce platform is crucial to connect with your customers. You can choose from various platforms like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp, but it's essential to pick one that your customers already use and fits your business model.

Shopify Inbox is a great option to consider, as it's a free messaging platform that lets you chat with customers as they shop across many channels. Your customers are already familiar with it, and it's a seamless way to manage conversations.

With Shopify Inbox, you can turn browsers into buyers with the power of chat. It has many use cases, including turning on chat and tracking results with a seamless workflow in the Shopify admin.

Here are some of the key features of Shopify Inbox:

Shopify Inbox has shown impressive results, with 70% of Inbox conversations being shoppers ready to buy. This means that by choosing the right platform and using features like Shopify Inbox, you can increase your chances of converting browsers into buyers.

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Bloomreach Clarity is an AI-powered conversational shopping agent that puts customer and product data to work for personalized customer experiences.

Powered by the latest advancements in agentic AI and large language models, Bloomreach Clarity engages with shoppers to deliver personalized, human-like product expertise. This helps ecommerce companies prioritize customer loyalty.

With Bloomreach Clarity, ecommerce companies can turn curious onlookers into loyal customers and build brand loyalty by having intelligent customer service interactions powered by generative AI.

Bloomreach Clarity is built upon a powerful real-time customer data engine and trained on more than a decade of commerce data, giving it a unique understanding of how customers shop and how products perform globally.

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Conversational commerce is all about creating meaningful interactions with customers, and that starts with a solid strategy. To implement a conversational commerce strategy, you need to define your efforts, including the types of inquiries your bot will handle, the channels it will be active in, and the language and tone it will use.

Defining your strategy is crucial, as it will help you determine how your chatbot will fit into your overall sales and marketing strategy. For example, you can use your chatbot to help potential customers with their orders at checkout, or to promote special offers and discounts.

To make your chatbot smarter and better at answering questions, you need to train it over time by leveraging AI and machine learning. Enter information about your products and services and frequently asked questions about your business.

Planning a conversational flow is also essential, as it will determine how your chatbot talks when a human isn't around. Design an easy-to-follow flow that meets your customers' needs, using a flow builder in your conversational commerce tool to map out the steps and questions your chatbot will ask throughout each customer touchpoint.

To personalize interactions, you need to integrate systems and software, making sure that information is accessible to all teams and agents. This will allow your bots and messaging capabilities to provide insight to agents in their workspace and suggest ways to fix issues.

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Conversational commerce is all about meeting customers where they are in their journey with your brand.

Brands are using conversational commerce channels and tools, such as messaging apps and chatbots, to personalize experiences for customers.

Examples of conversational commerce include using conversational AI to offer magical experiences to customers.

Conversational commerce use cases are rapidly expanding with advances in technology, offering inspiration for implementing these strategies in your own processes.

By meeting customers where they are, ecommerce businesses can go above and beyond to offer a seamless experience through conversational AI.

Soho House is a prime example of how messaging can drive significant increases in customer spending. By leveraging conversational CRM, Soho House streamlines communication and surfaces opportunities to upsell and cross-sell, resulting in a 30 percent increase in spending.

Their messaging strategy allows them to provide personalized experiences at scale, which is especially important in the luxury market. This approach has led to higher customer satisfaction overall.

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Conversational commerce is all about making interactions with your brand seamless and personalized. Examples of conversational commerce include messaging, appointment scheduling, and more.

Soho House and Mollie’s Motel use conversational CRM to provide luxurious experiences at scale, with messaging driving a 30 percent increase in spending and higher customer satisfaction.

Conversational commerce facilitates appointment scheduling by offering a convenient way for customers to book appointments, receive reminders, and manage their schedules. This approach simplifies the booking process and improves customer engagement.

By meeting customers where they are in their journey, conversational commerce can offer a magical experience through conversational AI.

You can gauge your success with conversational commerce by looking at metrics like customer satisfaction levels, average order value, and number of returning customers.

Customer satisfaction levels are a key indicator of a successful conversational commerce implementation. By monitoring these metrics, you can see if your customers are happy with the experience.

Compare the cost effectiveness of conversational commerce tools against traditional customer service channels to see if there are reductions in support costs or increases in your company's ability to handle a higher volume of inquiries.

The future of conversational commerce is being shaped by advancements in generative AI, unlocking innovation beyond what we've previously imagined. Customers will eventually become accustomed to the ease and convenience that conversational commerce and AI agents provide.

To gauge success with conversational commerce, focus on key metrics like customer satisfaction levels, average order value, and the number of returning customers.

Customer satisfaction levels are a great indicator of a successful conversational commerce implementation. You'll notice improvements in this area when customers are happy with their shopping experience.

Compare the cost effectiveness of conversational commerce tools against traditional customer service channels. You may see reductions in support costs or an increase in your company's ability to handle a higher volume of inquiries.

Monitor customer feedback and online reviews to see how they compare before and after implementing conversational commerce tools. Positive feedback and reviews indicate a successful and satisfying customer experience.

The future of conversational commerce is being shaped by advancements in generational AI. This technology is unlocking innovation beyond what we've previously imagined.

Customers will eventually expect personalized experiences from all brands they interact with online, and conversational commerce and AI agents will provide the foundation for these experiences.

Conversational commerce is on the cusp of a seismic change, with generative AI unlocking innovation beyond what we've previously imagined. Businesses can expect to see significant advancements in the future.

Service and sales reps will use chatbots to augment their work, finding a new balance between automation and human touch. This will enable them to handle increasingly complex issues and provide more personalized support.

Customers will become accustomed to the ease and convenience that conversational commerce and AI agents provide, and will expect equally personalized experiences from all brands they interact with online. They will demand a seamless and personalized customer experience, and businesses will need to deliver.

Embracing conversational commerce will be crucial for businesses looking to stay ahead in a competitive marketplace. By incorporating conversational commerce strategies into their everyday workflows, businesses can deliver a more intuitive, organic, and convenient commerce experience for their customers.