Social media and messaging are seeping into our daily lives.
Whether consumers are young and experimenting with new channels or older and interacting on family group chats, almost everyone has set sail on their journey through social media. And, day-by-day, they drift deeper.
To keep up and be where their customers are, businesses are moving the entire shopping experience – from product discovery and research to delivery alerts – to social media.
As a result, more people are trialling social commerce and enjoying the frictionless nature of an completely native buying journey – so much so, estimates suggest that the social commerce market will be worth $3.4 trillion by 2028.
Indeed, many brands are hedging their bets on a bright future for the field, delving deeper into social commerce to provide 24/7 support, and bridging the gap between in-store and online experiences.
Yet, let’s not jump the gun. First, consider social commerce journey frameworks and use cases.
Social Commerce Journeys and Use Cases
As a Kustomer report suggests: “Digital-first consumers want to converse with your business at every stage of the funnel, and the easier you can make it for them to do so on the platform of their choice, the more likely they are to exhibit loyalty.”
Luckily, social commerce unlocks value at every social commerce journey touchpoint – across familiar, on-the-go, trusted apps.
Start with delivery and consideration. A good strategy will answer customer questions while they gather information across digital messaging – perhaps with a virtual agent handling FAQs.
At purchase, it will remove friction in the transaction, give confidence, and reduce cart abandonment. How? Native storefronts, personalized recommendations, and virtual agents enable this process.
Finally, at the retention and advocacy stage, a well-rounded social commerce strategy will offer customers a direct channel for immediate access to post-sale support.
By developing such journeys, social channels become retail stores, direct messaging is the contact center, and opening hours extend from 9-to-5 to 24/7. As such, the dynamics of power shift, and the consumer seizes control.
Further social commerce use cases can add value to these strategies. Typically, these fit into two buckets: marketing and customer care.
In marketing, guided sales, dynamic offers/coupons, form-filling, bookings, and lead-gen activities are additions that may lift social commerce.
For customer care, use cases include proactive social messaging alerts for order confirmation, shipment tracking, back-in-stock alerts, etc. Meanwhile, strategies may also allow customers to access account information, resolve issues, and complete the returns process.
An Example of an Instagram Customer Journey
There are numerous considerations when identifying the next-best CX channel. Yet, many choose Instagram. After all, in the case of many businesses, their audiences live on Instagram.
Moreover, a Meta study of 18-50-year-olds uncovered the following statistics:
- 77 percent of users surveyed see Instagram as a platform that allows brands and people to interact in multiple ways.
- 63 percent of users surveyed believe Instagram allows them to form meaningful connections with brands.
- 90 percent of people surveyed on Instagram follow a business.
These statistics showcase the opportunities for social commerce across Instagram, which allows businesses to build personal connections at every stage of the customer journey.
Such a journey may start with businesses creating stories, posts, and direct messages to aid brand discovery. Customers can visit the in-app store or interact via private messaging to browse and purchase. The latter also supports the post-purchase journey.
Companies can build on this end-to-end experience with the help of Kustomer – Meta’s CRM platform – which paves the way for personalization.
Alongside this, the technology enables a coherent social commerce strategy that breaks the boundaries of channels. Indeed, the vendor helps clients to filter and tag contacts across the social spectrum with AI.
In doing so, businesses may prioritize direct customer contacts and brand mentions – through intent and sentiment analysis – before delivering relevant communications to sales, support, or marketing.
Increasing Sales and Building Advocacy with Social Commerce
Social and messaging are moving the needle in CX. With a savvy plan, businesses may push it further. How? One way is to respond to brand appreciation messages and mentions.
Yet, there are many others. For instance, responding to particular product queries with the intention of providing a guided buying journey may bolster advocacy and sales. So too could creating templates to offer direct product links for purchase.
The aforementioned Kustomer report also notes several additional examples. These include:
- Leveraging social messaging for real-time support
- Connecting brands, social influencers, and buyers
- Linking social media accounts to the CRM for next-gen support
- Intercepting issues, complaints, and spam with AI-tagging
- Filtering transactional contacts through to virtual agents
However, perhaps the most critical advice is to connect social media with other customer engagement channels to provide a holistic view of CX and deliver effortless experiences.
As the Kustomer report states:
Leverage a modern customer service CRM that can create a unified home for all your customer data, regardless of the source, not only the data generated from customer conversations on social. This ensures that you’re able to deliver personalized, high-value conversations at scale, and build customer relationships for life.
Bring Social Commerce Strategies to Life with Kustomer
Social media was once an extension of a brand’s voice; now, it is a business’s central mouthpiece.
As such, social commerce is the next frontier of CX, with 1BN users now messaging companies through WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram each week.
Figures like this highlight how Meta is driving the social commerce movement forward. It will continue to do so with the help of Kustomer, its burgeoning CRM platform.
To discover how the Kustomer team views the future of social commerce, read its report: The Social Connection: Building Lifelong Customer Relationships in a Social Commerce World
Alternatively, to learn more about its CRM technology and secure a free trial, visit: www.kustomer.com/free-trial/
