[RECAP] Live Commerce: The next-generation for today’s social shoppers (with Jay Baer and André Hordagoda)

Emplifi recently hosted a webinar to discuss how brands can capture, convert, and care for customers across the shopping experience through live commerce. This great conversation was led by our hosts: 

• Jay Baer: Marketing and CX expert, Best-selling author of 6 books, Hall of Fame keynote speaker. Founder, Convince & Convert

• André Hordagoda: Co-General Manager of Social Commerce, Emplifi

When André co-founded Go Instore 8 years ago, the original premise was to deliver the experience and value consumers receive at a physical store but through an online channel.  In 2021, Emplifi acquired Go Instore, creating an online live commerce platform, which is essentially retail and eCommerce hybridized. Watch the full webinar as they delve into how brands can leverage live commerce to boost revenue and the overall customer experience.  

Why Live Commerce?

It’s beyond any doubt that consumer behavior has changed. While live commerce is not trying to remove the physical store, it’s time to close the online-offline gap by taking the best elements from the physical and digital. 

“Typically, when a consumer walks in and engages with another human being, there's no one capturing their information,” André said. “But with Emplifi, there's a digital lens that sits between the consumer and the store associate or the customer service executive, and you're able to pick up on huge volumes of data.”

As a retailer, access to data like conversion rate, consumer spending, and customer satisfaction are important to the success of a brand. These metrics will help a brand strategize to improve both sales and the customer experience of a product or service. Here’s the data to prove it: 

• Over 300% ROI (Forrester)

• 20-50% conversion rate from video call to tracked purchase

• 92% satisfaction, as rated by your customers

• Increased employee satisfaction

• Higher loyalty with 1:1 engagement

Sonos Roam Giveaway 

A really great component of the webinar was the example of live commerce via video streaming to really understand this technology and see it in action. They looked at an example of a customer looking to buy a Sonos Roam speaker, being assisted by Elsa, the store associate via live video chat to answer any questions about the product.

“There's always circumstances where people have questions that bots can't answer that’s much better handled by a real person, and that's why this is so powerful and compelling,” Jay said. “She's sitting right there, she has the product in her hand, and if you have some weird question she can answer that question as a human being.”

You may find yourself asking questions like how big does it look in someone's hands? What does the material look like in different lighting? With a live demonstration, an expert can directly address these sorts of questions to make you feel safe in your purchase. It's one thing to have a bot tell you "It's 17 inches long and 6 inches wide," and it's quite another to have an associate hold it in their hand and give you a way to see it relative to something that makes sense to you.  Did we mention a lucky webinar attendee walked away with a brand new Sonos Roam speaker? Thank you, Jay and André!

Today's social shopper

Social shoppers move through the journey fast. There are three major steps in the buyer's journey. 

1. Research: 84% of shoppers are looking for insight on at least one social platform before making an online purchase 

2. Discover: 52% of new brand discoveries are through social feeds

3. Purchase: 40% of European and U.S. adults make purchases via social media monthly or more frequently (the number is 89% in China, indicating immense growth potential), according to Forrester’s Cashing in on Social Commerce report, commissioned by Emplifi.

Two-thirds of consumers say speed is just as important as price. And, more than half the time, customers will purchase from businesses that can solve their problems or answer their questions the fastest, regardless of price. This idea that customers are understanding of supply chain challenges and are sympathetic to the plight of the retailer is just not true. In fact, three-fourths of customers expect brands to be as responsive or even more responsive than before the pandemic. 

“Customer expectations continue to escalate, regardless of the global economic or public health state of the union,” Jay said, “so you have to continue to make your customer interactions faster, easier, and remove any friction points as much as you possibly can.”

Convenience is here to stay and, like Jay Baer put it, “Eventually, easy always wins.” Live commerce is here to help make purchasing easier for both the retailer and the consumer without completely eliminating a physical store. Using both the digital and physical elements of a store can increase conversion rates, boost sales, and improve customer satisfaction for your brand.

Watch the full webinar to learn more about live commerce and today's social shopper.