Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, the nature of commerce (and societal interaction) has changed. While brick-and-mortar stores are still common, more and more consumers are turning to online commerce as their go-to method of shopping than ever before. If customers shopping online for a year taught businesses anything, it was that no matter how good the product – how brands communicate with their customers can make or break a business.
That’s the driving force behind omnichannel communications providers like Mitto. Recently, the Telecom Reseller podcast interviewed Sean Whitley, the Vice President of Sales at Mitto, to discuss how modern brands can enhance the shopping experience using conversational commerce. Their discussion highlights the struggles and opportunities available to brands in a post-pandemic world.
About Mitto
Understanding what Sean Whitley and Mitto do is critical to understanding omnichannel communication’s necessity. Doug Green of the Telecom Reseller podcast zeroed in on how to define omnichannel communication and where Mitto fits right from the start of the podcast.
Mitto is an omnichannel communications platform committed to helping brands worldwide overcome the barriers in brand-to-customer communication. Mitto provides the tools necessary to interact with customers across time zones and cultural communication barriers and helps brands understand how customers want to interact – all while providing a single platform from which to do this. Sean Whitley is the Vice President of Sales At Mitto.
Shopping in-person demands personalization and context when engaging with customers. It’s something that customer service used to pride itself on and that interviewers looked for when hiring. Today, it’s harder to implement on a digital scale. There is still, in part, a drive to maintain the “old-fashioned” personalization of brick-and-mortar stores. But, as Sean Whitley put it, it’s essential to cater conversations to meet the demands of customers who are always on the go.
Meeting customers on the apps and in the ways that work best for them has been a constant struggle for brands since the start of the digital revolution, so Omnichannel communications providers like Mitto have attempted to make conversational transitions between brands and their customers easier.
How Conversational Commerce Works
For omnichannel providers, getting to the heart of the communication challenge is their goal. This topic was discussed further in the interview with Sean Whitley and Doug Green. The lure of online shopping remains, even when brands experiment with digital communication methods. Getting SMS updates about a package in transit is easier than calling the company to track the package. Purchasing items through Facebook & Instagram allows people to shop without leaving the app. WhatsApp Business enables customers and brands to communicate in real time despite global differences.
These communication methods allow brands to maintain the personalization of shopping in person. However, coordinating all these tools can become overwhelming for even the most seasoned business.
According to Sean Whitley, the point of conversational converse is not to replace the experience of shopping in the store. It is to create a new, unique, and individualized experience that takes the idea of shopping online and puts it on a pedestal. It solves existing problems and answers question the shopper didn’t even know they had. But most importantly, it prioritizes efficiency and convenience. It strives to lessen the differences between automated sales and those between a customer and a salesperson.
Debunking The Idea That Stores Need A Real Person
One topic mentioned frequently throughout the interview was the idea that brands are hesitant to remove a “real person” from the shopping experience. Especially virulent in the resistance to adopting conversational commerce methods is the idea that a real person provides things that an automated system can’t. Sean makes an example of a salesperson selling something based on personal use, such as, “This is how I use that product in my home” or “I have this one set up in my kitchen, too.” Or “[Here’s] how I utilize it.”
In the past, personalized touches like this were vital not only to making a sale but to maintaining positive customer relationships. Many brands worry that moving to online sales takes away the personal touch and may even cost them long-term customers. Whitley mentions that, especially in a post-COVID world, people generally desire a more personal connection. After not being able to experience an in-person customer experience for so long, personalizing communication makes a difference.
Whitley explains that there is a disconnect between the idea of “going digital” and maintaining customer service. He stresses that having a customer presence online means brands must do more than set it and forget it. Brands must go further and continue the interaction beyond the customer shopping on a web page. In other words: companies should create an experience where the customer is talked with, not at. That’s at the heart of traditional brick-and-mortar sales, and it’s what propels the most successful digital brands.
How To Go The Distance With Conversational Commerce
As the interview works toward its conclusion, Whitley has a formula for creating an environment that works for brands and customers.
For conversational commerce to do the heavy lifting that traditional sales once did, brands must:
- Understand their customer and what their customers want. Site analytic tools and AI are excellent ways to gather that information in a way that benefits both the brand and the customer.
- Be available to the customer in a way that works for them. By using international messaging platforms in coordination with effective chatbot AI and real representatives, brands can ensure customers receive the communication they need when they need it.
- Create memorable experiences. Sean Whitley consistently emphasizes throughout this interview that creating a fantastic experience doesn’t mean just wowing a customer with a unique website – it means ensuring they feel important in a post-pandemic world.
- Utilize tools that re-engage with latent customers. Everyone has abandoned a shopping cart in an online shopping scenario. A Mitto survey mentioned in the interview highlighted that up to 75% of those interviewed would return to their purchase if they received an SMS reminder, and 71% said they wanted a reminder from brands. It helps customers prioritize their spending and come back to things if they think they don’t have the funds.
To round out the interview, Sean Whitley re-emphasizes that omnichannel communication strategies do enhance conversational commerce experiences. Finding a way to communicate and build a rapport with customers so that when they get offline after a cart abandonment or purchase one item, they continue to remain in a conversation with the brand. He calls that act blurring the line between online and offline experiences. “When you think about customer experiences, the journey is not linear…my opinion or thoughts about what I want and why I want it to change over time. So, when you think about omnichannel strategies, it’s really about blurring the lines between the whole offline and online experience.”
And when it comes to building this experience, the most important thing for brands to keep in mind is that they are not alone. Omnichannel communication platforms are made to help businesses better understand and communicate with their customers in a rapidly changing communicational environment.
