Conversational commerce is

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

done via various means of conversation ( live support on e-commerce

Web sites A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education, ...

, online chat using messaging apps, chatbots on messaging apps or websites, voice assistants) and using technology such as:

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

speaker recognition Speaker recognition is the identification of a person from characteristics of voices. It is used to answer the question "Who is speaking?" The term voice recognition can refer to ''speaker recognition'' or speech recognition. Speaker verification ...

(voice biometrics),

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

Development

WeChat in China

During this time, in China, e-commerce via

WeChat WeChat or Weixin in Chinese ( zh, c=微信, p=Wēixìn , l=micro-message) is an instant messaging, social media, and mobile payment mobile app, app developed by Tencent. First released in 2011, it became the world's largest standalone mobile a ...

– at its core a messaging app, but also letting merchants display their goods in mobile Web pages and via social feeds – grew strongly. By 2013

e-commerce in China China is the world's largest market for e-commerce. Domestic e-commerce firms have the greatest share of China's market, with foreign companies having a comparatively small presence. The expansion of e-commerce in China has resulted in particular e ...

had overtaken that of the U.S.

Facebook Messenger

In 2016, Facebook announced its Facebook Messenger

chatbot A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of main ...

platform, heralding the arrival of conversational commerce via the most widely used messaging app in the world outside China. More than 34,000 businesses had opened shop on Messenger by August 2017. Early cited examples of conversational commerce chatbots on Facebook Messenger include 1-800-FLOWERS with an

IBM Watson IBM Watson is a computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. It was developed as a part of IBM's DeepQA project by a research team, led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's fou ...

-powered chatbot/assistant, and Mexican airline Aeroméxico, whose chat platform running on Yalochat lets customers search, book, track, or check in for flights; ask any question, using A.I. and NLP to provide answers; or pull the chatbot into a group chat.

Apple Business Chat

In June 2017,

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

announced its Apple Business Chat product, allowing consumers and businesses to message each other via the Messages app.

In September 2017

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

announced the pilot of its new Enterprise solution, the first time large companies would be able to attend to large groups of customers in an approved WhatsApp solution, after WhatsApp banned earlier unofficial solutions. Companies who piloted the solution included airlines Aeromexico, KLM, Latin American online travel agency Despegar and online retailer Linio. Enterprise solutions for WhatsApp have been available since 2015 from a variety of third-party vendors, and though unofficial, they have been used by major companies and governments including the Governments of Colombia and Costa Rica.

Podium

In March 2020, Podium announced a contactless payment solution allowing local businesses to accept payments through two-way SMS text message conversations with customers. Outside of traditional instore card-present transactions, there existed only a few options for businesses to accept payments, most of which were not secure, PCI compliant, or convenient. Through Podium Payments, businesses can engage with customers and securely close sales all within the same convenient channel.

In May 2017

Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

supported basic payments in chats using bots and in April 2021, the payment 2.0 that supports payment in more than 200 countries via integration with 9 different payment providers.

Alexa and Google Assistant

Both Amazon and Google are providing APIs to enable payment via voice chat using stored payment credentials in Google Pay or

Amazon Pay Amazon Pay is an online payments processing service owned by Amazon. Launched in 2007, Amazon Pay uses the consumer base of Amazon.com and focuses on giving users the option to pay with their Amazon accounts on external merchant websites. As of ...

Web chat

Although, they do not have any functionalities to facilitate actual transactions within the conversation, companies like LiveChat Software
CM.com
and

LivePerson LivePerson is a global technology company that develops conversational commerce and AI software. Headquartered in New York City, LivePerson is best known as the developer of the Conversational Cloud, a software platform that allows consumers t ...

have powered live conversations between customers and live agents as far back as the 2000s, before retail businesses used messaging apps to communicate with customers.

References

{{reflist E-commerce Instant messaging