As consumers demand an ever more personalised and attentive shopping experience, some interesting new retail trends are emerging ‒ such as chat commerce.

Chat commerce is a relatively new technological term, but put simply, it refers to brands and retailers who use chatbots or messaging apps to support their customers as they search for products, place orders, and track or return their deliveries. By using these virtual assistants, e-commerce businesses can cement their customer relationships and resolve queries quickly and efficiently, on platforms (such as Facebook Messenger) with which many customers are more than comfortable.

Tech industry expert Chris Messina declared 2016 as the ‘year of conversational commerce’, while Business Insider statistics reveal messaging apps are now bigger than social networks ‒ demonstrating the impact of chat commerce across a range of sectors.

So how is chat commerce being used?

According to Let’s Talk Payments, live chat has 73% customer satisfaction, significantly higher than email (61%) and telephone (44%), which shows the enormous potential chat commerce offers to both retailers and their customers.

Some examples include:

• Cosmetic retailer Sephora, which has partnered with messaging app Kik on its own chatbot, which greets customers, offers personalised makeup tips, and provides a variety of other content
• With Facebook Messenger, retailer Everlane can provide order confirmation and deal with customer requests
• The voice-activated Amazon Echo, which offers a range of customer services, including shopping and ordering food
• Mastercard’s new artificial intelligence bot, which lets its customers ‘transact, manage finances, and shop via messaging platforms’

With some big names becoming involved in chat commerce, it’s clear to see that this trend is set to grow, with consumers and businesses set to benefit from easy to use platforms that enhance the shopping experience. Will your online business make a move into chat commerce?