A survey of more than 5,000 adults in six countries found that messaging and chatbots are becoming widely used, with nearly two-thirds of consumers worldwide saying they’d like the ability to message with brands.
LivePerson’s Consumer Preferences for Conversational Commerce survey looked at consumer attitudes and preferences around brand interactions, messaging, and chatbots. What’s more, the survey showed that as consumer interest in messaging increases, brands need to pay greater attention to conversational design — the ability to evaluate and optimise conversations — to meet customer expectations.
The August 2019 survey included respondents from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia. Among Americans, interest in using messaging to interact with brands rose significantly, from 52 percent in 2018 to 62 percent this year. The European countries surveyed had the highest average demand for messaging, at 65 percent of respondents. Perhaps not surprisingly, this capability is of most interest to younger demographics, with more than 70 percent of people 18-34 years old wanting the option to message with businesses.
Consumer messaging capabilities can take many forms, including the native messaging apps of iOS and Android, messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, voice assistants such as Alexa, and even branded mobile apps and websites.
While human representatives are still the default preference for certain situations, but an appetite for bots is growing, especially among younger consumers.
Consumers are gaining confidence in the ability of bots to help with routine tasks. For example, more than 50 percent of respondents said they’d prefer a bot over a human agent to tell them their account balance or update an address.
Conversely, consumer confidence in bots is lower for more complex tasks — just 15 percent said they would want a bot to assist with correcting a mistake on a bill.
In alignment with other portions of the survey, younger respondents (ages 18-34) were more likely to cite “good” experiences with bots, while older people (over 34) were more likely to cite “negative” experiences. In fact, the younger group ranks chatbots and human support roughly equally, while the older segment significantly prefers human agents even when it is explicitly stated that a chatbot can help them.
Manlio Carrelli, executive vice president, Enterprise Business Group at LivePerson said: “The Consumer Preferences for Conversational Commerce survey shows that consumers — particularly younger consumers — are increasingly interested in the convenience and ease bots and messaging offer. That said, there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the experiences consumers are having. Savvy brands should pay attention to conversational design to ensure they are not only offering customers their preferred channels of communication but that they are also meeting and exceeding customer expectations in those channels.”
