Conversational commerce

Conversational commerce is the empowerment of consumers to make shopping decisions, purchases and transactions through messaging apps and other conversational technology. Conversational services and technology have transformed the way people shop. It is easier for consumers to explore product options, make purchases and pay for transactions through messaging apps, chat boxes and voice assistants.

How Did Conversational Commerce Start?

The phrase “conversational commerce” is frequently attributed to Chris Messina, who is the inventor of the hashtag and previously worked as Developer Experience Lead at Uber and UX Designer at Google. In 2015, Messina wrote the technology supporting conversational commerce was growing and there were significant trends among messaging platforms and voice assistants like Siri from Apple.

Messina said conversational commerce is about convenience, personalization and supporting decisions while users are on the move and only have part of their attention on a task. In the same year as Messina’s post, Facebook launched a conversational commerce option, the Transportation feature on its Messenger app. It allowed users to request and pay for rides from car service partners like Uber within the same conversation screen. This is one of the many conversational services that have emerged to meet the needs of a growing number of mobile users.

Pros of Conversational Commerce

Some of the pros of conversational commerce include:

Some of the examples of conversational commerce are: