There is a pervasive misconception circulating to brands, instructing those looking to engage their consumers in conversation the need to turn, primarily, to social media. While this might be a reasonable initial assertion, the opportunities to diversify this tactic are gathering strength.

One such example is the chatbot. If you have been following chatbots at all, you already know that their use is exploding. As a takeaway from the latest MobileBeat Conference in San Francisco 2016, a rapidly expanding cohort of companies are pouncing on the chat ecosystems of Facebook and Kik, among others. The hospitality, travel, service and retail industries are building chatbots at a rapid pace and more than 10,000 developers are actively working on bots connected to Facebook’s Messenger, “M”, according to the conference.

These companies, Pizza Hut, Expedia, AirBnB, and many others, are exposing their chatbots in a number of ways, through external ecosystems like FB and Kik but also in their own properties. So, to what extent does a chatbot play in your conversation strategy and how reliant is it on social media? It is the type of question I pose to my students at the University of Denver, however we aren’t going to answer this question in this article, but there is power in the asking.

Before we continue, chatbots are really just one method bringing to the common consciousness a theme of conversational mass customization. As you explore this industry, be sure to investigate the influence natural language processing and the most basic of menu driven conversation UI begins to impact your users. Additional note, there is a substantial impact on technological infrastructure required to support the various levels of conversational sophistication.

So what’s happening with conversations?

To dredge up some marketing theory, moments-of-truth (MOT), was started in the late 80’s from some P&G consumer research that determined there are two moments of truth:

- First Moment of Truth (FMOT): When a consumer was confronted (usually isle-side) with brand packaging and selected a toothpaste

- Second Moment of Truth (SMOT): When the consumer used their purchase and was either smiles or frowns

This model contributed to a lot of other theories with which you are familiar: CPG strategy, Buyer’s Remorse, Social Marketing, funnel conversion theories, and others. However Google came along and, for simplicity sake, established online search as a thing. As part of their work to understand user behavior, Google released a new Moment of Truth, Zero (ZMOT).

- Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT): Establishes the role that the searching and researching process plays as a consumer narrows down options before making a purchasing decision.

String them together and now we’ve established: ZMOT, FMOT, and SMOT. And now, I’d posit that there is a Pre-ZMOT, we can call it CMOT for now.

CMOT is the Conversational Moment of Truth. The stage where users are engaged in conversations: social media driven, SMS with friends or in their private environments like a car or home and brands are listening and providing a instant concierge experience to help drive to purchasing decisions, bypassing search. Yes, you heard it, bypassing search, er… Google. Quick note here, is to mention the reason for the native mobile app ecosystem, bypassing search? Again, yes. Brand participation in conversations is a big deal and hopefully surfaces the paradigm shifting impact this has for brands dependency on Google and the structure of consumer engagement. This is the evolution of marketing moments of truth and the underlying context for the conversational battlefield.

I’ll provide a method in a later post on how a marketer begins to strategize within the conversational arena, called adaptive brand conversations.