Adobe’s Trust Report 2022: APAC found that amid the rising digital economy, it has become difficult for brands to forge trust with consumers. APAC is home to digitally-savvy consumers that are demanding more from brands. The study found that consumers are constantly looking for personal and valuable experiences, and great content can all deliver a trust dividend– if done well.

Missteps can put hard-fought customer loyalty and spending on the line. In fact, it has been reported that leaving consumers with unanswered queries can result in over $2 million in missed revenue per day. This is where conversational commerce (c-commerce) can step in.

First, let us understand what this means: The term conversational commerce gained popularity in the year 2015 when American blogger and the inventor of the hashtag Chris Messina used it in his viral Medium article where he drew attention to the trend of selling products and services through messaging apps.

Conversational commerce elevates the convenience of online shopping with a personal touch, and with the dramatic surge in smartphone usage, internet penetration and popularity of messaging apps, it has become one of the most popular marketing and sales channels in the region. In APAC, the chatbot market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 26.5% between 2021 and 2027.

Businesses in the cut-throat retail and eCommerce spaces, are increasingly relying on chatbots to create personalised customer experiences and leverage messaging apps for fostering good relations for business growth and scalability.

With conversational commerce, businesses of all sizes can transform social platforms into new digital storefronts. Here are 7 ways in which retail eCommerce chatbot are being leveraged by brands to elevate the customer experience:Studies have found that in the Asia Pacific, consumers are increasingly expecting real-time responses to their enquiries and want shorter waiting times to solve their problems. As such, they are spending more time on social media. Based on a study by Statista, around 88% of respondents from Thailand and 70% of respondents from Indonesia were intending or willing to shop more on social media platforms.

Image: Coopervision chatbot answers product enquiries

During the pandemic, CooperVision worked with AiChat to launch their new daily contact lenses on social media by creating an offer that is only redeemable via Facebook Messenger. The campaign that relied heavily on Facebook posts that were boosted via Reach and Frequency buying and social influencers, offered customers a chance to learn about the company’s new contact lenses.

With AiChat’s AI-powered chatbot, CooperVision was able to provide round-the-clock customer support for free text enquiries instead of being limited to a set of fixed user flows or keyword triggers. The chatbot attended to 80% of the FAQs from users by drawing answers from the knowledge base and understanding their questions using AiChat's advance Natural Language Processing technology.

The chatbot could also easily handle registrations, and with marketing automation, reminders were scheduled to customers when actions were not completed."With AiChat’s Chatbot that we have now on CooperVision Malaysia Facebook page, things have become much easier not just for us but also for the consumers. The journey has become much simpler for consumers to reach us for any enquiry,”- Emily Wong, Marketing Manager at CooperVision Malaysia.In phases 1 and 2, the campaign saw over 11.2 million impressions, with a 7.8 million reach and 462,919 click posts. 4,200+ users initiated the registration process via chat. Of which 45% registered, and 1 in 3 went on to complete the redemption of the free trial packs. In phase 3, in December, the campaign drove in a smashing 1.6X more registrations as compared to Phase 1 and 2 combined.

Image: Coopervision chatbot offer personalised recommendations for their contact lenses

According to Twilio's State of Personalisation Report 2022, over 62 percent of consumers in APAC not only expect personalisation but even go to the extent of declaring that a brand can lose their loyalty if their experiences are not personalised. With conversational commerce, marketers can take product enquiry response efforts to an altogether different level. With chatbots, they can offer personalised product recommendations based on valuable insights and data points.

Product enquiries are extremely vital. These can be direct sales leads and attending to them with utmost tact is of extreme importance. Many businesses are relying on conversational commerce to address product enquiries online. In fact, CooperVision Malaysia leveraged AiChat’s AI-powered chatbot to offer personalised recommendations for their contact lenses. Users could participate in simple yet engaging “find your lens” quizzes and make an informed decision.

Image: Cart reminder flow

Another vital area where conversational commerce can help marketers is cart abandonment. According to Forrester, ​shopping cart abandonment currently causes eCommerce brands to lose a staggering $18 billion in yearly sales revenue with the average abandoned cart rate is over 70 percent. Marketing experts and data analysts have found that conversions can be increased by a whopping 35.62 percent by implementing the right checkout optimization strategies, and this is where chatbots can help. Studies have found that chatbots can recover up to 7x more abandoned-cart revenue for eCommerce stores.

With conversational commerce, retailers and eCommerce brands can send cart reminders to their users. Studies suggest that cart reminders are up to 7x more effective as compared to emails or other sources. The reason is simple: people are more active and engaged on social media than on emails. For example, messenger boasts of over 80 percent open rates and 35 percent click-through rates on average as compared to email's 20 percent and 2 percent, respectively.

Image: Lotus's Malaysia (formerly TESCO Malaysia) Digital Catalogue

Digital catalogues are yet another great way that helps with better consumer engagement and help drive sales. They allow buyers to find specific product information in a matter of seconds. From item descriptions to retail prices and product images to specifications- they can have all the information they need easily. These catalogues help create an immersive, information-rich experience for online shoppers, making them more likely to move through the purchase journey.

A Gartner study has found that business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing departments can drastically benefit from digital catalogues as a sales enablement tool.

Lotus's - the world’s third-largest retailer measured by gross revenues and ninth-largest measured by revenues is known for leveraging digital catalogues in the Malaysian market. Lotus's partnered with Official Meta Partner AiChat with the goal of distributing their digital catalogue and promoting their weekly promotions. With this collaboration, they were able to create an engaging experience on Messenger where users were able to download the catalogue, subscribe to receive updates and make enquiries for things such as information about store locations and more.

Between June and October 2019, 54 percent of people who contacted Lotus's via Messenger viewed and downloaded the digital catalogue, they saw a 4X increase in digital catalogue views from Messenger compared to those from email marketing, and 85 percent of enquiries were handled by the Messenger-powered digital assistant and there was a 13 percent decrease in general enquiries to the customer service team compared to call centre hotline.

As per a 2021 Facebook and Bain report, more than 32 percent of Southeast Asian consumers switched between online commerce websites to secure faster delivery time. This shows that customers tend to ditch companies that fail to deliver on time, miss the delivery, or do not offer real-time delivery updates. Another area where conversational commerce can help. With retail chatbot or eCommerce chatbot, marketers can ensure that users are updated in real-time about delivery and order status.

MR DIY, one of the largest home improvement retailers in Asia that serves more than 80 million customers yearly at all stores in the region, partnered with AiChat to address these gaps. With this partnership, they rolled out an AI-powered Facebook Messenger chatbot to tackle the challenges faced by the service support team. The multilingual digital assistant had a host of features and capabilities, including, tracking order and delivery status, responding to queries and feedback, store locator, offers and promotions, as well as job applications.

Image: Mr. DIY Chatbot offers order tracking

96 percent of customers are willing to leave your business if they receive bad service. Multiple studies have found that after-sales customer service plays an important role in customer satisfaction and customer retention. Retailers and eCommerce companies can leverage conversational commerce to generate loyal customers and increase brand value.

One of the most common challenges faced by retailers today is increasing and maintaining footfall. This is even more difficult in today’s increasingly competitive landscape where consumers have no dearth of choices. To address this challenge, businesses are leveraging online store locator features in chatbots that help customers find stores easily on Google Maps.

Case in point: MR DIY’s AI-powered Facebook Messenger chatbot - its store locator feature allows customers to navigate through their multiple store locations and choose the nearest one, thus offering a seamless online to offline user experience. This not only drives more footfall but also helps gain consumer trust over time.

Image: Mr. DIY Chatbot store locator feature helps to drive footfall to retail stores

Free trials are an excellent sales strategy, and conversational commerce is an ideal way to reach out to consumers and attract new ones with coupon and trial campaigns. For example, Unilever Selecta - a Filipino dairy products brand owned by RFM Corporation, worked with AiChat to create a Happinas Day Campaign. The campaign sought to engage customers by inviting them to create eCards for their friends spreading joy and happiness all around the Philippines. Participants received free vouchers for ice cream.

Image: Selecta chatbot drives leads with icecream coupon redemption

There were multiple ways to discover the campaign. Users could discover the campaign through boosted posts, ads that clicked to messenger and influencer shout-outs.

With the campaign mechanism in place, it was a smooth and seamless process for users to go through the whole journey through a few simple steps. All they needed to do to participate was: choose a Happinas ice cream template, upload photos and wait for the video to be generated, and share the video on Facebook or WhatsApp. Participants could then redeem ice cream vouchers at participating stores by simply providing their names, emails, contact numbers.

The campaign saw a participation rate of 46.9 percent for generating videos, of which 55 percent shared videos over social channels. One out of five of all participants received redeemable coupons after providing contact information.

Conversational commerce is on the rise in Asia and around the world because it sits at the intersection of two booming areas of digital activity among consumers: mobile shopping and messaging- both text and voice. In the 4.0 era, no business can afford to lose valuable customers by skipping out on conversational commerce, especially in the current climate. For marketers and drivers of digital transformation seeking to stay ahead in the competition, chatbots are no more a “good add-on” but a necessity.

Embark on your chatbot journey with AiChat today. Contact us now!