Think about the last time you bought something:

• Why did you choose to buy the product?
• Where did you go to find out more about the product or brand?
• What channel did you use to complete the checkout?

For the most part, I can guarantee that you have, at some point during the buying journey, engaged with a social media platform.

The reality is that consumers are now spending 80 per cent of their time on social media platforms, and 98 per cent of them are making direct purchases and discovering new products online via these platforms. This means that the current retail landscape has evolved into a highly social, customer-centric, and omnichannel activity. And it’s growing fast.

As the modern-day consumer becomes more reliant on their mobile devices, convenience, integration, and promptness is valued above all else when it comes to social commerce. To respond to this demand, social media platforms have introduced social commerce tools, such as Instagram Shops, Facebook for Business, Pinterest for Social Commerce, and even TikTok Shopping, enabling businesses to build meaningful audiences and drive product discovery.

What is social commerce?

In essence, social commerce is the idea of buying and selling any kind of goods or services through a social media platform.

Here are two significant challenges in e-commerce that social commerce has managed to overcome:

• Mismanagement of inventory control due to the lack of visibility across both online and offline channels
• High operating costs associated with the setup and management fees across independent sales channels

The global pandemic has intensified the urgency to overcome these challenges as the lines between shopping physically and digitally become blurred, and buying becomes a more interconnected experience.

Also Read: Accelerating Indonesia’s rural economy through social commerce

So, if your business involves selling products or services, it is important to focus resources on building a strong digital and social media presence where customers can discover your brand and products, what they like, connect with your brand through customer support and checkout seamlessly, all in one centralised location.

That is why it comes as no surprise that the social commerce market is now expected to reach US$3.37 trillion by 2028. And this market potential is exactly what SaaS solutions like SleekFlow are excited to tap into.

Why should e-commerce brands leverage omnichannel platforms?

Nearly 50 per cent of brands say unifying online and in-store operations and data will be their biggest challenge in 2022. As more consumers demand the best out of every commerce interaction,  retailers must now manage multiple communication channels to engage with their existing customers.

To set themselves apart from their competitors, retailers are turning to omnichannel platforms to drive sales conversions through both online and offline channels, manage multiple communications platforms with minimal resources, and maximise customer touch points and data.

Many e-commerce brands find it challenging to keep customers updated across numerous social media platforms, especially when 82 per cent of consumers now expect an immediate response to their sales enquiries.

When a customer reaches out via Facebook Messenger to request clarification about product details outside of business hours, merchants must immediately respond. Otherwise, they risk losing an offline lead due to a lack of follow-up by the salesperson online.

As an all-in-one omnichannel social commerce hub, solutions like SleekFlow help businesses retain and convert leads both online and offline.

Drive conversions with smart routing and in-chat payment

One out of every five shoppers will abandon their cart if they find the checkout process too complicated or involves many steps. SleekFlow allows businesses to send product catalogues and payment links in chat so that customers can check out with ease.

Whether it’s a birthday offer, product promotions, or abandoned card notifications, chatbots can offer a highly personalised customer service experience by extracting essential information from the consumer, and then routing them to the relevant team member.

Also Read: How retailers could prepare for the next consumer recession, if it were to come

SleekFlow, for instance, merges instant messaging channels in a unified omnichannel inbox for your team to manage your customer conversations efficiently. You can even set up an auto-reply function on Instagram and Facebook messages and posts to avoid ever missing an opportunity to connect with customers.

How SleekFlow helps e-commerce brands boost sales

The key to boosting conversion rate is to build authentic engagement with your customers.

That is why SleekFlow centralises over 2,500 tools and messaging channels such as Official WhatsApp Business API, Facebook Messenger, Instagram chat, SMS, and Telegram to streamline communications for businesses.

We aim to bring useful customer data and actionable insights right to your fingertips so that you can eliminate the manual processes that are draining your team’s time and money. By allowing for multi-agent collaboration, SleekFlow’s automation feature enables businesses to route incoming messages and send auto-replies to segmented contact lists. You can also integrate your e-commerce tools, like Shopify, to trigger abandoned cart messages.

For example, alfred24, a green delivery solution provider, created a stable and effective communication channel with SleekFlow. alfred24’s team used the auto-assignment feature to route conversations to the right team member and auto-reply to customers outside business hours.

They also sent out WhatsApp broadcast messages and used the unified dashboard to understand that their WhatsApp message open rate is four times more than EDM’s open rate. These insights allowed their team to quickly develop follow-up actions to resolve customer enquiries and enhance customer satisfaction.

SleekFlow now serves over 5,000 businesses globally, including Bossini, Lalamove Hong Kong, and PSB Academy. Following our 7-figure pre-Series A funding round last year, SleekFlow recently completed its US$8 million Series A funding round, led by New York-based investment firm Tiger Global Partners, an early investor of Facebook and Bytedance.

Final thoughts

Consumers now spend 80 per cent of their time on social platforms and have more options now than ever. Shopping on social media is already becoming a habit, and so is discovering and buying products directly from these platforms. This means that businesses need to innovate to make the buying experience easier, more convenient and more compelling for consumers.

SleekFlow aims to drive this e-commerce revolution by being the top social commerce unified hub merging conversations, product catalogues, payment solutions, and order management into one for businesses.

Besides our latest social-to-payment feature, SleekFlow will continue developing products, including detailed buyer journey tracking and analytics, which will provide invaluable actionable insights for enterprises to unlock their social commerce power as they embrace this unstoppable megatrend. 

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