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Using Conversational Messaging to Eliminate Friction From the Customer Journey With more and more customers using mobile What’s “friction” you ask? Great question. and messaging to engage with their favorite In a nutshell, buyer friction is anything that prevents a potential brands, it’s important to examine any friction customer from making a purchase. This friction could manifest itself your business might have in its buyer journey at any stage in the customer journey, from early stage discovery and take the steps to help eliminate it. to post-sale engagement. Regardless of what stage in the journey, though, the best way to identify the friction is by asking yourself one simple question: How easily can someone buy from your business? If you find yourself acknowledging complexities associated with the buying experience, it’s time to take a look and improve the buyer experience by reducing as much friction as possible. One of the ways a growing number of businesses have been reducing friction in the buying experience is through conversational messaging, which we’ll touch on later. For now, let’s unpack the components of the overall buying experience we’re looking to optimize.

Defining the Buying Experience A buying experience encompasses the complete journey of your customer from discovery to checkout. This includes but isn’t limited to: 01 02 03 04 Browsing your product Adding items to their Entering payment Engaging postsale catalog and taking shopping cart and options at checkout with product inspiration from your reaching out to and final delivery of recommendations recommendations. customer support the purchased product. and alerts. with questions about inventory or shipping. By understanding the different stages of the But why address points of friction at all? buying experience, it’s easier to mitigate points Simple: Businesses that aren’t focused on eliminating friction of friction using the tactics outlined below. from discovery to purchase and beyond risk harming their bottom line. According to recent research, there’s a projected $260 billion opportunity cost for e-commerce businesses in the US¹ alone. While we’re still early days in scoping the impact of friction in other industries like telecommunications, travel, banking and beyond, it’s fair to say that it makes sense for businesses to prioritize seamless experiences at every stage of the buyer journey through a variety of tactics, starting with friction identification activities to constructing a conversational approach to accelerating key elements of the buyer experience.To get started, here are a few steps you need to understand the friction your customers are experiencing. ¹ “44 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics,” Baymard Institute, December 2020 2

Understand Friction from Your Customers’ Point of View The first step to removing friction from the buyer journey? Figure out what’s causing it. You can kick off this process with an audit of your digital marketing and sales channels: web, mobile, paid and organic social, and messaging. If you can’t tackle a full-scale optimization effort right away, start with just the core element of many commerce journeys: the web experience. Audit your key website pages and start by removing points of friction there first. For example, evaluate your instructions in the checkout flow for clarity. • Where could steps be eliminated to help accelerate the purchase process or provide the ability to directly message your business? • Where can you provide more opportunities for opt-ins to send visitors more information about your product and services? As an enterprise business, your Even incremental improvements like these will make a big difference customers expect a seamless to users by providing them with the right info at the right time. It’ll “ experience from you online. Performing also benefit your business to start identifying these critical stages and a website audit to optimize the flow of find new ways of capturing interest and closing the loop with those your customer's journey will help you who may abandon the shopping experience for reasons unknown. deliver on their expectations. A clunky user experience and slow page load One critical thing for your business to do in order to improve the times are no longer tolerated by online quality of the buying experience for your customers is to put yourself shoppers, and more often than not, in their shoes. Go through the entire buyer journey and note any making the sale means doing whatever obstacles that inhibit a smooth path to purchase or engagement, it takes to simplify and speed up those and then look at behavioral analytics. Where do you see drop-off stages on the path to checkout. or other areas of optimization based on the data? Use this as your starting point in the pursuit of removing friction. BERTIE TYSOME, PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER FOR WHATSAPP 3

Take Eliminating Friction to the Next Level Once you have the relevant data from your audit, you can form a strategy to help alleviate any friction found. This strategy should include: 01 Optimization of multiple entry points (messaging, paid and organic social, regular email outreach, etc.) to simplify product discovery, providing buyers with direct portals to new products or forms of communication 02 Provision of direct lines of communication for customer assistance 03 Personalized recommendations to help customers discover products 04 Implementation of points of opt-in for customers who aren’t ready to buy right away 05 Streamlined purchase and fulfillment experiences to encourage return customers By creating and implementing a strategy that includes the above, your business can start to target the most common points of friction for your customers and work to eliminate them. 4

Design a Buying Experience for a Mobile-first World Today, 75% of adults want to be able to communicate with businesses in the same way that they communicate with loved ones through messaging². What’s more, 72.9% of all retail e-commerce expected to be generated via mobile devices in 2021³. The key takeaway here? As businesses, you can build trust by allowing customers to reach Designing a world class buying experience means you quickly and easily, whether it’s a simple product inquiry or building richer buying experiences for mobile. questions about an order. With more than 2 billion people on Meta’s And, more often than not, that means developing WhatsApp, it makes sense to consider whether your business a strategy for driving meaningful conversations would benefit from using the Business Platform solution to get in across key touchpoints in the buyer journey. front of new potential customers and help reduce friction in the buying process. With WhatsApp, you can connect directly with your customers to offer support, gather feedback, and re-engage at scale. By using WhatsApp Business Platform, customers don’t have to wait on hold for minutes or hours to speak to a customer service representative. Removing this barrier to assistance helps relieve friction. It can also help cut costs for your business where you’d otherwise need to fund a call center for customer support. ² Business Messaging Research Study, Meta, September 2020 ³ Global mobile retail commerce sales share 2016-2021, Statista, October 2021 5

Seamless Transitions from Finding a Product to Purchase A big point of friction for customers is the discovery process. 56% of online shoppers are more likely to return to a site that recommends products.⁴ With a large selection of offerings, it can be a daunting task for shoppers to find the product that they need or want. Businesses can help eliminate some of that endless scrolling through product pages by using WhatsApp Multi-product Messages to offer curated product lists to their customers that are tailored to their needs. With Multi-product Messages, you can provide real-time recommendations in a conversation with a customer, giving them the experience of having a personal shopper directly on their phones. And by keeping your catalogue up to date, you can offer the latest inventory to them, alleviating some of the friction that comes with navigating fulfillment. Once a customer has purchased an item, they can also have the option to conveniently reorder their same list of items from a previous purchase directly in the chat. Using a product like WhatsApp’s Multi-product Messages gives your business the tools you need to streamline your customers’ shopping experience and help drive conversations with your customers that deliver business results. USE CASE: A business recommends additional relevant products for the customer before checkout. ⁴ “Online Shopping Personalization-Statistics and Trends,” Invesp, April 2021 6

Removing friction is important for all businesses that want to remain relevant and profitable in this new mobile-first world, one filled with demanding and expectant shoppers who value speed and ease. With consumers turning to digital for all of their needs and their mobile devices for convenience, businesses that successfully identify friction and take the necessary steps to help remove it will gain a competitive edge and help create a seamless experience for their customers. So, examine your business from the customer’s point of view, iron out the creases of friction in the buyer journey, and fill in the necessary gaps between what you’re offering your customers and what they are expecting. 7