When talking about conversations, what comes to your mind? Emails, phone calls, meetings, or WhatsApp? Our work arrangements, ways of living, and even spending habits have changed significantly. More and more people prefer text messaging over audio, video, and even face-to-face meetings. This shift applies directly to business communications; customers now expect a personalised and seamless shopping experience anytime, anywhere through conversational commerce.
A Quick Summary for Chat Commerce: The Rising Customer-Centric Strategy
– As digital habits shift, over 65% of consumers now prefer messaging over traditional email or phone calls to interact with brands.
– Omnichat centralises WhatsApp, FB, and IG into one platform, allowing brands to automate 24/7 support and send personalised broadcast messages.
– Leading retailers like Sa Sa reduced customer waiting times by 57% and handled 50% of enquiries via automated chatbots, significantly boosting conversion rates.
The Growing Importance of Conversational Commerce
In May 2022, Meta held its first-ever business event, ‘Conversations,’ highlighting that chat commerce is the definitive market trend.
More than 1 billion users connect with a business account across WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram Direct every week, and the number of conversational commerce users is expected to increase. 65% of customers prefer messaging over email or phone; 50% of U.S. adults do online shopping through ‘conversations’, 62% of whom are 25-34 years old.
Conversational commerce benefits both businesses and customers. Brands can build deeper connections with their customers through popular messaging channels, and customers can get speedy, accurate responses from merchants.
How Businesses Can Implement a Chat Commerce Strategy
To stay competitive, brands must adopt a structured approach to digital messaging:
1. Integration of Social Messaging Channels
Let’s start with integrating all communication channels, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, LINE, WeChat, and Website live chat, into one place, ensuring no customers’ enquiries go missing. With the support of multiple users’ access, the customer service, marketing, branch sales, and management teams can collaboratively manage conversations across all channels.
2. 24/7 AI Chatbot Automation
Businesses should also set up Chatbots to reduce customer wait times and employees’ workloads. People usually ask similar questions, such as offer and delivery details, and can get 24/7 instant support via Chatbot automation.
For example, well-known beauty retailer Sa Sa Hong Kong successfully reduced customer wait times for agent responses by 57% and handled 50% of enquiries via automation after using omni-channel chat commerce solutions.
3. Personalised Broadcast Messages
Happy customers always come back. Conversational commerce empowers businesses to build customer loyalty and seize new business opportunities. Broadcast Messaging via WhatsApp or Recurring Notifications on Facebook are among the most commonly used features. Brands can send proactive, personalised, and automated messages that drive leads, sales, and re-engagement, such as product recommendations or new offers.
Timberland, the world’s leading outdoor apparel and footwear brand, has recently used WhatsApp to broadcast its pre-order sale message for classic boat shoes.
4. Digital Coupons & OMO Sales
Have you ever looked for coupons or discount codes before making a purchase? Giving away coupons is always an effective way to get customers to check out. More and more brands are using messaging channels to distribute digital coupons because of their extremely high open rates (over 90%). They can easily track and analyse digital coupon performance, thus optimising their coupon marketing strategies for future campaigns.
Lukfook Jewellery, a famous gold and platinum jewellery retailer, sent $200 e-coupons to selected customers for Mother’s Day promotion, generating more revenue.
There are many more advanced marketing and OMO (Online Merge Offline) sales features that can be used through conversational commerce. Messaging has become an important and powerful tool for growing your brand, attracting new customers, and achieving business goals. Ready to get started? Get in touch with Omnichat’s consultants and learn more!
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