


Chris Messina of Uber recently coined the term “conversational commerce” to describe this movement, which he defines as:



The key trends driving this movement include:

  • The rise of sensors, wearables, the quantified-self movement, and advances in data science and analytics are bringing never-before imagined levels of personalization and predictive assistance capabilities (as well as rising concerns over privacy).
  • The integration of seamless payment technology into devices, increasingly accessible to third parties via APIs.

At my company, ZipfWorks, we build and scale intelligent shopping platforms and applications, so I pay close attention to emerging trends impacting digital commerce such as chatbots and mobile commerce. Here is a look at the major initiatives and forces shaping this trend:

1. WeChat


WeChat was created by Chinese holding company Tencent three years ago. The product was created by a special projects team within Tencent (which also owns the dominant desktop messaging software in China, QQ) under the mandate of creating a completely new mobile-first messaging experience for the Chinese market. In three short years, WeChat has exploded in popularity and has become the dominant mobile messaging platform in China, with approximately 700 million monthly active users (MAUs).

How stores interact with customers on WeChat.

While in the US, the trend for apps has been to “unbundle” themselves into separate, use-case specific apps, in China the trend is quite the opposite. WeChat is reminiscent of what Yahoo might be if you crammed it all into a single mobile app. Yes, on WeChat you can chat, but you can also conduct a myriad of shopping-related activities:

  • Hail a taxi
  • Order food delivery
  • Buy movie tickets
  • Customize and order a pair of Nikes
  • Send an order to the nearest Starbucks
  • Track your daily fitness progress
  • Shop Burberry’s latest collection
  • Book doctor appointments
  • Host a business conference call
  • Pay your water bill

You get the point.


Nike’s social media presence on WeChat.

WeChat combines a chat-based interface with a vast library of add-on features such as a mobile wallet, chat-based transactions, and chat-based media and interactive widgets, and exposes it all to businesses through a powerful API that enables businesses from mom and pop noodle shops to powerhouses such as Nike and Burberry to “friend” their customers and market to them in never before imaginable ways. Over 10 million businesses in China have WeChat accounts, and it is becoming increasingly popular for small businesses to only have a WeChat account, forgoing developing their own website or mobile app completely. US technology firms, in particular Facebook, are taking note.

2. Facebook Messenger


Facebook has jumped fully on the conversational commerce bandwagon and is betting big that it can turn its popular Messenger app into a business messaging powerhouse. The company first integrated peer-to-peer payments into Messenger in 2015 and then launched a full chatbot API so businesses can create interactions for customers to occur within the Facebook Messenger app. You can order flowers from 1–800-Flowers, browse and buy the latest fashions from Spring, and order an Uber, all from within a Messenger chat.



Shopping for fashion with Spring’s bot on Facebook Messenger.

The Facebook Messenger API enables rich interactive UI elements to be included as a part of chats, which I think points to a future of conversational UIs that are not limited to text chats or voice commands but that weave together maps, product photos, comparison tools, and other interactive elements (cards?) into the conversation stream.

3. Amazon Echo

“Alexa, order me a pizza.”

Amazon’s Echo device has been a surprise hit, reaching over 3 million units sold in less than 18 months. Although part of this success can be attributed to the massive awareness-building power of the homepage, the device receives positive reviews from customers and experts alike and has even prompted Google to develop its own version of the same device, Google Home.

What does the Echo have to do with conversational commerce? While the most common uses of the device include playing music, making informational queries, and controlling home devices, Alexa (the device’s default addressable name) can also tap into Amazon’s full product catalog as well as your order history and intelligently carry out commands to buy stuff. You can reorder commonly ordered items or even have Alexa walk you through some options in purchasing something you’ve never ordered before.

Through Amazon’s developer platform for the Echo (called Alexa Skills), developers can develop “skills” for Alexa that enable her to carry out new types of tasks. Examples of skills include playing music from your Spotify library, adding events to your Google Calendar, or querying your credit card balance with Capital One . You can even ask Alexa to “open Dominoes and place my Easy Order” and have pizza delivered without picking up your smartphone. Now that’s conversational commerce in action.

4. Operator

Operator calls itself a “request network” aiming to “unlock the 90% of commerce that’s not on the Internet.” The Operator app, developed by Uber cofounder Garrett Camp, connects you with a network of “operators” who act like concierges and can execute any shopping-related request. You can order concert tickets, get gift ideas, or even get interior design recommendations for new furniture. Operator seems to be positioning itself for “high consideration” purchases, bigger ticket purchases requiring more research and expertise, where its operators can add significant value to a transaction.

Examples of commerce interactions on Operator.


5. Slack

Slack has its own internal help bot (@slackbot) which sends you occasional helpful messages that you can then interact with using text chat commands. The company has expanded on this concept and launched an external API enabling developers to build bots for Slack, accessible via Slack’s app directory.

Ordering with TacoBot on Slack.

One of the more talked about integrations has been Taco Bell‘s announcement that it is working on a Slackbot (appropriately named Tacobot) that will not only take your Gordita Supreme order but will do it with the same “witty personality you’d expect from Taco Bell.” Consumer demand for such a service remains to be seen, but it hints at the potential for brands to leverage Slack’s platform and growing audience.

6. Allo from Google

At this year’s I/O, Google announced its own Facebook Messenger competitor called Allo. Apart from some neat features around privacy and self-expression, the really interesting part of Allo is @google, the app’s AI digital assistant. Google’s assistant is interesting because the company has about a decade-long head start in machine learning applied to search, so it’s likely that Allo’s chatbot will be very useful. In fact, you could see Allo becoming the primary interface for interacting with Google search over time. This interaction model would more closely resemble Larry Page’s long-term vision for search, which goes far beyond the clumsy search query + results page model of today:


Allo from Google.


7. Snapchat Discover + Snapcash

Brands are falling over themselves to plug into Snapchat, and the ultra-popular messaging app among teens and Millennials has recently been offering some tantalizing signals that it will become an even more compelling e-commerce platform in the near future.

In 2015, Snapchat launched Snapcash, a virtual wallet that allows users to store their debit card on Snapchat and send money to friends with a simple message.


While this was a limited test, it shows that Snapchat sees potential in enabling direct commerce (likely fulfilled through Snapcash payments) within the Snapchat app, opening the door to many interesting new ways brands can interact with and sell products to Snapchatters.

Lancome on Snapchat Discover.

While snaps and stories are a bit different from traditional voice or chat conversations, Snapchat nonetheless represents a new form of messaging that enables entirely new ways to embed commerce into conversations. And with 10 billion views per day, innovation on Snapchat will no doubt be exciting and will have a profound impact on commerce.

8. AppleTV and Siri


While AppleTV’s commerce capabilities are currently limited to purchasing media from iTunes, it seems likely that Siri’s capabilities would be extended to tvOS apps so app developers will be able to support voice commands from AppleTV directly within their apps. Imagine using voice commands to navigate through Netflix, browse your Fancy shopping feed, or plan a trip using Tripadvisor on AppleTV . The potential for app developers will be significant if Apple extends its developer platform further into the home through AppleTV and Siri.

9. Magic

Magic, launched in early 2015, was one of the first all-in-one intelligent virtual assistants as a service. Unique in that the service does not even have an app (you access it purely via SMS), Magic promises to be able to handle virtually any task you send it — almost like a human executive assistant. Based on user and press accounts, Magic seems to be able to successfully carry out a variety of odd tasks–everything from setting up flight reservations to ordering hard-to-find food items.

Examples of things Magic can do.

However, since Magic simply connects you with human operators who carry out your requests, the service does not leverage AI to automate its processes. Thus the service is expensive and may lack mainstream potential. The company recently launched a premium service called Magic+ that gets you higher level service for $100 per hour, indicating that it sees its market among business executives and other wealthy customers.

10. Kik Bots

In Kik CEO Ted Livingston’s vision of the future, you may sit down at a baseball game, open your Kik app, and scan a QR-type code on the seat in front of you to connect with the stadium concierge, and order a beer via Kik chat to be delivered to your seat.

In Livingston’s words:


Shopping H&M via its Kik bot

Kik is one of the most popular chat apps among teens, with 275 million monthly active users. And 40% of those are in the 13 to 24-year-old demographic. In April, Kik launched its own bot store with 16 launch partners, including Sephora, H&M, Vine, the Weather Channel, and Funny or Die. Using Kik’s bots currently feel like using the Internet in 1994, very rough around the edges and limited functionality/usefulness. However, we’ll see how the API and bots progress over time. Kik’s popularity with an attractive demographic might convince some brands to invest in the platform.

11. Telegram

Founded by Pavel Durov, creator of Russia’s equivalent to Facebook, Telegram launched in 2013 as a lightweight messaging app to combine the speed of WhatsApp with the ephemerality of Snapchat along with claimed enhanced privacy and security through its use of the MTProto protocol (Telegram has offered a $200,000 prize to any developer who can crack MTProto’s security). Telegram has 100 million monthly active users, putting it in the second tier of messaging apps in terms of popularity.

Example of a Telegram Messenger bot in action.


The big picture

As these platforms and technologies evolve, we’ll see new forms of brand-to-consumer communication and interaction emerge — some will work and some will fail, but there’s no doubt both consumers and brands will benefit from more intelligent touch points enabled by these technologies.

[A version of this post was originally published on the ZipfWorks blog.]

Michael Quoc is founder and CEO of Zipfworks, which creates new ways to shop. He was previously a director of product management at Yahoo.


  • our newsletters
  • networking features, and more
Become a member