Within the last two years, messenger apps for ecommerce companies have developed into relevant and no longer negligible channels for customer interaction. As the most direct dialogue channel to customers and through their open technical interfaces, WhatsApp & Co. are leading online trade into the era of conversational commerce – and raising the customer experience to a new level.
The world of ecommerce is at your fingertips with messenger apps
“Our unique approach has earned us double-digit £m revenue and more than 100%+ annual growth”, said Threads-Gründerin Sophie Hill. “This is chat commerce, and it’s changing how the world buys fashion.”
Launched in 2018, Threads is the first luxury marketplace to sell its fashion exclusively via Messenger – without an online shop or its own app. The Threads team offers style advice via WeChat, WhatsApp, iMessage, and Co. and arranges suitable designer pieces. “We can communicate with you and style you directly via messaging platforms. You tell us what you want, and we source it and deliver it to you immediately.”
Similar to market giant Amazon Platform No. 1 for retail, WhatsApp is now THE marketplace for customer dialogue and interaction: More than two billion people use the app worldwide, on average every WhatsApp user checks their chat input 23 times a day and spends 195 minutes in Messenger. Even the best ecommerce app or the most user-friendly online shop does not even dare to dream of these KPIs. “Welcome to the revolution … get the world of luxury at your fingertips.” (Sophie Hill)
“The perfect customer experience”
With this, Thread’s marketing strategy meets the zeitgeist of consumers who are increasingly shopping online: Nine out of ten customers state that they tend to buy from brands that they recognize and provide them with relevant offers and recommendations. “Personalization has become the priority for nearly all businesses,” advises management consultancy Accenture for a long time.
According to a PwC study, 43 percent of consumers are already willing to pay a higher price if interaction with the provider works smoothly: companies could realize up to 16 percent higher prices if they create a “perfect customer experience”. In addition, there would be “higher loyalty and a significantly greater willingness on the part of consumers to disclose valuable data”.
“Fast and efficient to serve customers”
Personal, multimedia, mobile, in real-time, and already familiar to everyone from private use: With their specific properties, messenger apps are increasingly being used successfully as a platform for customer interaction in ecommerce in all phases of the customer journey: from awareness to individual Advice through to sale (Apple Pay, Facebook Pay, WhatsApp Pay)
The crisis has shown that companies need fast and efficient ways to serve their customers and make sales, WhatsApp COO Matt Idema confirms: For companies, WhatsApp “has become an easy and convenient resource during this time”. More than 175 million people now send a message to a WhatsApp business account every day. At the same time, WhatsApp is gradually expanding its services as an interaction platform for ecommerce.
Top 3 Messenger Apps for Ecommerce
WhatsApp is the world’s most widely used messenger app: WhatsApp is not the market-leading messenger in only 25 of the 195 countries in the world. 95 percent of Germans between the ages of 18 and 64 use WhatsApp regularly, and around 58 million Germans use the green app every day.
WhatsApp: High priority among users
Another KPI also underlines the importance of the app: Around 90 percent of all messages sent via WhatsApp are read within a few minutes. No other application gets access to the smartphone lock screen (push notifications) as often as WhatsApp.
For years, WhatsApp was a purely private user chat channel without any features, interfaces, or other options for professional use. Since the introduction of the free WhatsApp Business App (mainly for small companies, but it is hardly scalable and not GDPR-compliant) and the launch of the WhatsApp Business API (Launch in DE: 2018), there have been special solutions for the needs of companies. The first reference customers included Netflix, Booking.com, Wish, MakeMyTrip, B2W, iFood, and the ride-hailing service Uber.
Facebook Messenger: Strong channel for lead generation
With 1.3 billion active users, Facebook Messenger is the second-largest messenger app in the world. 23 million Germans – 50 percent of the 18 to 64-year-olds – use the app for interaction.
Since Messenger offered an API for developers in 2016, the platform has become an Eldorado for marketing campaigns, chatbots, and mini-programs. With the Facebook Business Manager (through which all commercial use of Facebook products is organized), blue messenger offers a wide range of options, especially for ecommerce companies aiming at lead generation. Facebook is currently pausing some of the lead generation formats due to new data protection regulations in Europe (as of Dec. 2020).
Apple Business Chat: Target group with purchasing power and in-messenger payment
Apple Business Chat, introduced in 2018, is the equivalent of iMessage for communication between companies and customers. It enables companies to interact with iOS users (1.3 billion potential users worldwide, 15.1 million people in Germany): The application is fully integrated into the Apple universe.
Business Chat allows Apple users to connect with companies via the Apple Messenger app using Siri, Maps, or Safari. Companies have direct contact with a target group with purchasing power and Messenger is one of the few that offers direct purchases in chat via Apple Pay (so far there have only been pilot projects for Facebook and WhatsApp Pay in the USA and India).
In addition to their distribution and multimedia interaction in real-time, one point makes all three messenger apps particularly interesting for ecommerce: they all offer the technical basis for integrating them into ecommerce processes and successfully operating conversational commerce.
The Conversational Commerce Revolution – Case Study “Hey Charles”
The effects of the chat commerce revolution observed by Threads founder Sophie Hill at the beginning go far beyond the topic of live customer advice in the chat room in everyday ecommerce: In terms of the precision of customer addressing, they even surpass the market-leading Amazon and Google algorithms ( “Customers who buy product X also bought product Y”).
Because the true secret of the success of conversational commerce via messenger apps is not only in the chat itself. It is based on the potential of messenger apps as digital universal platforms with open interfaces (APIs) – for example for connecting to the company’s own CRM, accounting, or delivery software architecture.
“Hey Charles, I need a shirt”
With Kapten & Son, Artjem Weissbeck successfully founded a social commerce company on Instagram in 2014. With Hey Charles – “a kind of Uniqlo via WhatsApp” – he now wants to herald a new era in ecommerce.
All Hey Charles products are sold exclusively via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. “There is probably no other ecommerce model in the German market with such a strict mobile or messenger focus,” says ecommerce professional Alexander Graf.
Reading tips
Read our interview with Alexander Graf here, in which he discusses the success factors in ecommerce and reviews events that have shaped him in 15 years as an entrepreneur.
The “Charles” bot guides the user through the assortment of the virtual wardrobe. Artjem Weissbeck describes: “Charles is not only the fashion brand but also your assistant on WhatsApp, which you can text: ‘Hey Charles, I need two more of those gray t-shirts.'”
With its lookbook, the messenger shop offers customers direct inspiration on their smartphones. If a customer is interested in a specific product, they receive additional pictures and individual advice via WhatsApp.
Once the customer has selected a product, he will receive (until WhatsApp Pay is available in Germany) a payment checkout link with his shopping cart for confirmation.
“Nice way of customer relationship”
Charles customers are kept up to date on the status of their orders via WhatsApp notifications. If there is a complaint, the customer can explain his reasons in the WhatsApp chat. “It’s an opportunity to build completely new and much nicer ways of customer relationships. On the one hand, there is the warm and human aspect of retail,” says the Hey Charles founder, describing his vision of conversational commerce. “On the other hand, the convenience, optimization for speed from ecommerce.”
For Threads founder Hill, the strength of messengers in ecommerce also lies in the combination of the advantages of analog and digital shopping opportunities: “It was about positioning a luxury retailer that was more personalized than ecommerce and (also) logistically simpler than is stationary.”
GDPR and Co. are no hurdles for messengers in ecommerce
“In general, there are no restrictions on what data companies and customers exchange via Messenger.
The legitimacy can be obtained, for example, via a widget built into the website: users can access the chat after they have agreed to the data protection declaration and sent a message on their own initiative. Or a chatbot asks for consent directly in the chat.
But what about WhatsApp’s compliance with GDPR? , is usually the next question. WhatsApp (private use) and the WhatsApp Business App (commercial use by small businesses) do not comply with data protection. Companies that use the WhatsApp Business API, on the other hand, are on the legally secure side.
Access to the WhatsApp Business API is only through selected WhatsApp Business Solution Providers. As a result, all personal data is stored by the respective provider. With an order processing contract (AVV for short) and other measures relevant to the GDPR or data protection, companies can use Messenger for their customer communication in a legally secure manner.
With the WhatsApp Business API, all communication is end-to-end encrypted, just like with the “normal” app. Encryption and decryption take place on the end devices of the users or the servers of the certified solution providers. WhatsApp therefore never has access to chats.
Messenger along the customer journey
Awareness
Engagement-Kampagne: 180 Prozent Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)
Your Superfoods introduced its customers to Messenger with a Facebook Messenger quiz. There, a chatbot determined the most important nutrients for the customer and recommended appropriate products. In the first week alone, the campaign achieved a 180 percent ROAS at a cost per chat lead of less than a dollar.
35.2 percent of the participants clicked on the product page after the quiz. In addition, shopping cart abandoners were contacted via Messenger. As a result, additional sales worth almost $1,000 could be generated in the USA within three weeks, and the abandonment rate fell by around five percent.
At the same time, Your Superfoods strengthened customer loyalty with automatic order confirmations and parcel tracking via Messenger. Negative feedback was forwarded to customer support by Your Superfoods, positive feedback was used for up- and cross-selling advice.
Product launch: 14-fold increase in daily sales
For the launch of a new fabric softener, Unilever used a WhatsApp chatbot (“MadameBot”), which, among other things, gave tips on how to care for favorite clothing, but also presented new products based on customer preferences.
The campaign was advertised with 10,000 posters in the metropolis of Sao Paulo. Within twelve hours, “MadameBot” had more than 6,300 WhatsApp contacts and over 145,000 messages sent. Unilever recorded a 14-fold increase in sales over normal days during the campaign period.
Consideration & Purchase
More sales with advice via Messenger
Since the connection via chat between stylists and customers is very personal and communication via Messenger is low-threshold and direct, Threads Messenger customers spend far more per purchase than on conventional channels – for example via apps, online stores, or on marketplaces.
“From the first browsing through the range to the perfect fitting of the glasses, we have numerous points of contact with the customer – and almost all of them are digital,” reports former Brille24 CEO Christophe Hocquet. “We, therefore, need service and communication offerings that go well beyond the go beyond conventional online shops.”
Brille24 customers can send in a photo of themselves via Messenger and state their personal preferences. On this basis, the customer advisor creates a purchase recommendation with a link to the offer in the online shop. In this way, the interaction can be personalized and the customer can be guided into the shop at the same time.
High upselling potential
Many customers can also be persuaded to buy by a brief reminder of the product in the shopping cart. However, e-mails usually reach customers too late in the consideration phase or are often not read at all. High awareness of the lock screen and the possibility of continuous availability (chatbot) make messenger apps for ecommerce a channel with high upselling potential. It is precisely these reasons that have had a positive effect on the purchasing behavior of their customers at Women’s Best, a global ecommerce company for sportswear and sports nutrition: more sales through advice via messenger.
Service & After Sales
Fewer returns
Messenger apps also score points in customer service and after-sales – not least because of the option of simply sending files, links, and photos: “Customers can easily send us pictures via WhatsApp. In the event of complaints, we can find a solution quickly – and in many cases avoid returns. This is a great economic advantage,” reports Harald Goßler, Head of Customer Service at Hessnatur.
Twice as fast service and 70 percent fewer emails
With the introduction of WhatsApp and Apple Business Chat, the processing time for inquiries at Women’s Best has decreased by 50 percent and the customer care team receives around 70 percent fewer emails. Customers value the messenger service above all for “the ease of use and the short response times,” reports co-managing director David Kurzmann. While e-mails require an average processing time of around four days, the response time for messenger inquiries is between a few minutes and a maximum of five hours.
Retention & Recommendation
Three out of four purchase-critical touchpoints are now shaped by user-generated content and recommendations. Experiences from one’s own circle of friends and family are particularly relevant. In this context, messengers play a special role as recommendation tools: WhatsApp and Co. are the platforms on which content and positive experiences are shared most often.
“We ask people to simply photograph their receipts and send them to our system with WhatsApp,” says Florian Scharmann, Managing Director of Erlebe-haltern.de. Customers with positive feedback via messenger can be encouraged to send a photo of the product in use or to recommend the company and receive an incentive in return.
The chatbot can also be used to quickly and easily create customer satisfaction surveys or automatically display special discounts to retain customers in the long term. Threads founder Sophie Hill says that her startup never really had its own marketing budget. The successful growth of the company was initially based primarily on the (viral) spread via messenger – by satisfied customers of the company.
Why Use Messenger Apps for Ecommerce?
Given the increasing competition in online trading, offering their customers first-class service and the most seamless possible shopping experience is now one of the top goals for almost all ecommerce companies.
WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Apple Business Chat are developing into digital universal platforms that can be connected to all software systems in everyday ecommerce. With their possibilities for low-threshold contact, personalized real-time interaction, and simple data collection, they are gradually leading online trade into the era of conversational commerce.
At the same time, with the help of chatbots, they enable efficient 24/7 service with consistent quality of personal communication by handing over to a human advisor at the right time.
Hey Charles Co-Managing Director Artjem Weissbeck: “I’m thinking of a men’s outfitter who knows exactly your height and weight and can also see immediately if you’ve eaten a few Chicken McNuggets too many.”
With this potential, messenger apps used for ecommerce raise the customer experience to a new level of quality that will change the entire online shopping landscape. The big messenger platforms know this too: They are all working on further expanding their range of services and features for ecommerce – as WhatsApp announced again at the end of 2020
Messengers are already a convenient alternative to website chats, e-mail, and telephone. The success of Threads and Hey Charles shows that they also offer an alternative to apps, websites, and online shops.