How to Use Conversational Commerce to Improve your Customer Experience
We’ve all been there: you’re in the middle of a shopping experience on your favourite retail website, and suddenly you need help. You find yourself staring at a chat window for 15 minutes with no response from anyone, or, even worse, someone does respond but doesn’t really seem to understand what you’re asking.
Not exactly the best way to make a sale—or keep your customers coming back!
Your customer experience is the most important part of your business. As a company, you want to make sure that your customers feel like they’re being listened to.
You want them to feel like you care about what matters to them and that you are invested in providing them with an unforgettable experience.
With conversational commerce, you can do just that. By offering an easy way for your customers to interact with your brand, you can create a more human experience for them and improve their perception of your brand as a whole.
Through conversational commerce, users can get help from companies directly through messaging platforms like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp—without having to go through many different steps or jump through many hoops.
This approach is designed to streamline the process of getting help from companies while also making it more personal and engaging than other methods (like calling someone up on their phone).
Why do brands need Conversational Commerce to improve customer experience?
Conversational commerce is the future of e-commerce, and it’s here to stay. This form of marketing is designed to improve customer engagement by making a customer’s buyer’s journey more human and effortless.
Conversational commerce combines the best of both worlds—the personalization of in-store shopping with the convenience of online shopping—into one seamless experience that feels like talking to a friend.
This kind of experience creates more loyalty from customers, who will be more willing to return to your brand and tell their friends about you. It also helps your company increase its perceived quality, which raises your brand’s status in the eyes of potential customers.
With conversational commerce, businesses can not only provide fast and friendly service, they can also build relationships with their customers that will last long after the transaction has been made. Here are five ways brands can use Conversational commerce to their advantage:
- Make it easier for customers to find the answers they need when they need them.
- Create a more personalised experience for each customer by engaging them with their name and other information about them.
- Provide more options for interacting with your brand, such as voice-enabled devices or chatbots.
- Promote engagement between your brand and its customers by making it easy for them to share their experiences on social media or other channels.
- Use conversational commerce to help cultivate loyalty from your customers by providing exclusive offers and rewards that only they can access through conversation.
Let’s take a look at how brands can leverage conversational commerce at various stages of the marketing funnel.
Conversational marketing at the Top of the Funnel
When you’re at the top of the funnel and have a new prospect, you have one goal: get them to start trusting your brand. You want to build that connection with them and make it so that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll be thinking about you first.
At the top of the funnel, you want to engage with potential customers and make them aware of your brand in a non-pushy way. You want them to feel like they’re making their own decision about whether or not they want to buy from you, not being forced into it.
One way to accomplish this is by using conversational commerce technology that allows you to offer helpful advice or suggestions as part of your marketing strategy. With Conversational Marketing, buyers get the information they need faster. They start building trust with your brand and recognize you as a reliable source of content, which means they’re more likely to buy from you.
The best way to incorporate conversational commerce at the top of the funnel is by creating a seamless customer experience. This means that when customers are browsing products, they can get answers to their questions about those products without having to exit their shopping experience.
You can use it to:
- Promote your brand and products
- Build trust and credibility with your audience
- Gain insights into their needs and interests
You can accomplish this by providing a chatbot that answers basic questions about your product and its use.
For example, if someone is looking at a pair of shoes and wants to know what size they should order, they can ask that question and receive an answer within seconds.
The chatbot would then provide the customer with links to other pages on your website where they can find more information about sizing or product details.
You can use conversational commerce to build trust with potential customers and help them understand how they could benefit from using your product or service.
For example, if you’re a clothing brand, you can use conversational commerce to help customers find out which offerings would work best for them based on their body type and style preferences. You can also use conversational commerce to provide customer support and answer questions about sizing before someone actually buys anything from you.
For example, H&M uses its chatbot Kik to deliver an unforgettable conversational experience to its shoppers. In addition to the usual recommendations and product information, H&M’s chatbot Kik also offers a personalised shopping experience.
This bot acts as a personal digital stylist, asking users to answer a series of multiple-choice questions to determine their preferences before making bespoke recommendations.
Conversational Marketing at the Middle of the Funnel
Conversational Marketing in the middle of your funnel is like a warm hug to your leads.
It’s a way to make them feel comfortable with you, making them more likely to become sales-ready leads and accounts.
The middle of the funnel is where companies can really differentiate their sales process—and it’s also a place where marketing teams often struggle. That’s because it’s not enough to be relevant anymore; you need to be personalised and customised to each person’s needs and desires, which means gathering information about them and using it to create a personal experience that speaks directly to them.
Here are three ways you can use conversational marketing at the middle of the funnel:
- Identify questions that are commonly asked by your target audience, then answer them with content that supports your product or service.
- Use customer data to create personalised content that resonates with each individual customer.
- Use social media and chat platforms like Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp to engage with your customers in a personal way.
Here’s how brands can use conversational marketing to nurture leads and build trust at the middle of the funnel:
- Use chatbots to answer questions and guide customers through their purchasing journey. Chatbots can handle simple questions, like “how do I set up my account?”
And they can also gather information from prospects about their preferences so that when it comes time for sales reps to reach out, they know what those prospects are looking for. - Reach out with personalised emails or text messages that address specific concerns or questions from each prospect. This is especially helpful if you’re trying to sell something complicated like insurance or legal services and need your prospects to understand what it is you’re offering and how it will benefit them before making your final sales pitch.
- Deliver relevant and valuable content for each stage of your customer’s journey: For example, if they’re just getting started with your brand, send them a resource guide or other educational materials that will help them get familiar with your product or service.
If they’ve already purchased from you once, send them a tip sheet on how to optimise their current setup for maximum performance. And if they’re looking to upgrade their current setup, send them a list of recommended upgrades based on their needs and budget. - Share Personalised recommendations: Conversational commerce is all about the customer experience, and personalised recommendations based on previous purchases or browsing history can help you make the most of your customer’s shopping experience.
When you offer personalised recommendations, you can do several things to increase average cart value: - Recommend products that are likely to appeal to your customer’s interests. This will help them feel like they’re getting exactly what they want, which will increase their confidence in your store and make them more likely to buy again in the future.
- Use this information about their interests and past purchases to suggest complementary items that might not have occurred to them before. This will make for a better overall experience for both parties involved!
- Use this information about their interests and past purchases as a way of targeting ads toward them based on those interests, which means that when these ads show up on other sites (like Facebook or Instagram), they’ll be more likely to click on them because they already know what they’re looking for.
Here’s how Kettlebell Kings encourages its visitors to sign up for their workout service to build trust and ultimately convert visitors into paying customers.
Conversational Marketing at the Bottom of the Funnel
Conversational marketing is a powerful tool for helping you build trust and loyalty with your customers at the bottom of the marketing funnel.
It helps you solve customer problems, provide them with the information they need when they need it, make sure you’re delivering on your brand promise by having a consistent and coherent conversation with customers throughout their entire buying experience, and build trust and loyalty by showing that you care about their needs and wants and are willing to go above and beyond to make sure they’re satisfied with their purchase.
At the bottom of the funnel, Conversational Marketing focuses on the nitty-gritty details and questions of the customer and makes the sales process more seamless and efficient. Here are three ways to use Conversational Marketing at this stage:
- Create a FAQ page where you can list all of your most common questions and answers. This helps customers find what they need quickly and easily, without having to ask you for help or dig through your website.
- Host live chats or webinars about your product or service so that people can get answers in real time—and feel like they’re getting personal attention from you! This is also a great way to get feedback from customers on what’s working or not working with your business, so you can improve as needed.
- Use live chat so that people can chat with an employee while they’re browsing around your website—and if they have questions, they’ll feel like they’re talking directly to someone who knows exactly what they’re going through!
A great example of conversational marketing at the bottom of the funnel is the chatbot used by American Leather to deliver a conversational experience after a user has made a purchase. The bot makes it easy for customers to check their order status, access order receipts and invoices, or check the warranty terms.
Final Thoughts
The possibilities are endless when it comes to leveraging the power of Conversational Marketing across your funnel.
You can use it to set up your brand, create trust, and build relationships with your customers. You can use it to convert more leads into customers, and you can use it to turn your customers into repeat buyers.
The key is to implement this strategy in a thorough, thoughtful way—and you’re guaranteed to see an increase in ROI!
If you’re looking for more information on how to use conversational marketing, we have a number of resources available that can help. If you have any questions or need help getting started, let us know!
Book a demo of LimeChat today to get started with conversational commerce.