Conversational Commerce

Another look at conversational commerce.   Though beyond what we think of as messaging.   Including memory of previous interactions and leveraging what is known about the correspondents. Positioned as a service with value.  Examples at the link:

Why your business should pay attention to Conversational Commerce  in Unified Inbox: 

In an article published by Customer Think (http://bit.ly/2w3vhGy), Amrita Bhattacharyya writes: “Conversational Commerce refers to using natural language within a messenger application (Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and others) or using voice assistants (Siri, Amazon Alexa, and others) to interact with a business for an inquiry, purchase, or customer service.”

Conversational Commerce enables a person to, quite literally, message their refrigerator! For example, you would text your refrigerator “Do we have milk?” Using a combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), your refrigerator would text you back “Yes, but at your current rate of consumption, it will be gone tomorrow. Would you like me to place an order with Peapod?”

This technology is not science fiction from Star Trek, it’s actually available today!

Here are a few more interesting scenarios:   .... " 

Smart Speakers as a Shopping Tool?

Interesting stats in article below.    Though I suggest that once you get someone using the device, say for streaming music (60%), moving them to engaging with commerce is more likely.   Also, suggest that the 60% represents only one time.   The system is likely to be on line streaming for long periods of time, when its use as an assistant is evident.   It becomes a prime resource dominating a room.   Also upcoming notification capabilities could change this further.   And evolution towards a dialog conversation beyond just question and answer.    With discussion.

Are smart speakers limited as a shopping tool?
by Guest contributor  MarketingCharts staff

 -> Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from MarketingCharts, which provides up-to-the-minute data and research to marketers. <- i="" nbsp="">

New research from comScore shows that shopping-related activities with smart speakers remain fairly limited, though one in six households with Amazon Echo are using them to find local businesses.

For the time being, the most common use cases for smart speakers among households owning these devices are general questions (60 percent), weather (57 percent) and streaming music (54 percent). ... "  ....  

Bots Asking Questions

A natural next step.  In any conversation, questions go in both directions.  With initiative from both sides. To test understanding, but also to establish context and progress towards a goal.  To gather information to feed algorithms.   To link with expertise, human and artificial.  Still not easily modeled well, but will be crucial for assistants.  How natural must such interaction be?

Inquisitive bot asks questions to test your understanding
By Matthew Reynolds

Inquisitive artificial intelligence that asks questions about things it reads could be used to quiz students in class. The question-asking ability would also help chatbots with the back and forth of human conversation.

AI is usually on the receiving end of queries, says Xinya Du at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Du and his colleagues have turned the tables by building a system that has learned to ask questions of its own.

This is something that people have been wanting to do for a long time, says Karen Mazidi at the University of Dallas in Texas. Previous attempts by other people using hand-coded rules haven’t been particularly successful. .... " 

Echo Skills can Now Include Selling

Rumor is out that Amazon will now allow sales pitches within contributed Skills.  Course I can now decide which skills I want to use.  So I am choosing, and perhaps I want to buy things in that context. But this is something new to know and watch for.   An assistant should be there to help me buy as well, but does this erode the overall experience?

A first implementation of  'conversational commerce', previously discussed?  Consider the role of initiative here.

Baidu's Little Fish Virtual Assistant

Recall we previously looked at reports on this, aka Duer.  Another platform for Conversational Commerce?   In a very large market to experiment with.

Baidu's 'Little Fish' home robot could be China's Echo
by Paul Miller   In TheVerge

While Amazon and Google are battling for voice assistant dominance in the home, they've mostly neglected other countries. Now Baidu, in partnership with AiNemo, is building the Xiaoyu Zaijia ("Little Fish") family robot, which, on paper, has most of Alexa's talents along with a big screen, a camera, and a touch of robotics. If you couldn't guess, it's for China. .... " 

Posts on dozens of other virtual assistants. 

Will Conversational Commerce be Next?

Conversational Commerce.  First I heard that specific phrase.  Consider the posts made in this blog in just the past few days as evidence, by very big players.  Will the path from Search to Buy be replaced by Search to Converse to Buy?   Facebook and Amazon are obvious players to begin with.   They are likely to be agents for many other sellers.

Are chatbots good enough?  Do you need a screen?  Should human agents be included?  Consider links to other virtual assistants.  Some good examples below of work underway . Discussion at the link below.

In Retailwire:

Will chatbots drive a ‘conversational commerce’ trend?
  by Matthew Stern

The social media landscape is always changing, and retailers have continually tried to find ways to leverage the most popular platforms to turn users into shoppers. Now some big names are trying out a method of leveraging Facebook Messenger to facilitate purchases, foregoing both websites and retailer apps.

Subway and Mastercard have partnered to roll out an ordering chatbot for Facebook Messenger, Mashable reported. Fresh Direct and Cheesecake Factory are introducing similar chatbots. A demo on YouTube shows a user messaging the Subway chatbot, which responds by inviting the customer to find his or her location on a map and select the nearest Subway restaurant. Then it displays a menu, inviting the user to select a sandwich. The chatbot carries on a back-and-forth conversation with the user, determining the sandwich size, type of bread and other options. When the order is completed, a customer can pay using Mastercard’s Masterpass. .... " 

Other Posts here on my work with dozens of Virtual Assistants.