Messaging as a business tool is exploding, and businesses have more options than ever before to choose from when it comes to messaging platforms. 

So how do you choose a messaging platform? ?  

I’m not in a position to offer an unbiased perspective on this topic, but we here at Radiance have thought deeply about where our product fits into the landscape. I’ll share our perspective on how brands should choose a messaging platform. 

Marketing, Customer Support or Conversational Commerce?

The first step in choosing a platform is to determine whether you are looking for a marketing or customer support solution, or to to enable commerce via a messaging channel.  

Marketing

Some of the largest messaging startups have grown rapidly by solving a simple problem. They are adapting an existing email marketing playbook to mobile text messaging (SMS). 

Obviously, there are differences in the two channels, but recreating your email marketing or email support program on SMS is the lowest of low hanging fruit. 

It pays off with higher open and read rates – text messages are 134% more likely to be read than emails. And SMS has open rates as high as 98%, often within 5 minutes of receipt.

Plus, SMS requires only a simple toolset to execute. There are a multitude of providers available to set your business up with an SMS number and begin collecting opt-ins and sending campaigns.  

Customer Service

Messaging has rapidly overtaken email and phone support as the users preferred channel for customer service. According to Zipwhip’s “State of Texting 2021” report, 58% of consumers advised that text is the fastest way to communicate with them. While some issues require a phone call with a live agent, messaging offers a faster, often asynchronous, means of resolving an issue.  

Conversational Commerce

“ Conversational commerce ” takes an existing messaging program to the next level. 

Conversational commerce is the process of buying goods and services over messaging channels like Messenger, SMS, Instagram Messaging and WhatsApp.

The promise of conversational commerce lies in its ability to to transform the user experience of mobile commerce experience.  

Despite the rapid growth of mobile commerce and its increasing share of overall commerce ( 73% in 2021 ), improvement to the mobile commerce experience has been slow to materialize. 

Indeed, the process of purchasing and transacting on mobile remains a major pain point. While native mobile apps can greatly improve the experience, only the likes of Amazon and possibly Walmart can expect to have their app installed on the average user’s phone. 

Forward-thinking brands see how conversational commerce can greatly improve the mobile commerce experience, and in the process develop deeper connections with their customers.  

Conversational Commerce:How to Choose the Platform

To transform the mobile commerce user experience, conversational commerce companies must innovate and excel in three key areas: 

Conversational UX 

Conversational UX refers to the ease with which users can communicate and navigate through messaging channels, accessing the information they need and getting the answers they need with the least amount of friction and effort. 

The foundation of a good conversation is scalable, automated conversational technologies like chatbots. 

It is relatively easy to design a chatbot that fields basic questions for a business. It is more challenging to expand this capability to support transactions all the while interacting with users in the brand’s preferred tone and voice. 

Also key to conversational UX is the ability to leverage additional visual capabilities such as images, icons and even video, and then knowing when to transfer the user to a web view, a live agent or the website for the most optimal experience.

For more, read: How Conversational Checkout Can Boost Ecommerce Sales

Artificial Intelligence 

AI already plays an important role in some of the most amazing mobile experiences out there. Think of IOS generating timely and heartwarming slideshows that are easily shared with friends, or Google Now providing navigation to your appointment before you even think to open google maps. 

Beyond its important role in powering automated conversations (when at its best, this goes unnoticed), AI can provide conversational commerce’s “magic” moments by learning the optimal timing of reorder reminders, recommending new products based on purchase history and expediting issue resolution based on sentiment analysis.  

All require a platform capable of leveraging consumer data, including purchase history, merchant data including product catalogs and possessing flexible models that are good at incorporating the nuances of a brand’s unique business.  

Systems Integration 

Systems integration is a requirement to realize the potential of conversational commerce. Without the ability to stitch together the many software tools that make up the typical e-commerce stack, messaging will be confined to the same limited role played by email. 

An optimal mobile commerce experience will cross seamlessly between marketing, support and checkout, traversing the backend system without any impact to the user.  

Your conversational commerce platform should integrate easily with the stack you have today, while offering a flexible integration framework that will work with the stack you have in the future.   

In addition, beyond concrete functionality in each of these areas, look for signs of agility, a company that embraces experimentation and a commitment to improving your experience based on hard data.  

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, the platform you choose for conversational commerce should be committed to improving your mobile commerce experience.  

Fixing what is broken about the mobile commerce experience is not something that will happen overnight, but innovation in conversational UX, AI and system Integration has the potential to get you from where you are today to offering a truly pleasing experience to your customers in the future.  

Remember, your software choice should be more than one-time transaction; it should be a partnership that leads to the delight of your customers for years to come.