The tech company invited a select group of small and mid-size enterprises (SMEs) to attend a workshop on the value of business messaging and how conversational commerce can help to build positive brand experiences as people embrace shopping via online chats. The workshop was part of Meta’s ongoing Community Conversations series in APAC.
According to George Neo, a messaging platforms partner manager at Meta, “In the last two and a half years, the epidemic has actually boosted the adoption of conversational messaging by enterprises.” “Consumers are now more at ease communicating with firms via texts,” says the study.
Commerce in conversation
Virtually every company can benefit from conversational commerce, which is the fusion of e-commerce and online messaging services. For his restaurant, Phongthas Loetthanaphan, owner of Ruen Petch Suki, connects an offline reservation platform with a business messaging platform. His business has undergone a metamorphosis as a result.
According to Loetthanaphan, one of the main advantages of chatbots is that they automatically respond to communications. He says that in the past, if he didn’t respond to a message within five minutes, consumers would go to other retailers: “Chatbots can answer customers instantaneously so I can finish the transactions or answer the questions that the customers require the most information about.”
According to a recent BCG & Meta poll released in August 2022, companies who collaborate with partners or employ third-party technological solutions typically have greater purchase and conversion rates with their clients. A scalable, sustainable business messaging ecosystem that increases efficiency and reduces costs can be developed by collaborating with other parties.
“What we have observed with the 150,000 firms that use us is that they are able to lower the cost of customer acquisition by up to 40% within around six months. According to Pancake partner Aditya Gupta, that is the true value of the one-on-one relationship with the customer.
To manage online sales and track purchases via Facebook Live chats, online shoe shop GDX collaborated with Pancake. From 100 orders per day in 2018 to 1,500 orders per day in 2020, Pancake helped GDX raise its daily order volume by 1,500%.
The primary source of that traffic, according to Gupta, is a type of advertisement known as a click-to-message. The click-to-message advertisements from Meta take users right into conversations with the brand on WhatsApp, Instagram, or Messenger. Because it generates genuine business value for advertising and merchants, Meta is very interested in this. Today, conversational advertising or messaging is responsible for 70% of GDX’s traffic.
Humanize your communications
However, putting conversational commerce into practise has its own set of difficulties. It can be challenging to reply to consumer messages promptly, and chatbots cannot take the place of interpersonal conversation. Customers are aware that they are speaking with a chatbot, according to Loetthanaphan It “could reduce their level of involvement with the brand.”
We can take steps to humanise these interactions in order to boost engagement, enhance the shopping experience, and encourage the completion of transactions. Giving chatbots a human name, using everyday language, including humour in the exchanges, and implementing communication delays that mimic human-to-human chat conversations all had “a direct and beneficial relationship with transaction outcomes,” according to research published by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee last year.
