As consumers look for a deeper connection with the brands they buy from, it is the conversational messaging channels that are seeing the fastest growth.

Brands all over the world have been adopting an omnichannel approach to their customer messaging. However, there is no single blueprint that can be applied in all regions and to all use cases. With different messaging apps popular across the regions there is a requirement for flexibility in the primary and secondary channels that are utilized for transactional and promotional use cases.

To get a better idea on the trends specific to you, try to focus on:
 

As business messaging continues to evolve, it has become clear that customers are happy for brands to incorporate AI into their messaging strategies if it means that they can benefit from:

However, although people know that they are interacting with AI they want to retain the sense of speaking with a human. Interactions that are robotic and inflexible are not appreciated. 

This means the development of conversational AI that is flexible, that has a personality, and that knows when it is time to hand over to a human agent.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Conversations between humans help to break down barriers through two-way exchanges of information and ideas that give us a deeper understanding of each other’s lives and motivations, and potentially change our points of view.  

Conversational experience is the practice of applying this concept to the interactions between businesses and their customers. By combining human creativity with conversational tools, machine learning and artificial intelligence, innovative brands can provide a more personalized, friction-free, and intelligent customer journey that retains its ‘humanness’.

The three pillars of conversational experience >>

CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Effective marketing is all about reaching out to people that may be interested in your products and services and engaging with them to form a mutually beneficial relationship.

This is the basis of conversational marketing and why we are seeing brands ramping up their efforts to be available to customers on the digital channels that they already use to communicate with family and friends.

Overall, we saw a 29.3% increase
in mobile app messaging for marketing use cases in 2023.

Key to this growth has been the release WhatsApp of features that enable customers to seamlessly progress through all stages of a purchase within a single chat window. No need to jump between apps and websites, making for a more convenient experience. New features include:

Other messaging channels are also enabling brands to explore conversational marketing use cases:

CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Conversational commerce is all about guiding customers through the entire marketing and sales funnel using their favorite digital channels: 

With the release of WhatsApp Flows and Payments, WhatsApp offers the most complete experience. Businesses can build pathways for customers to easily complete tasks and even make purchases, all without leaving the app. For countries where the final payment step is not yet supported, Infobip can help businesses to use WhatsApp Flows with their preferred payment gateway. 

WhatsApp is not the only channel enabling brands to explore conversational marketing use cases. As they expand their channel usage and adopt messaging apps that are popular in all the regions where they do business, we are seeing significant increases in the use of other messaging channels including Telegram, Line, Viber, and Messenger. 

CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Customer service and support is one of the first areas where brands start experimenting with a conversational approach. Whether a person is dealing with a human agent or a chatbot, or a combination of the two, conversational support provides an effective, efficient, and positive experience. 

WhatsApp is still the primary channel that brands use to provide conversational support, but there has been a marked increase
in the use of other channels.

In 2022 99% of support messages were sent on WhatsApp. However, for 2023 the figure is 90% with several additional chat apps being used more widely.

This trend shows how brands are diversifying their channel mix for support use cases and leveraging the regional popularity and conversational qualities of other chat apps in order to provide a service on their customers’ preferred channels.

As expected, 2023 saw increased use of AI for customer support by Infobip’s customers. With our help, many brands were able to safely introduce AI to provide a more efficient and cost-effective service. 

Some of the trends that we are seeing include:

CUSTOMER JOURNEY

The spotlight has been on artificial intelligence in the past year as technologies have impacted the CX strategies of many brands.

For our customers and partners, the experiences implementing GenAI have been resoundingly positive. We have been proud of many success stories where our conversational AI tools have been used to create groundbreaking chatbot solutions.

We firmly believe that AI should not be seen as an autonomous black box solution but rather as a tool that can be called upon to perform the specific tasks that it excels at. It must exist symbiotically alongside the human workforce and other software tools to add value throughout the customer journey.

Today’s customer is happy to share private information with virtual assistants if they get accurate, personalized, and immediate responses in return.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Chat apps are the most commonly used channel for conversational use cases. They are ideally suited as their native features compliment and enrich person-to-person communication.

With customer support being the main reason for people to get in touch, it is crucial for businesses to make the process of starting a conversation as easy as possible.

This can be done by adding ‘Click to chat’ links on various entry points. Brands that have been able to do this successfully increase the number of queries that can be resolved on more cost -effective digital channels.

SMS is still an important channel for business communication, but the usage patterns are changing. With comparatively higher costs than chat apps, and not being suited to conversational messaging due to the 160-character limit and lack of rich media support, we are seeing it being used more in conjunction with chat apps.  

RCS BUSINESS MESSAGING

Apple announced in November 2023 that it would start supporting RCS on its devices in 2024. However, we were already seeing a significant uptick in RCS traffic in many regions as brands extended their use of the channel, primarily to take advantage of its media sharing capability and suitability for conversational interactions.

This will significantly impact the volume of RCS traffic that we see in 2024. As customer opt-ins for SMS also cover RCS messaging, the process of moving traffic from SMS to RCS is simplified.   

According to Juniper Research, the number of active RCS users will reach 2.1 billion globally by 2025. 

Total global growth in RCS messages on the Infobip platform in 2023 was a massive 358%.

Countries that already had high RCS adoption rates that grew strongly in 2023 include: 

INDUSTRY FOCUS

Retailers and eCommerce businesses are often the trailblazers when it comes to adopting new technologies and rolling out innovative new use cases. Agile and creative young brands can challenge established players by engaging with customers in fresh and dynamic ways.

This is especially true of brands that target the teen and young adult market who have led the way in adopting chat apps and social media as sales channels and working with influencers to exponentially extend the reach of their campaigns.  

Some of the latest trends include:

INDUSTRY FOCUS

In what has traditionally been seen as a more conservative industry when it comes to the adoption of new technology, we are seeing definite signs that things are changing. 

With more choice of financial service providers available to customers, smaller and more agile businesses that can incorporate the latest technology to provide a faster and more engaging customer experience become more attractive. Customers who have become used to the conversational experience provided in other sectors are more likely to abandon larger organizations whose velocity is hampered by legacy systems and processes.    

Due to the high priority of many of the messages and the need to have a reliable backup channel, the finance sector has comparatively high rates of omnichannel adoption. 

Combinations of SMS, Email and Voice have been the most popular channels, but it is now SMS and WhatsApp that have pulled ahead with 24.3% of institutions going for this combination.

INDUSTRY FOCUS

For an industry that is based on connecting people, it is always interesting to track how telcos communicate with their own customers for transactional and promotional messages.

As you would expect, Telcos make significant use of SMS, but the trend that we have been tracking is a significant increase in the use of digital channels and RCS.

Telco communication trends

Telcos are often early adopters of new communication technology.

For example, automating customer verification with chatbots for SIM cards and exploring generative AI use cases to benefit both customers and staff.

This is illustrated by the recent news that global telco brand Vodafone is partnering with Microsoft to make use of Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service.

REGIONAL MESSAGING TRENDS

With the dominant global trend being a move to a more conversational style of business messaging, these are the regions that are leading the way.  

It is an exciting time in the world of customer experience as new technologies are maturing to a point where they can offer real value both to consumers and businesses – without the risk of reputational damage. 

AI will play an ever-greater role in the interactions between brands and their customers, but as we have discussed, it is not a silver bullet for every use case. It needs to be used for the tasks that it excels at as part of a wider eco-system of people, data, and other tools, where the end consumer is always the focus. Technology by itself is no longer a differentiator; it is the experience that technology can help to provide that really matters. 

Take mobile phone security as an example – it was a major step forward when we could lock our phones with a passcode. But that required us to remember the code and enter it every time we wanted to use our phones – which was increasingly often as more and more services went mobile. Fingerprint recognition was a big step forward – it was even more secure than a code and quicker, but it had its drawbacks. Anyone from a cold climate will know the frustration of having to remove a glove every time you wanted to check your messages. Facial recognition got around this problem and now we just have to glance at our phone screens to unlock it.

Each step forward ensured both better security and a simpler experience for the user. With this in mind, the next stage in the evolution of conversational experiences will be a consolidation of technology and services designed to make life easier for people.
Rather than having a multitude of different apps on our phones to meet our requirements for communication, recreation, and retail experiences, we will see the continued emergence of super apps that do it all. We are already seeing this trend with WhatsApp adding to their messaging, voice and video call services to supporting end to end retail journeys in their app – from discovery to purchase and support, but that is just the start.

The role that AI will play in this process will be twofold – more engaging and human-like interfaces, and in the background, increasingly sophisticated and joined-up large language models working to provide a personalized experience for every user. 
 The ultimate fusion of form, function, and creativity.

At Infobip we don’t pretend to have an intimate knowledge of all the individual markets that our global partners and customers operate in. However, we are experts in conversational experiences, and how

to use AI effectively and responsibly – and we are fast learners. That is the power of co-creation. As we learn about the needs and challenges of our customers, they learn the art of the possible with a technology partner that can support their ambitions and is not afraid to push the possibilities. 

We are a technology provider, but we thrive on collaboration. We love nothing more than helping businesses to make breakthroughs in their understanding of their own customers and markets, and to build loyalty through empathy and understanding.