Creating a positive customer experience is critical in boosting your sales. Many customers are willing to pay more for a better experience. Fortunately, creating a positive customer experience isn’t difficult. It’s one of the most effective strategies in building long-term relations with clients. There are a few things that play an essential role in helping you build strong relations with each of your customers. It starts with conversational commerce.
What is Conversational Commerce?
Conversational commerce is a relatively new term. It’s often referred to as chat or conversational marketing. Using conversational commerce makes it possible for online retailers to better sell their products or services through chatbots, a voice assistant, a chat app, or other messaging platforms. Creating a personalized and helpful experience for the customer will help them navigate faster through the sales funnel.
How Does It Work?
Conversational commerce makes it possible for online businesses to connect with customers throughout each sales journey. Instead of using aggressive pop-up ads or banners, conversational commerce creates a dialogue between you and potential customers. It helps create a much better relationship.
You can divide the customer journey into five different stages: awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy. Using the right conversational commerce tools makes it possible to connect with each of your customers during these stages. It improves the commerce experience and builds a long-lasting relationship.
Different Types of Conversational Commerce
You can use a variety of tools for implementing conversational commerce in your online business. Some of these tools may work better for different companies than others. It’s essential to take the time to research your available options to create the best customer experience possible. Here is an overview of the most common types of conversational commerce tools:
Live Chat
Live chat is one of the best ways to communicate with potential customers. It’s especially useful for customers who need a few answers or assistance with your product or services. Using live chat on your website makes it possible for each customer to receive an immediate response without having to wait forever on hold. A customer service agent can efficiently work with multiple customers simultaneously. This improves productivity and helps you provide immediate support.
Chatbots
Chatbots are another popular way to answer questions to common questions about your product or services. Using chatbots makes it possible to answer questions from multiple users at the same time. Customers will be able to get immediate answers at any time of the day or night. You can also implement chatbots on your website or messaging platforms. This makes it possible to deliver a conversational experience throughout various stages of the customer journey.
Messaging Apps
A messaging app is a great way to communicate with potential customers. These apps also enable you to use memes, GIFs, and emojis, which help keep the conversation light and improve customer engagement. One reason brands are using messaging apps is because it creates a personalized communication platform. This helps to increase conversion rates.
Voice Assistants
Voice assistants are becoming more popular in many electronic devices. They are convenient, fun, and make it easier to multitask. Providing voice assistance services makes it possible to provide quick answers to common questions. It even makes it easier to search your website. Voice assistant technology will only continue to evolve and become more prevalent. This is with the help of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing software.
Benefits for Online Stores
Conversational commerce makes it possible to use various tools to best meet your customers’ needs. These tools can play a crucial role in improving the customer experience, whether you use voice assistants, chatbots, messaging apps, or other services. Here are a few of the main benefits of using conversational commerce for online stores:
Limit Cart Abandonment
Shopping cart abandonment is a significant problem impacting online businesses. Statistics show that nearly 70% of shopping carts are abandoned. This results in a lot of missed sales opportunities. One way to overcome this challenge is to use live chat to offer support in helping customers finish their orders. Creating a proactive approach can help minimize cart abandonment and significantly improve the bottom line for your company.
Close More Leads
Another benefit of conversational commerce is that it helps you convert more leads into customers. For example, live chat makes it possible to highlight special discounts or answer any questions related to a product. Giving each customer the information they need during the sales journey can often lead to more purchases. Chatbots are another effective way to answer any questions, such as highlight delivery options or discussing a refund policy.
Gain Feedback
Gathering feedback from your customers with natural conversations is often a much better option than using web forms. You can gain feedback in many ways, such as using chatbots on a Facebook post or offering a live chat survey to gather more information. Understanding your customers’ opinions will help you further improve your product and keep them happy over the long term.
Build Customer Loyalty
Making a positive first impression is vital in building customer loyalty. Supporting each one of your customers throughout their sales journey is an excellent way to build trust, as they are even more likely to use your product or services in the future. Offering promotional coupons with chatbots or providing voice assistant services are just a few of the many ways you can develop a loyal following with your customers.
Getting Started with Conversational Commerce
Implementing conversational commerce for your business doesn’t happen overnight. However, you can often achieve outstanding results by following a few steps to help your business fully realize its potential with conversational commerce. Here are a few things to remember while getting started with this technology.
Analyze Your Needs
The first step to using conversational commerce is to identify your needs. The needs of each online business are always different, whether you are looking to boost sales, decrease shopping cart abandonment, or provide better customer support. You can create a list and order them by priority to help you accomplish these goals.
Perform Research
The next step is to perform research in advance while learning about all of the available tools for your business. Doing your research in advance can help you determine which technology is best to use, such as using chatbots or voice assistant services. Gaining feedback from customers can also help you determine the best tools to use.
Find a Partner
Selecting a reliable partner that easily integrates with your business is important for conversational commerce. Using technology that’s easy to implement and manage is also critical in saving yourself time without hiring any specialists.
Measure Your Success
One of the final stages is launching your conversational commerce services to help you improve your customer experience and increase sales. Continuously measuring your success is essential in making effective changes for the future, whether it’s conversation rates, satisfaction scores, or a variety of other measurements. Real-time metrics can help you continue to evaluate your performance and improve your services.
Closing Thoughts
Using conversational commerce services is an excellent option for a wide range of online retailers. You can choose from various tools to improve the customer experience, such as chatbots, messaging apps, or voice assistant services. Now is a great time to begin implementing these services to help improve customer experience and maximize your earnings.
