On The Origins of Conversational Commerce
Now that “Conversational Commerce” is officially a ‘thing’ and I claim to be one of the people who coined the term, it’s useful to march through its origin. I have done so in this post on the Opus Research Web site. I do so with full awareness that Conversational Commerce remains very much a work in progress and it takes a community of individuals spanning digital advertising, marketing, customer care armed with technologies from the ranks of that provice automated speech processing, CRM, Contact Center Infrastructure, AdTech, MarketingTech and… (no surprise here) System Integration.
The speed at which new conversational platforms are proliferating is staggering. I just re-tweeted and posted an article from TechCrunch that observed that nearly 50 million people in the U.S. have access to “intelligent speakers. It appeared in a post that oberved that it took 13 years for televisions to reach the 50 million mark versus 2 for #VoiceFirst devices.
Rapid adoption exposes gaps in the service delivery chain. Bots don’t talk to one another. Brands can’t have their “own voice” across all devices and channels. Growing concerns, and new regulations impacting privacy threaten several brands efforts to conduct highly personalized conversations that are informed by Big Data, which is often gathered from 3rd Parties.
Add the need for continuous identification and authentication to promote trust and you have the topics that will shape conversations at Opus Research’s Conversational Commerce Conference (C3) in London. As much as I am impressed with the quality of man-to-machine interactions, I have observed that much more progress is made when people carry on face-to-face conversations among thought-leaders in digital marketing, multi-channel and, indeed Conversational Commerce.
