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Conversational commerce, brands’ ability to interact with customers through messaging, continues to evolve. According to Quiq CEO Mike Myer, our latest guest on Heard on the Street, this is a function of the technology but also cultural factors that deter consumers from traditional channels like email and phone.

“Waiting for email to come back is like watching paint dry,” he told us. “So, if you’re in the purchase process, you’re going to go somewhere else to buy if you’re on a brand’s website and you have to interact with them on email. And making a phone call: There’s a whole generation of people who aren’t very fond of phone calls.”

Quiq provides software for brands to implement an auxiliary messaging channel for customer communications. According to Myers, that happens in both pre- and post-sale contexts. That means it can help customers qualify purchase decisions but also send them ongoing messages to cultivate a long-term relationship. The latter can be everything from ship notifications to ongoing promotions.

Going forward, Myer is excited about some of the impending messaging advances. For example, a new standard called RCS will enable much richer and meaningful messaging. That includes more rich media such as images, video, augmented reality, and other things that help visualize products or qualify purchase decisions.

“The capabilities in six months are going to be significantly expanded,” Myer said. “Everyone is familiar with SMS as the common universal form of texting… Facebook and Google and Apple are focused on messaging channels. As a result of that focus, the capabilities of messaging are rapidly advancing.”

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Mike Boland has been a tech & media analyst for the past two decades, specifically covering mobile, local, and emerging technologies. He has written for Street Fight since 2011. More can be seen at Localogy.com