How Voice and Text are Transforming Shopping

We’re all doing a million things at once.

We’re driving the kids to school while making a mental grocery list. We’re doing laundry and remembering it’s our turn to bring snacks to soccer practice. We’re doctoring a kid’s boo-boo and realizing we’re almost out of Band-Aids. (The superhero ones, not the princess ones. It’s a whole thing.)

Soon, our supermom will simply be able to say, “OK, Google, add Band-Aids to my Walmart cart.” Whether she's using a Google or Apple device, commands like this one open the Walmart app and adds Band-Aids — the superhero Band-Aids Walmart knows are the household favorite — to her cart, and she doesn’t have to lift a finger.

So, how close are customers to being able to text Walmart their shopping list? I’m excited to say 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.

Walmart gets it, and we’re here to make the shopping process simple and convenient. This type of innovative customer experience is exactly what we build every day. And while Walmart has offered voice shopping for years, text shopping is just getting warmed up.

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. 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.

To learn more, check out this video, where I had an opportunity to share details on Walmart’s conversational commerce collaboration with Google, making it easier than ever for Walmart customers to shop via their phone or Google device.

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.

Let’s face it, we’ll never stop trying to do a million things at once. Our hope is that conversational commerce can help ease the stress of the never-ending to-do list.

By Dominique Essig, VP of Conversational Commerce, Store No8 (Oct. 14, 2021 )