Retail business leaders at the Internet Commerce Summit 2022 revealed that they are using conversational commerce for improving customer relationships and experience
Bengaluru: Business leaders from various retail businesses shared that they have been able to improve customer relationship and experience using several conversational commerce tools such as WhatsApp. They were speaking at a panel discussion on ‘Driving Quality Conversations Throughout the Customer Shopping Journey’ at the Internet Commerce Summit (ICS) 2022 being held on 13-14 December in Bengaluru.
The sixth edition of the summit kicked off on Tuesday and more than 100 speakers are expected to keep the audience hooked on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“Conversational commerce is all about using chat as a channel of interaction within brands and its users for customer acquisition and support,” said moderator Anila Rao, VP-APAC of Haptik, an Indian enterprise conversational AI platform.
“There are 575 million people in India are actively using WhatsApp, and when we speak about chat as a channel, it is always synonymous with WhatsApp,” she added.
Speaking about how his company uses chat, TT Venkatesh, DGM Retail, TTK Prestige said, “Right now, we use chat for posting information for customers, so it will help them to find stores, find service center and contact to us.”
The panelists discussed how conversational commerce picked up during the pandemic when chat platforms were the primary medium for brands to stay in touch with customers. Conversational “During Covid, people started becoming more health conscious. So, we relooked at our strategy of reaching out to people, and making them aware about our products and how they could contribute to their health and hygiene. We looked at WhatsApp and other chat mediums,” said, Sachin Songaonkar, General Manager IT of Jockey India.
“The conversation, conversion and meaningfulness of a conversation depends on the sector, or the product are you looking at,” said Anil Menon, CIO of Lulu Group India.
Chakradhar Reddy, Head of Digital Product- Urban Ladder stressed on the solution a conversational commerce provides. Customers need businesses to fulfill their endless demands and specifications. They have a bundle of questions that need to be answered. Through the chat mediums customers can get their questions answered. This is what his team does in the pre-purchase journey.
“For us to personalise a conversation, it is important to understand which part of the shopping journey they a customer is going through, and what should we do to close the barrier to make the conversion,” he said.
ICS is the only event of its-kind for the country’s e-commerce and m-commerce industry which is a convergence of new-age retailers from online retail, brick-and-mortar stores, product and services commerce and omnichannel.
Leaders and experts from the emerging industry of internet commerce convened to share their valuable thoughts about the massive cross-channel transformation and what challenges and opportunities are available to woo the connected customer.
