Spotlight on Conversational Commerce

Customers have always been right, but they've never called the shots more than they do today. From expecting real-time responses to customer service queries on social media to wanting endless self-service options on a website, every step in the conversion process must be on-demand and authentic. The latter, in fact, has led to an industry shift toward "conversional commerce."

Bontact, a multichannel contact app for business websites, is born from this demand - allowing visitors to contact brands with their questions the way they want (e.g., through chat, SMS, callback or email) from anywhere on the site. Bontact helps brand websites move from being mere product catalogues, where the visitor can simply look at products and offers, to being focused on starting a conversation between the visitor and the business.

Boris Kogan, who runs the marketing for Bontact, advises to think of the old model as a Walmart where shoppers wander around looking at items. Whereas the new model is more like a mom-and-pop store, where the owner is always there to answer questions and give visitors advice.

Bontact, whose nearest competitors are SnapEngage and ClickDesk, easily integrates with a variety of content management systems and ecommerce platforms including WordPress, Shopify and Wix. From there, retailers can instantly speak, chat, text or email their customers as they are making their online shopping decisions.

To further enhance its claim to conversational commerce, Bontact will integrate with more contact channels, like Skype and Telegram.

"We are focusing on letting visitors talk to businesses who have our app installed on their site in as many ways as they can currently talk to their friends," said Kogan. "We are also integrating Bontact with CRM tools, so that the conversations and contacts visitors have through our tool automatically sync with the company's CRM system."