How to Use WhatsApp Business for Conversational Commerce?

This concept was described by the former Developer Experience Lead at Uber, Chris Messina, as "the intersection of messaging apps and shopping" in 2015. For Uber, it cuts out the middleman by allowing 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.

What Does Conversational Commerce Mean for Online Businesses?

This new trend in e-commerce has several benefits for online businesses, including:

1. 24/7 availability: Chatbots can provide instant customer support and answer questions at any time, increasing customer satisfaction and improving sales.

2. Improved customer experience: Conversational interfaces provide a more natural and intuitive way for customers to interact with businesses, making the process faster and more personal.

3. Increased efficiency: Chatbots automate repetitive tasks, freeing up customer service reps to focus on more complex issues.

4. Data collection and analysis: Chatbots can collect and analyze customer data, providing valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences.

Overall, conversational commerce has the potential to transform the way online businesses interact with customers and can lead to increased sales and improved customer satisfaction.

How to Use WhatsApp Business for Conversational Commerce?

Providing Widespread Personalized Assistance

Through the use of 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 for them 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 personalized suggestions and recommendations, giving them the exact information they need to find the relevant products and services in a fraction of the time.

Offering 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.

Optimizing 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 optimization techniques that can work wonders.

Why Use WhatsApp as Your Conversational Commerce Platform

There are several reasons why businesses choose to use WhatsApp as their conversational commerce platform:

• Wide Reach: 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.

• Familiarity: WhatsApp is a well-known and widely used app, making it a familiar and trusted platform for customers to interact with businesses. With over 2 billion active users globally, businesses have a larger customer base to engage with.

• Personalization: WhatsApp provides a direct and personal line of communication between businesses and customers, allowing for more personalized customer support and sales interactions.

• Convenience: WhatsApp's messaging interface is simple and intuitive, making it easy for customers to ask questions and receive answers in real-time.

• Secure: WhatsApp is known for its strong security measures, providing customers with the peace of mind that their personal information and communication is protected.

• High engagement: since it's a more reliable communication channel, (a 98% open rate & a 45-60% click-through rate) than emails and SMS, it's also much faster. Research shows 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

By providing customers with an all-round shopping experience that is personal, convenient, and streamlined, businesses can increase customer satisfaction and build loyalty, ultimately leading to increased sales and revenue.

Here are some ways to achieve this:

1. Personalization: Use customer data to personalize their shopping experience, such as offering recommendations based on their previous purchases or interests.

2. Communication optimization: Ensure that your social commerce channels are all linked - Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp Business. This makes it easy for customers to shop and browse on-the-go.

3. Streamlined checkout process: Simplify the checkout process by reducing the number of steps and minimizing friction, such as pre-populating shipping information or offering payment on delivery.

4. Fast and reliable shipping: Offer fast and reliable shipping options, and provide customers with real-time updates on the status of their orders.

5. Easy returns and exchanges: Make it easy for customers to return or exchange items, and provide clear information on the process.

6. Exceptional customer service: Offer exceptional customer service, providing fast and helpful support for any questions or issues they may have.

At CM.com we help brands design their Conversational Commerce strategy. By including WhatsApp Business messaging as one of the main communication channels and pillars for eCommerce, businesses are able to engage in dialogue with customers on a conversational level using an app that they're both familiar and comfortable with.