Conversational Commerce

Conversational commerce is the practice of selling to and serving customers inside a messaging conversation, without forcing them to jump to a website or a form. The buyer discovers products, asks questions, chooses, confirms and often pays without leaving the chat, whether on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger or the company's own website widget. What changes compared with traditional e-commerce is not just the channel: the interaction replaces browsing through pages, and the service can be human, automated with an AI agent, or a combination of both.

The term became popular in 2015, when Chris Messina (the inventor of the hashtag) used it to describe the convergence of chat apps and shopping. In Latin America, where WhatsApp is the dominant channel for contact between companies and customers, it stopped being a trend and became the natural way many consumers buy. For companies, managing those conversations at scale (catalogs, templates, agents, payments) is part of what a sales platform like Sellium organizes on top of Salesforce.

How it works in practice

Conversational commerce combines several pieces that work together inside the chat thread. The customer arrives through a Click-to-WhatsApp ad, a button on the website or by replying to a campaign. On the other side, an advisor or an AI agent greets them, understands what they are looking for and shows them options, often through a native WhatsApp catalog. The conversation moves forward with real questions ("do you have it in a medium?", "will it arrive before Friday?"), something a web form never handles as well.

When the customer decides to buy, the close happens inside the same thread: the order is put together, a payment link is sent or an integrated payment gateway is used, and the confirmation, tracking and after-sales service continue on the same channel. All of this relies on the WhatsApp Business API, the infrastructure that makes it possible to operate at scale (unlike the free app, designed for one phone and one operator).

Why it matters for a business

The underlying reason is that people are already in the chat. According to a survey across 22 markets (including Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia), 73% of consumers prefer messaging when communicating with a business (Kantar for Meta, 2025). Selling where the customer is already talking reduces friction: there is no need to create an account, remember a password or complete a multi-step checkout.

For the business, the concrete value shows up on three fronts:

• Higher conversion: a conversation that answers questions on the spot recovers sales that a website loses to abandonment. It is the natural territory of abandoned cart recovery.
• Lower service cost: an AI agent can handle repetitive questions (stock, prices, order status) around the clock, and leave people for the cases that require judgment through a human handoff.
• Customer data in one place: each conversation is tied to a contact, which feeds the CRM and makes it possible to segment, follow up and measure.

A concrete example in Argentina

A home appliance distributor in Córdoba goes from taking orders by phone to taking them over WhatsApp. An Instagram ad takes people to the chat; the agent shows the catalog, answers questions about installments and financing, builds the order and sends a Mercado Pago payment link. The customer pays without leaving WhatsApp and receives the confirmation in the same thread. Orders that used to be lost outside business hours are taken by the automated agent instead, which escalates to a human sales rep only when a wholesale deal needs to be negotiated. The entire conversation is recorded as an opportunity in the CRM.

Common mistakes

• Confusing "having WhatsApp" with conversational commerce. Answering messages from a phone neither scales nor measures; conversational commerce needs the API, catalogs, templates and a system that organizes the conversations.
• Ignoring WhatsApp's rules. Starting conversations outside the 24-hour window requires an approved WhatsApp template (HSM); skipping this degrades the WhatsApp quality rating and can get the number blocked.
• Automating everything at once. An agent without a good handoff frustrates the customer at the worst moment (when they are about to buy). The human-AI balance is what defines a good experience.
• Not measuring. Without attributing the sale to the channel, conversational commerce looks like "just another WhatsApp" and not a revenue engine.

How it differs from traditional e-commerce

Both sell online, but the logic is different. Classic e-commerce is a self-service journey through pages; conversational commerce is an assisted dialogue.

In practice they are not mutually exclusive: many companies keep their online store and add the conversational channel to capture people who prefer to ask before buying and to recover the sales the website loses along the way.