Conversational commerce is a two-way discussion between a business and customer through messaging and chat apps where a relationship is established, ideally leading to a value-based transaction. With conversational commerce, customers can chat with your company, ask questions, get advice and personalized recommendations, read reviews, and complete purchases—all within the messaging app or using a virtual personal assistant (like Amazon Alexa or Google Home). These experiences can be delivered through chatbots, conversational AI, human agents, or a combination of each.
The definition of conversational commerce reads as if there are people on either end of the line. However, the goal of a conversational solution is to provide personalization and convenience throughout the entire customer lifecycle. This is typically delivered through messaging, virtual agents, and live agents when required. It’s not who answers the customer, but how they’re answered that counts.
Empathy—when taken in the context of customer communications—means understanding the importance of every transaction to the consumer. They’re calling or messaging for a reason, and the result of the transaction holds value for them. To exhibit empathy, the agent who answers the call or text—whether human or virtual—must listen to not only the words used by the customer, but also their tone of voice.
AI-powered conversational chatbots are evolving systems that are continually improved to exhibit greater empathy. They understand differences in dialect, and they listen for phrases and tones that indicate frustration.
They use predictive analysis and past experiences to hand-off calls to live agents before the customer experiences dissatisfaction. If the system waits too long, and the customer becomes agitated, it learns and incorporates that transaction into its predictive data set so that it can do better the next time it encounters a similar scenario.
To read more, download the Conversational Commerce: The Customer Experience of the Future eBook.
