Talk to Your Customers: Four Ways Conversational Commerce Can Help Your Business
Online retailers face many hurdles. For starters, consumers are glued to multiple devices and channels — and every screen features another business competing for their attention. And with consumers always on the go, capturing the moment is often difficult. So what can you do in this race for customer attention?
Talk to Your Customers
It’s such an easy thought. But reaching and engaging your customers on their schedule is a challenge. Instead of a challenge, consider every moment as an opportunity. Focus on providing an excellent shopping experience to your consumers that is personalized, convenient, and helpful. Adopt a conversational commerce strategy which is integral to creating such experiences.
With a conversational commerce strategy that is focused on excellent consumer experiences, your business runs and sells 24/7, without additional hiring. Think of AI-powered chatbots, voice assistants, in-app purchases, personal recommendations — integrated with live representatives or in-store staff — to help you engage customers on their favorite channel and platform. This simplifies the shopping process for your customers, increases their satisfaction, and helps with conversions and sales.
Let’s look at four ways you can use conversational commerce to reach and exceed your business goals.
1. Engage Customers Quickly and Conveniently
Keeping your customers happy is the key to retention. According to the Vonage Global Customer Engagement Report 2022, a bad CX — such as having to repeat themselves, or being on hold for too long — is enough for 75% of customers to take their business elsewhere.
What to do?
With conversational commerce tools like chatbots, you can engage with your customers quickly and conveniently. Since consumers are already familiar with these tools, they can comfortably talk to your brand like they’re talking to a personal contact. This saves time for both the customer and your business. You can reduce customer service costs and their problems will be solved in a timely and consistent manner, making them less likely to drop off.
2. Personalize and Enhance the Customer Experience
The Vonage Global Customer Engagement Report 2022 also details how customers love their communications with family and friends. But that connection just isn’t there when communicating with businesses.
Conversational commerce solutions like instant messaging allow you to personalize the shopping experience for a particular need. For example, customers can check whether you offer expedited shipping to their area through a chatbot, which saves them from looking for answers and can prevent cart abandonment. Your customers can get their questions answered about your products and services in no-time, which incentivizes the purchase and creates a personal connection with your brand.
GLOBAL RESEARCH STUDY
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We hope you enjoy the 2024 Global Customer Engagement Report.
3. Increase Sales Throughout the Journey
Conversational commerce isn’t only helpful for solving your customers’ problems and improving their experience. It can also be a great asset to increase sales throughout your marketing funnel. For example:
Discovery stage: Inform customers about your expertise, establish trust, and notify them about new products and services, important events, or exciting promotions.
Engagement stage: Offer them the information they’re looking for through dialogue. Because of the ease of communication between you and your customers, they will be less likely to search for answers elsewhere.
Purchase stage: Combine convenient online shopping and a personalized in-store experience with recommendations, perks, and post-sale support. Your customers can get their questions answered, find products they love, and complete their purchases — all within their favorite channel. You can also use conversational commerce tools to promote additional products and services, which can further influence customer decisions with upselling and cross-selling.
You can use specific tools like the Mollie and Vonage integration, where your customer service representatives can reference conversations started by your customers to inform them, solve their problems, and sell and upsell your products.
4. Strengthen the Connections and Customer Loyalty
Conversational commerce tools can help you with your goals beyond the purchase stage. That’s because these tools help establish a connection with your customers. When they leave the shopping experience, they will have easily found exactly what they were looking for, built a personal connection to your brand, and discovered even more personalized offers.
The ease of communication between you and your customers will help soothe customer pain points through feedback, help them with better purchase decisions, and elevate their status as a valued customer.
The relationships you can build through conversations will result in higher customer retention and repeat purchases. Additionally, your customers will become brand ambassadors who will advocate for your products and services — and create opportunities for new connections.
Discover the Conversational Commerce Integrations With Vonage
Ready to explore conversational commerce opportunities? Then discover the conversational commerce integrations with Vonage. You’ll find software solutions that can help you boost customer satisfaction, retention, and sales.
