Selling via chatbot or, in other words, selling with the help of a digital assistant?

More and more companies are implementing bots on their website or in Facebook Messenger. This refers to chat windows and messaging apps in which a real person no longer answers user queries and directs them in a specific direction, but instead intelligent software takes over these tasks.

Conversational commerce goes one step further: the intelligent digital assistants not only answer customer queries, they can also sell something directly to the customer and the sales or payment process is handled directly in the chat.

How did this development come about?

I would say you can look at these questions from two sides. On the one hand, there is the technology and the providers who are constantly using new technologies and methods that make it possible to control a call using software and, ideally, even sell it.

On the other hand, there are of course the users who are more and more accustomed to chatting. Some user groups have even skipped the classic phase of websites and online stores and gone straight from the classic telephone to the chat interface. One of the reasons for these developments is certainly the messenger service WhatsApp, which has familiarized almost every smartphone user with the chat interface. In other words, the way we communicate via chat has become as normal for almost everyone as the classic telephone was 20 years ago.

3 Examples of conversational commerce

Lead generation and conversion generation for a website with a subscription offer

Users arrive at the website with the classic three different subscription offers and prices. They read the benefits of the individual subscriptions, but they still can’t make up their minds so quickly. Either the individual features of the different subscriptions are not clearly visible, the user does not understand the differences between the subscriptions, the user does not know which subscription suits his target group or the user has further questions that go beyond the classic subscription descriptions. For example, questions about the product or questions about canceling the subscription.

In this case, a chatbot on the website is a good option. The chatbot opens as soon as it notices that a user is undecided. So he asks him how he can help and ideally specifies 2-3 topics. By asking the bot specific questions, the software quickly finds out which subscription is the right one for the user and can explain this to them in detail. Thanks to stored databases and an NLP (Natural Language Processing) component, the bot can record the user’s queries and derive their intentions from them.

The user understands why they should buy the relevant subscription and ideally orders it directly via the chatbot.

Identification of leads in the B2B sector

Especially in the B2B sector, useless leads can lead to unnecessary costs. The expensive key account managers assume that the inquiry is a well-founded customer request, prepare extensively for the first phone call and then realize that the potential customer does not meet the necessary requirements to be considered as a customer. By using chatbots, new leads can first be checked and only when the bot considers a lead to be valuable is it passed on to an account manager. The Zurich-based software company IBV Solutions, for example, uses a digital assistant for lead qualification on the website of its CollaBoard app (www.collaboard.app)

Selling via Facebook Messenger

Many companies struggle to get their target group to their own website or online store. You place ads on all platforms, but the conversion rate remains low. Why should potential customers have to get used to a new channel when everything is already possible in Facebook Messenger? Users can communicate directly with the provider’s bot via a Facebook ad or via the Facebook page of the respective company and the provider can advise customers directly in Facebook Messenger (via smartphone or desktop) and sell them the right products.

H&M did this very successfully for a while. The fashion retailer showed its users different product images with different styles to find out the customer’s individual taste. The bot can then suggest suitable items of clothing that match the user’s request and even sell them directly and handle the payment process.

If you are interested in this topic, please let me know and I will write more about it.

There are countless other use cases for conversational commerce.

It is also interesting to know what companies and providers need to consider when introducing a conversational commerce assistant. And which tools and instructions are recommended.

So, let me know if you would like to know more about this topic or which areas you are particularly interested in.

I look forward to your feedback!

Sophie Hundertmark (sophie@hundertmark.ch)