Vonage Tests Conversational Commerce With Jumper.ai Merger

Cloud communications company Vonage has purchased Jumper.ai, a Singapore-based omnichannel conversational commerce solutions provider, according to a Tuesday (Oct. 19) press release. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

As part of the acquisition, Jumper.ai's team will join Vonage's Product and Engineering group in an effort to harness Jumper.ai’s conversational commerce capabilities, according to the announcement.

See also: Conversational Commerce May Be ‘Significant Portion’ of eCommerce Purchases Within Next Decade

Conversational commerce — or the act of purchasing goods without leaving a messaging platform such as Facebook Messenger — is expected to account for a “significant portion” of transactions within the next five to 10 years, according to PYMNTS.

Mike Myer, founder and CEO of communication platform Quiq, told PYMNTS earlier this month that businesses were already heading toward conversational commerce before the pandemic. However, the last year and a half has stepped up adoption and integration of this form of eCommerce. Between mid-March 2020 and April 2020, Quiq saw twice as much traffic on its platform. Since then, Myer said the conversation volume per client has surged to 300%.

The Vonage and Jumper.ai collaboration marries APIs and artificial intelligence-powered two-way conversations to meet customers “where they are,” according to Vonage. According to Vonage’s 2020 annual customer engagement report, where customers are, overwhelmingly, is on social messaging apps. The report found that 23% more consumers picked messaging apps as a top three way to call businesses. Text messaging declined by 23% in consumer preference, while Instagram interactions surged by 75% and Facebook Messenger increased by 20%. WhatsApp is the favorite method for contacting businesses in Latin America and it’s the favorite messaging app to connect with businesses for 32% of responders.

Related: AMZN vs WMT Weekly: Walmart to Expand Conversational Commerce, But Amazon Is Already There

Walmart too is looking to bolster its conversational commerce by allowing its customers to text their shopping lists, according to PYMNTS. The retail giant is evaluating the capability of its Text to Shop offering. Walmart offers voice shopping through Google Assistant, but is reportedly no match for Amazon, which controls a reported 68 percent of the voice artificial intelligence (AI) market.