How to use WhatsApp Business for Conversational Commerce

What Does Conversational Commerce Mean for Online Businesses?

That's more or less it in a nutshell: brands can implement Conversational Commerce to improve dialogue and overall communication with customers by using social messaging platforms and technology such as chatbots and virtual assistants. In the case of Uber, it cuts out the middleman - having to make a phone call to someone at a regular taxi office, who then calls the taxi driver and tells them where to go, for example - and instead allows users of the app to find, order, and communicate with their driver directly and in real-time, without having to exit the app at any moment.

How to Use WhatsApp Business Conversational Commerce?

Provide Personalised Assistance

Through AI chatbots, growing brands can offer quick and efficient one-to-one customer support without hiring a load of customer service staff to do the job around the clock. For example, customers can message your WhatsApp Business Platform with general questions about gift ideas, and you can program your AI chatbot to offer personalised suggestions and recommendations, giving them the exact information they need to find the relevant products and services in a fraction of the time.

Offer 24/7 Customer Support With Quicker Response Times

When people have a problem or a question that needs answering quickly, listening to hold music or scrolling through lengthy pages of information that may or may not be relevant to what they need to know is the last thing that they want to be doing with their time. As an alternative, you can design a FAQ WhatsApp chatbot that will instantly provide your customers with the answers they're looking for, without them having to read through the FAQs section on your website or spend time on hold with your customer service department.

Optimise Your Customers’ Checkout Experience to Boost Sales

Studies show that just under 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned, something that's a constant source of frustration for online retail businesses across the world. Conversational Commerce moves customer interactions online so that problems that would have otherwise stopped them from purchasing can be solved quickly and easily. Here, WhatsApp allows you to program simple yet effective actions to help nudge customers back in the right direction. Abandoned cart reminders and back-in-stock notifications are great examples of ideal conversion optimisation techniques that can work wonders.

Why Use WhatsApp as Your Conversational Commerce Platform

First of all, the figures speak for themselves: people like WhatsApp and they use it regularly. Recent statistics show that two billion people across the globe use WhatsApp on a monthly basis, making it the most widely used mobile messenger app in the world by quite some distance. It's considerably more reliable in terms of communication, as messages on WhatsApp have a 98% open rate & a 45-60% click-through rate - that's five times more than emails and SMS. It's also much faster than any other platform out there, with research showing that 70% of people will check a new message within five minutes of receiving it.

With such incredible reach and possibilities for communication, it's great news that WhatsApp is now enabling Conversational Commerce via its online Business Platform. More and more people are warming to this idea, with 68% of adults saying that they're more likely to buy from a business that they can message directly.

Giving Your Customers an All-Round Shopping Experience

Imagine you’re scrolling down your Instagram feed and suddenly see an ad about your favourite brand of sneakers. With one click, you can be taken to a chat within WhatsApp, where you will be provided with a completely automated shopping experience that allows you to personalise your order with the colour and shoe size of your choice. Within a matter of minutes and with minimal effort, you’ve been guided through the process from start to finish, and you now have the exact product you were looking for.

We can help you make that kind of experience a reality for you and your customers by helping you design your Conversational Commerce strategy. When you include WhatsApp Business messaging as one of the main communication channels and pillars for your eCommerce business, you make it possible for yourself to engage in dialogue with customers on a conversational level like you would in real life using an app that they're both familiar and comfortable with.