Social media has changed many things about our lives. Not only can we have a blow by blow account of what our friends and family are up to, but we can also see what they had for dinner. We can even see what friends of our friends had for dinner.   One of the other ways social media changed our lives is in how we interact with brands. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter gave us direct access to brands in a way we hadn’t had before. However, it also gave them direct access to us.    Conversational Commerce was conceived in 2016 by the inventor of the hashtag, Chris Messina. It describes how we interact with brands over several different channels in various ways, including social media. Messina, who has a career in tech and tech platforms, recently co-founded and launched a conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) company called Molly. Molly will skim your social media presence to find answers to your customer questions on your behalf.    However, Messina sees applications like Molly as just the beginning of AI handling customer interactions on the social media platforms. He also sees a future where brands interact with people as if the brand was a person. Humanizing brands is the future of social media. Moreover, it will be handled by AI, not humans.     But how should organizations create this anthropomorphized brand for themselves? What should they use to create it and how should it respond to queries? After they establish a humanized brand that can respond, how should it affect the customer journey and contribute to the relationship. These are all questions that Messina and other experts ask about the future of brand interaction.    This is the first of a two-part interview with Messina about his concept of Conversational Commerce and how it will affect the future of Customer Experiences on social media and the relationships that develop there. We also discuss the essential considerations that every brand should make before launching their personalized interactions that aim to deepen the customer relationship and facilitate customer-driven growth.  The Intuitive Customer podcasts help you take your Customer Experience to the next level by unlocking the “hidden” aspects of your experience and determining what really drives value for your customers.   To find out more about how your organization’s marketing can improve customer loyalty and retention, contact us at www.beyondphilosophy.com.    To subscribe to The Intuitive Customer and never miss a podcast, please click here.    This podcast is produced by Resonate Recordings. Click here to see how they can help you.