No doubt there is a market out there for conversational commerce. Being an omnichannel enthusiast, I believe very strongly that retailers and brands need to be on board with the latest technologies that their customers are using. Now think about how much time people spend in their cars. Doesn’t it just make sense that you could call up an app and talk to it to order an item while en route, buy it (still while driving), and pick it up from a store on the driving route?

People cannot stop complaining about how busy they are and how little time there is to get everything done. I am guilty as charged. So there is a market out there just waiting for a time saving – multi-tasking tool like this. Next step — make sure your order management system connects to it seamlessly. It all works in the omnichannel retail world!

I’m concerned that the chatbot space is already overheated and retailers are being barraged by pitches from chatbot startups, causing concern and confusion about making the right bets. The technology is fairly cheap and easy to implement, but getting the user experience and interactions right is tricky. I think it will be 18 months before both the market matures around the best solutions and consumers begin to really adopt the use cases.

Retailers would be wise to explore options other than their own websites and apps, since consumers have not widely accepted them. Chatbots may be a potential answer, provided that they make shopping easier and save time. Plus, companies like Facebook will always be more technologically advanced than individual retailers.

I’m a technology immigrant so new devices and apps are always appearing to me as a surprise. I just learned about chatbots. They open a new era for shopping. I see them not only for expediting the transaction process, but more importantly helping to guide shoppers through the “too many options” dilemma. They can provide knowledge, make the individual smarter and help make decisions based on the users’ historical choices. These are useful tools, not only for online or mobile transactions but also inside retail stores. What is needed is the knowledge of experience (merchants, designers, artisans, stylists, etc.) to be built into the bots’ database. Great job opportunities for those experts should abound!

Yes! In this post-app era, in which consumers are hesitant to load yet another app on their smartphone, simplicity rules. Consumers are hungry for simple and quick ways to interact with retailers in a manner that fits into the consumers’ existent lives rather than needing to be an extra step. Conversational commerce is a fine term for what is about to really take off.

I like seeing the attempt at utilizing chatbot technology right now, consumers need to use it and understand its abilities. Further improvements and adoption will follow. The use of Facebook Messenger is only one small application and one that is disconnected from a retailer’s branding and shopping experience. The true power in conversational commerce is all about allowing a consumer to find the right product quicker, especially on mobile. At AddStructure I am biased, but voice technology allowing for natural language queries on a retailer’s eCommerce experience will be a major breakthrough for mobile shopping.

This depends on the actual technology being utilized for the chatbots. If it employs true machine learning capabilities, it will definitely provide value for shoppers as more and more data get consumed by the bots. For now, some of these sites are hit or miss. Others are driving real value and upselling to drive profitable growth as we speak. Bottom line, the potential is there, but don’t underestimate the value of the tech used.

We’ve been building chatbots since 2011, and invented in-stream social and chat payments, so this topic is very close to home. Conversational and social commerce has really not evolved at all since then. There are many reasons for this, the majority of which have to do with a consumer mindset while on these channels. The medium does not lend itself to a good experience when shopping or purchase decision is the context. Other reasons are just as important. To date there has been no person responsible for social/convo commerce internally at a brand. Neither the e-commerce, nor the social team are tasked with driving this. So there has been no buyer or owner for this solution internally. That may change, but at a slow evolution. If it does, I agree with you Bill. Purchases will be driven by familiarity. What is working on these channels is brands providing consumers utility, customer service, and connecting these experiences to other business systems such as CRM and Loyalty programs. After all, consumers these days are measuring brands on… Read more »

Interacting with brands in chat environments holds promise for both revenue generation as well as deepening consumer relationships, but relegating those conversations to bot-based experiences could create challenges for brands attempting to reach their mobile audiences. What we know, especially recently, thanks to new studies, is that younger consumers not only embrace chat experiences around customer support and brand interactions, they prefer and expect it, dominantly due to interactions of functional utility and basic convenience. Yet these mobile shoppers also want highly personalized and predictive outcomes, and the brands working with Facebook to attract consumers to nearby locations by bot alone will need to work hard to make sure their conversations represent the kind of high-touch/high-recognition approaches that these digitally savvy individuals demand. Consumers are craving personal and inspiring connections, to excite their emotions and satisfy their existential needs, requiring brand activations to balance the efficiency of algorithms with the effectiveness of an indisputably human touch. Conversational commerce could well represent a meaningful conduit to the mobile consumer. Its likely value is as a starting… Read more »

While I’m not convinced ordering via chatbot is necessarily easier, faster, or more satisfying than ordering via a well-designed mobile app (I’m looking at you, Starbucks), the chatbot approach does has one massive advantage over standalone apps — there’s no need to download (or store) yet another app.

With every retailer, conference, event, and connected device featuring a unique app, consumers are quickly getting sick of having to download and sort through dozens of apps they only use once every couple of months. The benefit of Facebook Messenger-based chatbots is that they can all exist in a single app most consumers already own.

With this in mind, I believe this type of chatbot has better staying power in the long term, even if it isn’t quite valuable enough just yet.