Consumer Communication is Conversational
Conversational commerce has changed how customers interact with brands by allowing them to connect at any time, any day of the week, from wherever they are. Text messaging apps like iMessage and WhatsApp are now the most commonly used apps across all age groups. Even among older generations, texting is now used more frequently than phone calls.
As a result, we’re experiencing an impressive shift in the landscape of internet and digital shopping, and across every industry as all of the major Internet players have now introduced their own services. These services range from webchat to Amazon Alexa to Google RCS Business Messaging.
Below are a few insights highlighting how businesses are using messaging and voice assistants to interact with their customers:
- Telecommunications firms were among the early adopters of conversational commerce, particularly in their customer care departments. The pace of adoption in industries such as financial services, retail, and travel is accelerating as use cases expand beyond care to the entire consumer journey.
- Based on early sales and marketing use cases, conversational commerce conversion rates are up to four times higher than website conversion rates.
- Nearly 50 percent of conversations happening on platforms like LivePerson include some form of bot or automation, doubling from the beginning of 2018. Gartner’s recent, Market Guide for Conversational Platforms, forecasts that by 2021, 15 percent of all customer service interactions will be completely handled by AI — an increase of 400 percent from 2017.
- Consumers’ preferred method of communication is conversational. Data consistently indicates that conversational channels such as SMS or Facebook Messenger are chosen 70% of the time when consumers are given the option to message or call. The customer satisfaction on messaging versus traditional channels such as voice is also 10% higher on average.
- Consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable interacting with bots and AI technologies to solve service issues. A majority of Gen Z and Millennials globally (69.5 percent) can imagine a future where 100 percent of purchases are done digitally or online. In fact, 20.7 percent globally would prefer to buy most products and services completely digitally, never having to speak face-to-face with a human.
- The economic opportunity from automation is significant, as brands reduce their “cost to serve” and extend concierge-like shopping and care experiences to a broader group of customers. Conversational commerce customers report reductions in total cost to serve in the range of 15 to 50 percent in addition to higher conversion rates.
