IDG Contributor Network: Success secrets for conversational commerce

When Facebook Messenger announced the opening of its chatbot platform a little over a year ago, one of the first companies to leap into serving customers via automated chat was 1-800-Flowers.com.  Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, demoed their beta platform as part of his announcement, joking “To order from 1-800-Flowers, you never have to call 1-800-Flowers again.”Since then, Facebook has continued to expand the platform’s capabilities, adding payment methods and enhanced UI