As retail gears up for the 2024 holiday season, many customer support and customer experience executives are evaluating what went right back in 2023, and what their teams could have done better. What bogged their teams down? Where did consumers complain most? Where did they miss opportunities to drive average order value of first Black Friday and holiday gift purchases – and encourage exchanges instead of returns?

As a side note, can I just say that it’s moments like this when I know why it’s no wonder that CS and CX executives have such a good reputation? They’re such lifelong learners. 

In this blog, I’ll explore retail’s huge opportunity to tap into conversational commerce for the 2024 holidays, as well as why I believe Zendesk customers should be extra excited.

What We Learned During the 2023 Holidays in Retail

Consumers and retail professionals alike are keenly aware of how much people prefer to shop digitally whenever possible, and that was particularly true last year.

• Most consumers preferred to shop online. Nearly 3 of 4, according to Statista.
• Online retail sales are growing every holiday season. Whereas 1 of 5 retail sales happened online in 2022, 1 in 4 are expected by 2026, per Oberlo.
• Online shoppers spend more when it’s easy to get in touch. In fact, 82% spend more when it’s easy to contact a business, per Zendesk’s CX 2023 Trends Report.

Just in case we all need some more convincing: Forrester research shows that orders that resulted from messaging had a 20% higher average order value. Messaging – aka conversational commerce – drives better conversion and higher sales.

Forrester research shows that orders that resulted from messaging had a 20% higher average order value. 

There’s a lot of revenue to unlock during the holiday season by focusing on making online shopping easy and convenient.

7 Tips to Harness Retail’s Conversational Commerce Opportunity in 2024

The key for helping the 2024 retail shopping season sing holiday carols is to engage and support your customers in conversation while they shop across many different use cases. Here are the top five that Envoy has seen retail’s most progressive brands using.

1. Customize promotional offers with deep customer knowledge, context and history. Connecting your e-commerce systems and tools is a sure path to increasing average order value and stopping cart abandonment.
2. Give personalized, intelligent product recommendations that reflect consumers’ merchandise preferences, browsing data, and full shopping history. 
3. Make checkout as quick as St. Nick. Whatever holiday shoppers celebrate, they’ll all appreciate the chance to purchase easily and fast. Top retailers are collecting payment at formerly unprecedented speeds, thanks to comprehensive payment integrations, unified SKUs, and inventory location data.
4. Make brick & mortar matter, too. While many consumers love to start buying online, many also enjoy picking up in person. Our retail partners find that customers respond very well when they’re informed of product availability and nearby in-store locations.
5. Remind consumers about abandoned carts when they’re shopping. Although nearly 9 in 10 online shoppers leave their carts, nearly 100% click on reminder messages about their abandoned carts, per eConsultancy x Finance Online.
6. Track conversion and agent performance by monitoring and reporting on successful orders, order value, agent performance, and other key metrics across conversations.
7. Access and update customer profiles in a jiffy. The holidays are a great time to update profile information, so the best retail leaders make it super easy for agents to update profiles themselves in their customer experience management system.

Given what’s now possible it’s not much wonder that the majority of people expect conversational experiences when interacting with brands.

Please reach out to my team to learn more today.