What Happened
BP has started testing a so-called “personality pump” at select gas stations in New York City and Chicago that will talk with customers. Created in partnership with Pandora and The Onion, these interactive gas pumps can chat with customers, play music for them, and tell jokes to keep customers entertained as it fills up their tanks. Customers can also play music trivia games and record shareable video “e-cards” while they wait. Once they are done, they can opt to text themselves a message with a “special return offer.”
What Brands Should Do
This innovative take on conversational interfaces broadens the scope in which brands typically think of engaging customers via conversations. By incorporating the chat function into gas pumps, BP is able to transform a physical utility product into a digitally enhanced touch point to capture audience attention and leverage that into possible future engagements.
The rise of conversational commerce points to changing consumer behavior on mobile and a shift in brand-customer interaction. Therefore, brands should take note and develop a strategy for conversational commerce. For additional information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, please check out the first section of our Outlook 2016.
Source: The Verge
Lead image courtesy of BP’s press release
