Conversational commerce is both simplifying and revolutionizing the customer experience. It’s easier than ever to connect with favorite brands, asking for assistance and making purchases on the go. The revolutionary part is that customer experience has become infinitely richer and more personal. In the past, automation and mobile customer service have fallen short of customer expectations or simply lacked the human touch many customers still crave. And it’s precisely this richness and immediacy that makes conversational commerce the ideal path to millennial customer engagement. As tech-savvy consumers who prefer convenience on the go, millennials are, in many ways, the perfect audience for conversational commerce. Here are five reasons to consider.
As a generation that just won’t leave home without a smartphone, millennials are naturally more inclined to communicate through messaging. comScore data reveals that millennials are the leading generation for using messaging apps, while a Zobgy study found that 87% of millennials surveyed claimed to have their phones on hand at all times. Media agency MEC further revealed through one study that 63% of millennials are active mobile messaging app users. Given the millennial preference for SMS and messaging with friends, conversational commerce is a natural fit for their communication lifestyle.
As dominant smartphone users, millennials need to feel connected to their favorite brands. Whether it’s customer service they are seeking or a new pair of shoes, conversational commerce perfectly meets their need for quick and immediate support. Brands can offer stronger millennial customer engagement by making targeted marketing offers through SMS or messaging, offering personalized product assistance with the help of chat bots, and providing faster customer service at all times.
Millennials tend to feel a strong emotional connection to the brands they support. Indeed, a Cone Communications study found that 87% of millennials purchase products with a social or environmental benefit. What does this mean for conversational commerce? For one, the personalized nature of communicating directly through messaging establishes stronger customer-brand relationships. Millennials are set to feel better appreciated and understood by brands that have made an effort to offer products just for them, and service that is meant to make their lives easier. In addition, brands that are socially or environmentally conscious may reach a wider millennial audience through conversational commerce, appealing to millennial values through strategic marketing campaigns on popular millennial social platforms like Snapchat and Facebook.
Many customers may find conversational commerce features impressive, from chat bots carrying natural conversations to quick and easy payments within an app. For a millennial, such features are all the more reason to support their favorite brands. Conversational commerce puts the fun back in shopping while removing the obstacles. For example, brands like cosmetics retailer Sephora are using bots to help customers search product catalogues, find exactly the best products suited to them, and make purchases. Shopping remains personal while becoming more fun, interactive, and painless–all within a single app.
Millennial customer engagement is critical to brands for one simple reason: this generation has tremendous spending power. According to Advertising Age, millennials are expected to spend more than $200 billion annually starting in 2017, and a staggering $10 trillion in their lifetimes. As conversational commerce shifts the way consumers are able to engage with brands, those companies that keep millennial interests at heart are set to enjoy serious brand growth.Millennial customer engagement is, in some ways, no different from engaging other generations: emphasize quality service, timeliness, and ease of use for greater customer satisfaction. The only difference may be that with this generation, a creative approach to marketing and meeting customer needs is not the exception, but the rule. As a global leader in cloud-based contact center software solutions for customer service and sales, Vocalcom chose to integrate Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WeChat, Viber, Kik, and conversational SMS into its cloud contact center platform to evolve into a premium conversational commerce platform for providing great customer experiences, offering a data-rich context that enables customers to switch easily between channels in a single interaction. Conversational interactions through text messaging, in-app messaging, and platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, WeChat, Viber, and more allow customers to engage with brands in real-time or asynchronously through a single thread. Currently, 40% of companies have seen a call deflection rate when shifting customers to SMS, and 23% have plans to add it this year, resulting in more than 60% of all contact centers offering SMS support by the end of 2016. Learn more about Vocalcom contact center software solutions for optimum millennial customer engagement.
