Conversational Messaging Podcast by Gupshup

Episode 003: Conversational Commerce

May 28, 2021 Beerud Sheth and Srinivas Vijayaraghavan Season 1 Episode 3
Conversational Messaging Podcast by Gupshup
Episode 003: Conversational Commerce
Show Notes Transcript

In today’s episode, Beerud and Srini discuss how the pandemic changed the way consumers shop. Join them as they talk about conversational commerce, the future of e-commerce. Learn what conversational commerce is, why it’s a game-changer, and what you need to know to get started. 

Conversational Commerce in a Nutshell

The pandemic made everything digitized, pushing consumers to rely on dozens of applications for different types of activities and transactions. This sparked the need to discuss conversational commerce. But what is conversational commerce?  It allows customers to interact with businesses as if they are interacting with friends, creating a seamless experience. 

According to Beerud, this can be made possible through a single messaging mechanism that lets the consumers do everything, from ordering, payment, to delivery, and for all sorts of transactions and products. 

“The quality of experience is limited, and that’s the challenge in the way app-based commerce works. I think the solution to both of these is conversational commerce based on messaging.” - Beerud Sheth

Why Opt For Conversational Commerce 

Even before the pandemic, giants in mobile-based e-commerce and famous brands use their websites and own applications to interact and transact with consumers. However, small businesses can’t do the same right away, and even if they can, customers’ experiences from these platforms are not necessarily ideal. 

Ultimately, conversational commerce helps reduce the consumers’ effort from jumping from one website/application to another and improves the quality consumers’ experience. 

What You Need To Know

Beerud emphasizes that conversational messaging can engage consumers in a holistic interaction that replicates an experience with a live and smart salesperson. For starters, businesses can start to make their one-way SMS to two-way, where they can be redirected to somewhere for more options, get recommendations, additional support, or feedback. Also, as security is a priority, newer technologies like IP messaging can be incorporated to ensure consumers’ data privacy. 

“There could be multiple entry points, could be offline or online in different areas. All of them lead to this one consistent, high-quality conversation experience.”  - Beerud Sheth, CEO of Gupshup

To know more about Conversational Commerce, and for more information about Beerud  and Srini, listen to this episode.


Bio:

Beerud Sheth

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 30K+ developers and handles over 4.5 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.

Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities.

His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.

Srinivas B Vijayaraghavan

VP Marketing

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io

0:01
Listen to insights on how conversational messaging is changing the way businesses and their customers engage. Join gupshup CEO Beerud and VP for marketing Srini, and an array of guests for conversations about conversations. This is the Gupshup Conversational messaging podcast.

0:27
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the conversational messaging podcast by gupshup. I am Srini. And as always, I'm joined by Beerud. So today we're going to talk about conversational commerce. And before jumping into it, I think one broad observation that all of us can agree on is that in today's times, we're able to find and transact a lot of products and services across different industries, online, and we all seem to be getting comfortable doing that. And the pandemic has only accelerated the move of many of us to look for online options, which we would maybe go to a store before for that to buy. But this is also sort of created a challenge in and this challenge is two-fold. One is that it's not a not all businesses have been able to make this transition to either having their own website or an app, which are the two prominent modes of digital engagement today. And also the experiences that we as consumers face in these or perceived in on these interfaces is far from ideal. So we're going to delve a little deep into both these dimensions of dimensions of quantity as well as dimensions of quality. So Beerud, how do you see commerce playing out today from how it used to be even five or 10 years ago? To where it is heading? And what are some of these quality versus quantity challenges?

1:58
Yeah, I think, you know, e-commerce certainly, on the big screen web, e-commerce is the biggest revenue driver, right? Amazon, eBay, Shopify, and they're doing extremely well. Lots of commerce happening out there. Right. So that's already a major trend. And then in emerging markets, or in mobile, first countries, you know, sort of mobile, ecommerce is the primary driver, right, of revenues, and transactions. So mobile-based e commerce is a real game changer, right? in countries like China, India, Brazil, Southeast Asia, and so on. The vast majority of e commerce happens through the mobile device. But the current mechanism, which is essentially app-based e commerce, right has, like you mentioned the quantity problem and the quality problem, right? So on the quantity side, think about it, right? While there are millions of apps out there, most of us download just a handful of apps, right? A few dozen apps, you know, maybe 100, or a couple 100 apps on the device. What that means is you're likely to have you know, the top ecommerce, you know, platforms, you'll you'll get those apps, but nothing beyond that, right? For example, how many restaurant apps? Do you really have, right? Most people? How many retail apps?would you have? How many salon apps would you have? How many, you know, how many airline apps and how many sort of soap and shampoo apps do you have? Now, these are all brands and businesses we interact with all the time, right? But we we don't download each of these apps, you know, maybe you'll have the aggregator right, the the restaurant aggregator, or the e commerce aggregator, and so on. But it's just not practical for you to have for a consumer to have direct interactions with sort of the long tail of commerce players, right of businesses. So that's really, you know, the the problem of quantity, as in the number of businesses that can actually set up shop on the mobile device is small, is limited. And the other is the quality problem, right? Even the ones that you can engage with. I mean, they're great for some things, right? So. So app-based experiences are great if you know what you want. Or you can quickly search for something, find the item and buy it. But that experience doesn't work very well for purchase of complex products of consultative sale, and so on. Right? Like Like, say when you're buying insurance or when you're buying a car, when you're buying a dress, you know very likely you want to know right? Is this available in a different color or a different size, what are the customizations? What are the configurations, what are the other options You know, what, what are the accessories that go with something? I mean, these are all sort of, you know, you need to think about it, you need to talk about it with the merchant. But you can't do that in the typical app based ecommerce model. So that's really the quality of experience is kind of limited, right? So that's, that's the challenge in the way, you know, app based commerce works. And I think the solution to both of these is conversational commerce, right, based on messaging. And I guess we'll talk more about that soon.

5:35
Yeah, that's a great point, I think you will find that there are lots of aggregators and multi brand retailers that are the really big fish in the online space, or even equivalents in other countries. But smaller boutique brands that offer specific services do struggle to find an audience online. So switching gears to, you know, I know that for the last 20 odd years, we're all we've all been used to buying off websites or buying off apps. So what's the what's the solution to sort of solving this quality versus quantity conundrum? What do you think these brands that are that have gone online, can actually do to make it simpler for people to, to navigate through?

6:19
So I think, first and foremost, you know, you need a you need a mechanism that doesn't involve that allows businesses to interact with consumers, and also for consumers to easily you know, find and chat with, you know, interact with businesses, that does not involve any downloads, right? Because the download barrier causes that quantity issue, right. So the the obvious solution to that is the messaging app. I mean, imagine if you could just send a message to a business just like you send a message to a friend, then suddenly, you can just use one app, your messaging app, to now interact with businesses, and if you can interact with them, then you can do all the various activities that you want to do with them. You can order you can pay, you can track your order, you know, you can get support, and things like that. Right. So so the messaging format is, is clearly the right mechanism, right. And we've seen this in China already, where WeChat, which is a messaging app, the most prominent and dominant messaging app in China, it has the ability to interact with with a wide variety of merchants. So if you ever travel there, you know, you'll see that typically you go to a cafe, they will not take cash from you, right? The only way you can order and make payment is through WeChat in many cases, or could be the Ali Ali Baba product, right. So it's really, the messaging app becomes the super app that enables interaction with virtually any business out there. So suddenly, mobile e commerce is now accessible for virtually every business out there, that sort of the solving the quantity problem, and then on the quality of the experience, right? Because you have this sort of conversational experience, you can do a lot of interesting things, right? You can now discover products, right? So for example, you could say, let's take a clothing store, right? I mean, you're really chatting with the merchant in in a very natural conversational way. It's a little bit like, you know, walking into the store in the offline world. And typically, you know, the salesperson greets you. And then you ask them a question, right? Hey, okay, you know, here's my budget, you know, do you have, let's say, shirts or dresses for in this range of price? And, you know, I like the idea of bold colors, a light colors, you know, I like these patterns? Do you have something as a little different? Or do you have it in blue, green, red, do you have an in small, medium, large, mean, all of those really are simple conversations, right? And that same dynamic can be enabled through this sort of conversational experience. Right? So it really, it dramatically improves the quality of the shopping experience. Right? You can do I mean, literally every aspect of the purchase cycle, right can be can be dramatically enhanced. So for example, let's start with discover, right? You want to discover the right product that fits, you know, and you also want to get recommendations, right? What do you recommend, right? Do you have, is there something new or is there something, you know, interesting, that's come up recently, right? So or you can discover, like I said earlier, based on color or size, or budget and other constraints, right? It's also a consultative conversation. Right? You could be, you know, like, in what situations is this fabric better than that one? Right? Why, you know, what would be better in sort of my kind of weather for my kind of purpose, right? So you can really have that that sort of recommendation from the salesperson from the business through that conversation experience. And then, you know, once you're ready, once you narrow down your product, it's easy to order, right? You can add to the to the shopping cart, you can make the payment, sort of a one click payment experience, and then even tracking the order, right? If it's if there's a delivery involved, if there's status tracking, and so on, right, so sort of the entire purchase cycle can be enabled through these sort of conversation experiences.

10:49
Great points. I think one perspective that a lot of brands have, especially in the e commerce space, is they tend to look at messaging as another channel, as part of an omni channel experience, a website, you have the apps, you have the store, and then messaging is probably another channel, but the picture that you're actually painting here, just to clarify to our listeners, is that messaging can be the, the aggregator of all these experiences in a very, in a manner that, you know, they chat with their friends, is that is that fair to say?

11:20 
Yeah, I think as this as this scales, right, this could really become the primary mode of interaction, right? This becomes sort of the digital storefront. Right? So even if somebody walks into the store, very likely, you know, see the merchant, or the business could have a QR code that brings them into the conversation experience. Right? So instead of waiting in line, finding a salesperson, or looking around, you know, I mean, you can instantly redirect even offline visitors to conversational experience, right. Even on the website, you know, many websites these days have these little sort of chat widgets in the bottom right corner, right, that you interact with them, right? It could be, even from marketing campaigns, you could lead users to the conversation experience, if there's somebody gets an SMS, with a link, or even a print ad or offline advertising. I mean, all of those could have either links or QR codes that lead to the conversation experience. Right. So the point is, there could be multiple entry points could be offline or online, you know, in different areas. But all of them lead to this sort of one consistent high quality, conversation experience. That takes care of the whole thing, right. You know, we talked about the purchasing cycle earlier. But then even beyond that, merchants can go quite deep, right? So for example, they can offer a loyalty program, right. So again, it's part of the same thing, you can track points and rewards and redemptions. And so one, you can offer, provide deals and offers, right? And in fact, these deals can be hyper personalized, right to that person, not to the context, because you have history over time, the business can have a history of preferences and transactions, and so on, thereby making making recommendations. Right. So I think, or, or even, for example, the backstory about the business, right? If many businesses have interesting stories about how they got started, you know, who created it, what's unique about them, why their products are better, you know, how are they better than the competition, and so on. Right? So really, being able to engage the user in in a holistic interaction, right? It's, it's really replicating that offline conversation experience. I mean, thinking about most offline shopping, it's really a conversational experience with a live sale. And what we're talking about here is sort of replicating that in a in a digital format.

14:11
That's true. And if you look at the different types of messages that brands use today, SMS has been the the oldest one and also as the largest volume today, but the other IP-based messaging channels are catching up. So if if you were talking to an e commerce brand that today primarily sends out SMSs, as a means of communicating. How would you advise them to start thinking about converting SMSs into conversational experiences leveraging what they do today to transition into a conversational experience?

14:47
You know, that's a great question. I think most messages most SMS messages today are really one way notifications right. They alert the user to something and says your order is confirmed or your package is shipped, or your package is arriving tomorrow, for example, right. And I think every one of those messages instead of it just being a dead end, by itself could actually be the start of a conversation. Right? So if you're providing an order confirmation, you could say, hey, do find matching recommendations, click here. And then you say, you know, here are some additional items that go well as accessories with what you just bought, right? If you bought the dress, then here's some jewelry that goes with it, right? If you bought a laptop, or a mobile phone, and here's a portable battery, or other, you know, headset headphone that goes with it. So or if you're, if the package is arriving tomorrow, maybe I can re this, you know, you could, the consumer could reschedule it to another day if they are out, and so on. Right. So the point is really sort of tying the two way conversation into that one way notification is a great opportunity, and conversely not doing that is is a huge missed opportunity. Right? So we you know, we work with many businesses. And they've we started doing that were really the the SMS message, for example, the notification message automatically leads to a conversation where there's an opportunity to engage further to cross sell, to upsell, to collect feedback, to provide support, all kinds of things. Right. So so I think that's being able to link the one-way with two-way messaging is sort of an important opportunity that provides substantial upside to enterprises. Yeah.

16:45
That's a great point. So final question. I think this question that comes up, whenever we talk about anything going online, is there is always the sense of is it going to be secure. Because when you today, when you use an app or use a website, you have HTTP, HTTPS and the encrypted traffic, so you have some confidence that your data, or when you're doing a transaction, for example, you have some confidence that your information is not going to get compromised. So as these experiences move into messaging platforms, how do we get that same degree of confidence?

17:20
Oh, I think, you know, with with newer technologies, with IP messaging, in particular, it is very easy to have both rich experiences and secure experiences, right? Because it is possible, for example, to send messages that are visible, let's say only one time, right, so a second time user, even if it gets forwarded, cannot cannot access it, or it may only be visible for, you know, like 10 seconds, you know, it's a little like is common, these are disappearing messages, like Snapchat, or like in the movie, right? Mission Impossible, distracting messages or something. Right, or it could be, you could have a captcha in there. So you know that, you know, there's no automated system that's hacking it, it has to be a person that has to do it. So there's many different levels of security, right? So it's, it's not just, I mean, you can certainly do end to end encryption, but this is even better than encryption, which is, the message is just not there. So there's nothing to hack. It's only through SMS, for example, or through WhatsApp, you just send a reference or a pointer to the data that the user is looking for. And when they when they enter the conversation experience, then then they can see the data item, the secure data item, right. So basically, it's thing is merely between the enterprise and the consumer. And no other intermediary has any access to that data. Right. So suddenly, this this this sort of an extremely high level of security, that can be enabled through sort of these IP based messaging channels.

19:11
Very thanks very important, Beerud. And I think we covered everything from discovering products to personalization to transactions to also security. So it looks like the next step for commerce after having gone online is to go the messaging way to create compelling experiences for shoppers and other customers. So as always, thank you, we look for your views and thank you listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week with another episode of the conversational messaging podcast. Thank you for tuning in. 

19:45 
Thanks.