In a blog posting late last week, Dominique Essig, the retailer's VP of Conversational Commerce at its Store No8 incubator, said that " Store No8 and Walmart’s Global Tech team are currently testing a beta experience — Walmart Text to Shop — with customers in select areas. We’re learning a lot about when and how customers prefer a conversational experience, and we look forward to making this more widely available in the future."
The idea, she says, is that when a customer needs something immediately, she'll be able to just say, "OK, Google, add (insert product name here) to my Walmart cart.” And it'll be done.
"In addition to helping our busy families with this simple solution, a key benefit of this new service is that it’s personalized just for them," Essig writes. "By understanding our customers’ preferences, we also solve the paradox of choice and save them time by serving up what we know they love best. Most importantly, we offer Walmart customers the opportunity to shop no matter where they are, and to communicate naturally by simply asking for what they want, any way they want … The advantage of conversational commerce is that customers can communicate with Walmart the way they communicate with friends and family. Easy, convenient — no need to learn how to use a new platform."
- KC's View:
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Pretty soon, the way things are going, we're just going to have to think about a product, and the embedded electrodes in our brains will automatically order it from someone.
Which could be a problem for me, because I think about Twizzlers and Tito's a lot. (Not necessarily in that order.)
