Conversational commerce becomes a trend. The retail channel should pay attention to it and Artificial Intelligence will surely collaborate with its expansion.

This modality is nothing other than real-time dialogue between sales channels and customers, using both applications and personal contact and even going beyond the act of buying or selling, to cover, for example, requests for information on prices or delivery conditions.

More than a year ago, Facebook research revealed that more than 56% of messaging app users reported having messaged brands for more information throughout the customer journey, and that when a brand is active on a messaging app, more than 66% of consumers will feel more confident about purchases and 55% will feel more connected to the brand.

The projected growth

Associated with the importance that this behavior has for marketing, communication and sales, recent research from Juniper Research, conducted by Elisha Sudlow-Poole, revealed that Global conversational commerce spending through OTT channels, including WhatsApp or WeChat, will increase from $13.3 billion in 2022 to $25.1 billion in 2023. This 89% growth will be driven by retail and e-commerce, which next year will account for more than 35% of spending through OTT conversational commerce channels, about $9 billion in spending globally.

But there is work to do

However, regional fragmentation in the OTT messaging space was identified as a key obstacle to growth. To overcome this, urges conversational commerce providers to incorporate each messaging app individually, while strictly adhering to the different financial regulations of each country.

Issues for conversational commerce providers include the different types of payment methods used in different countries. Providers should take these differences into account and support multiple digital wallets. This flexibility will allow providers to offer a complete omnichannel experience by providing payments through OTT applications, chatbots, voicebots and RCS enterprise messaging.

Full omnichannel

According to Juniper Research, to increase market share, conversational commerce platforms must invest in value-added services to differentiate themselves from conversational services. For example, digital loyalty programs can be used to send personalized, incentivized messages and achieve increases in digital engagement. Additionally, providers should facilitate features like link tracking and call-to-action support to monitor engagement.