Should a small business sell over chat and text?

Bizer · 2026-10-01

On 31 July 2024, Google switched off the chat button on Google Business Profiles. Businesses that had built their customer service around it had a few weeks' notice. It is the plainest lesson in the whole subject: selling over chat works, and building it on one company's channel is a bet that the channel stays.

Conversational commerce means taking orders, answering questions and getting paid inside a conversation, whether that is a text thread, Instagram or Facebook messages, WhatsApp or a chat window on your site. This page used to be about preparing for it. For most small businesses it is already here. Customers text you whether you planned for it or not.

What changed since the chatbot years?

The 2017 version of this idea was the scripted chatbot: a menu of buttons in Facebook Messenger that walked a customer through an order. Most were abandoned, because customers with a real question hit a dead end.

Three things are different in 2026:

• The channels shifted. Google's business chat is gone. Meta moved the WhatsApp Business Platform to charging per message from 1 July 2025, according to Meta's developer documentation, with replies inside an open customer service window free.
• Texting got regulated by the carriers. Businesses sending texts from ordinary 10 digit numbers through software must register under a system called A2P 10DLC. Twilio's help center says messages from unregistered numbers to US phones have been blocked since 1 September 2023.
• The software can answer real questions. AI assistants now handle open questions, not just button menus. Whether they handle yours correctly is something you have to test.

Should you sell this way?

Yes, in the places your customers already message you. No, to building a new channel and hoping they come.

Where it earns its keep:

• Quotes. A customer texts a photo of the fence, you text back a price and a payment link for the deposit. That is a sale that a contact form would have slowed down by a day.
• Repeat orders. "Same as last time?" is the shortest sales conversation there is.
• Order and appointment updates. Customers want to know when you will arrive. A text saves you the phone call.
• Questions before purchase. Sizes, availability, whether you deliver to Thibodaux. Answer within minutes and you often have the sale.

A payment link is what turns a conversation into money, and every major processor offers one. Setting up PayPal covers one route.

The rules for texting customers

This is where small businesses get hurt.

Marketing texts need the customer's prior written consent under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Get it at signup, in words that say they will receive marketing texts, and honor STOP immediately. A customer who texted you a question has not agreed to your promotions.

In January 2025 a federal appeals court struck down an FCC rule that would have tightened consent further, the so-called one-to-one consent rule. That did not loosen the underlying law. TCPA lawsuits carry statutory damages per message, which is why a careless blast to a bought list can cost more than the business earns in a year. If you text customers at any scale, have a lawyer read your consent wording once.

Register your number for 10DLC through whatever texting software you use. It takes days to weeks, and unregistered messages simply do not arrive.

What does it cost?

The software is usually cheap. The cost is attention. A customer who messages you expects an answer in minutes, not tomorrow. If nobody owns the inbox, a chat channel loses you more sales than it wins, because you were visibly there and did not reply.

An AI assistant can cover nights and weekends, and it can also tell a customer something false with complete confidence. If you use one, give it your real prices, hours and policies, read a sample of its conversations every week, and make it easy for a customer to reach a person.

Who this is not for

A business whose sales need a site visit and a written contract, or whose customers are other businesses buying through purchase orders, will get little from selling in chat. Use messages for scheduling and updates, and leave the selling to the quote.

What is uncertain

How customers will use AI assistants to find and buy from local businesses is not settled as of October 2026. Several platforms now advertise selling inside AI chats, and it is too early to say which, if any, will matter for a small shop. The safe position is the boring one: answer the messages you already get, quickly, on channels you could leave tomorrow, and keep your own list of who your customers are.