Rising Opportunities For Channel Partners Across Conversational Commerce

Digital innovation has been a significant growth activator for most organisations, especially from the last few months. Now, following a year of embracing conversational commerce, many businesses are acknowledging the exposure this innovation has cultivated. CM.com has been playing the role of a catalyst in helping businesses adapt to conversational commerce via its platform. As CM.com's platform enables various consumer-facing industries in going conversational, they are also creating opportunities for channel partners on the go. 

The last two years have been disruptive for most industries but in the conversational commerce industry, there has been remarkable growth making way for new opportunities. It has been stated how attainable mobile cloud solutions can be in the long run, and how crucial the role a channel partner plays with businesses in good times and bad. It's safe to say that 2020 has been definitive for Conversational Commerce. 

In fact, there's been a 450% rise in conversational commerce among the consumers since the pandemic hit the world, says Numa research report. While initially constrained to chatbots accessed via messaging apps, the definition of Conversational Commerce has considerably broadened.

South Asia, the biggest eCommerce market is leading the current innovations and growth. A report by McKinsey predicts that Asian consumers will add to nearly half of the worldwide consumption growth rate, ultimately introducing up to USD 10 trillion opportunities in the coming years. SAARC region is definitely one of the world’s fastest-growing regions for conversational commerce. Now assessed to amount to $35 billion for retailers alone, it’s definite that the SAARC region is going to bring in a lot of opportunities for channel partners.

An increase in consumer demands in South Asian countries, aided by the global pandemic fueled this growth. The SAARC region is observing an explosion in new business opportunities among developing countries like India, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia – to name a few.

Stepping into a foreign market as diverse as South East Asia, a largely fragmented region with disparities in language, culture, and business levels – can be a very challenging task. To leverage this thriving market, it's important to promptly understand the potential advantages it could bring for your business and how CM.com's suite of products can help you have a first-hand on these opportunities.

Why All These Growing Opportunities In Asia?

When compared to other regions, it's pretty clear that Asian consumers are more mobile-native since the global smartphone penetration rate has boosted from 49% in 2016 to 78% in 2020 - SAARC countries being the major contributors. 

Led by COVID-19, the upswing in the number of mobile users in Asia is driven by Gen X and Baby Boomers, as a result of nationwide lockdowns that were imposed during the health crisis which provoked the change in consumer behaviour and increased online business interactions. As of now, baby boomers alone are expected to add up to 30% of the consumption growth rate in Asia for the next decade. Unlike Gen Z and Millennials, they prefer having conversations with merchants and inquire for information directly through social platforms instead of browsing online by themselves.

Conversational commerce perfectly fits in and satisfies this consumer behavior by enabling a direct point of interaction via chat and other channels between consumers and businesses, filling in the gaps created by lack of physical touch. All in all, research indicates that Asia has the greatest messaging community across the world and CM.com's conversational commerce platform is one right way for your business to start converting these populations to business opportunities.

Conforming to this digital adoption combustion, the Asian consumer behavior also evolved to a whole new level. Infamous for being the most demanding, Asian consumers are embracing conversational commerce due to the ease it enables during the whole online shopping journey, right from product inquiry, to placing an order, payment, delivery, tracking, and assistance without any friction. What’s more, it also incorporates customer service via powerful chatbots and live chat systems to enable a hyper-personalized service on the go and be available 24/7 wherever and whenever consumers want. 

So, it comes as no surprise that conversational commerce is helping businesses get a higher conversion rate, higher average order value, and higher customer loyalty. If you want to get the first hand over this rapidly growing market of conversational AI, getting in touch with one of the industry leaders - CM.com, can definitely be the best choice.

Channel Opportunities in the SAARC Region:

The year 2021 substantiated that both the businesses and consumers are ready to start leveraging conversational commerce and that the new year will see both big and small-sized businesses implement long-term conversational commerce strategies to displace the incapable systems adopted at the start of the pandemic. When Covid-19 emerged, cloud adoption shortly heightened and demonstrated its worth to many businesses across multiple verticals. As a result, a cloud communications platform needs to be at the heart of every business strategy to make sure that business continuity and stability are maintained. Most businesses’ digital transformation journeys have been stimulated due to the pandemic, growth opportunities within the channel are only going to emerge from encouraging customers to use cloud technology to assist their business operations moving forward. Here are the top partner opportunities:

• Holistic customer and employee interactions are crucial for resiliency.

The last year forced companies to respond instantly, improvise when possible and modify continually in order to keep up with the consumer expectations and ever-changing market. The key to withstanding all the disruptions and setbacks has been, and still is, unified communication and interaction fostered by the right technology. Then, irrespective of the situation, brands can deliver the experience required to keep employees productive and customers engaged and satisfied.

To stay ahead in the current competitive environment, brands must scale up their customer engagement strategies to provide superior customer experiences. Conversational AI can do the same for you as it largely influences purchasing decisions of customers, by engaging them in a ‘heart to heart’ interaction. This engagement has a subsequent role to play in forming the customer’s opinion about the product, its usage and helps in constructing a positive image of the brand. 

With CM.com's conversational software, your business can also interact seamlessly with the customers and work with the customers wherever they are in the communications journey.

• With choices comes opportunity and ever-increasing significance in the Channel partner’s role as a delegated advisor.

Businesses are increasingly leaning on conversational commerce platforms to effectively manage their solutions, whether offline, in the cloud, or both. Successful channel partners are pointing towards cloud enablement to drive better business outcomes and improved customer lifecycle engagement.

Affirmation to a partner-first approach helps business succeed in all these areas. As a conversational commerce enabler, CM.com stays close but also understands that partners have the best knowledge of their customer environments so we assist them to get the right product mix and programs required to strengthen their expertise even further while maturing the business.

• An integrated customer + employee experience is the key to business success.

The e-commerce industry is a thriving sector for cloud communications providers and their IT partners. The opportunity for Channel Partners is to enable their customers to deliver a fully integrated and enhanced user experience for their own customers and employees.

Customer experience (CX) being a significant competitive differentiator is not something new, however, the same way how the pandemic upended business strategies, it also gave rise to a whole new level of customer expectations. From marketing to business development and the help desk, every employee in an organization has a role to play at the forefront.

For a brand to have a positive impact, their employees need access to the exact omnichannel communications platform and collaboration capabilities as customer representatives–customer data, applications, and so on–to ensure the CX can be invariably imitated. Businesses will bank on conversational commerce enablers and Channel partners to turn technological intricacies into seamless user interactions. 

With CM.com's powerful solutions, your business has the opportunity to engage effectively with customers in a hyper-personalized way, provide real-time customer service, and assist customers in an instant. CM.com's offerings can help your business use the data to draw powerful insights and make more informed decisions. Tap into the future of e-commerce with CM.com. 

To know more, visit: https://www.cm.com/en-in/