On Tuesday, at Connect Interact and Transact (CIT)’s annual Joburg event tagged “Turning Conversations into Commerce,” the organizer, Clickatell, a pioneer in CPaaS and Chat Commerce, spoke with participants about the new age of Chat Commerce and how businesses can create a completely new method of engaging consumers with the service.
Some of the most well-known businesses in the region gave examples of how they changed their chat platforms into scalable, personalised customer experiences that bring in new streams of income.
At the event, which was attended by several business and technology professionals from around the continent, Werner Lindemann, Clickatell’s Senior Vice President of Enterprise Sales and Growth Markets, moderated a panel discussion.
Chat commerce will be revolutionized by Clickatell
Speaking at the event, Bronwyn Williams, a futurist, economist, and business trends analyst, provided an intriguing glimpse into the future of technology and the many exciting prospects that are yet to come.
Williams made the observation that conversation is becoming easier to understand because of the fast-advancing application of many technologies, including AI. She did point out, however, that despite the fact that the purpose of the new technology was to make chatbots almost indistinguishable from humans, “any effective anticipatory communications with customers must happen in real-time and, most importantly, where they are and in a way that feels natural and is not disruptive.”
She ended her discussion by advising company owners to carefully analyse how they automate to maximise their cost savings while maintaining a sustained, personal connection with their consumers.
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Also, Clickatell’s Co-Founder and CEO, Pieter de Villiers, used these insights and Shep Hyken’s idea of the “convenience revolution” as a starting point to look at what happens when companies interact with customers where they already are.
De Villiers began by asking the crowd to consider the true value of their customers’ time and how they valued the value of ease when making purchasing decisions.
“As anyone in retail will tell you, location, location, location is everything. And, with chat now having almost twice the number of active users than the internet, there can be no better place than the address book of your customers– the most valuable location of all,” de Villiers said.
De Villiers stated that there would soon be nothing that could be done on the internet that couldn’t be done on chat, citing the capabilities of mega-platforms such as Meta and WhatsApp as evidence.
“Convenience is not difficult to achieve. If you meet your customers where they are, not only can you build a closer, more authentic engagement with them, but you’re giving them back the one thing that we all crave, time,” he shared.
More from the Panel Debate
After that, there was a dynamic panel discussion, during which Clickatell clients and partners were given the opportunity to share their insights and experiences with the audience.
Daniela Birnbaum, the Channel Partner Manager at WhatsApp EMEA, praised local companies when discussing the significance of chat. She said that these brands are leading the charge when it comes to developing a robust WhatsApp channel. In addition, she said that South Africa is much ahead of many other EMEA areas in terms of chat usage.
Gareth Bray, the BD & Partnerships Lead for EMEA – Business Messaging Group at Meta, said that the rapid advancement in features had transformed WhatsApp from a simple text channel into a customer engagement platform. With this platform, brands are able to create personal relationships with their customers very effectively.
Moreso, Eswee Vorster, Executive Manager and CIO at FlySafair, a regional airline, said that it has been able to take its digital offering to the next level by virtue of its capacity to personalise interactions with its customers.
“It doesn’t matter where I made my booking, when I type ‘Hi’ in the WhatsApp channel, it will immediately be able to access my booking. We have been particularly excited about how fast we can roll out new features on the channel and being able to reduce the call centre engagement has massively benefited the customers and our business,” he explained.
When discussing the ways in which local retail companies have utilised chat, Lynne Blignaut, Head of Loyalty and Customer Rewards at Dis-Chem, noted that the company’s decision to let consumers place orders for long-term prescription medicine using WhatsApp was a significant step forward.
“Typically, we only see 50% of people actually adhere to their chronic medication for a maximum of six months of the year. Reaching more people, ensuring they adhere to their chronic medication, and staying healthy by expanding the platforms they can use to order their medication without standing in a queue is a big leap forward. Of course, adding a payment option to this will greatly impact the overall customer journey, and we are really looking forward to seeing this happen,” she shared.
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Rounding Up the Event
De Villiers rounded up the discussion by adding, “WhatsApp is pervasive and safe. We see adding embedded payments as the logical next step and we have no doubt that this will be the one transformative thing that will keep customers engaged and a bold step into the convenience revolution.”
At the end of the event that night, three Chat Commerce awards were given out. The award was given to FlySafair, which uses WhatsApp for all of its day-to-day operations’ communications. The other was presented to aYo Holdings, which has more than 12 million microinsurance customers and uses WhatsApp to onboard them. Finally, Imperial Logistics was recognised as the Chat Commerce Innovator of the Year for its groundbreaking work with chat platforms in the business-to-business sector.
Rounding up the event, Lindemann said: “The chat industry is currently valued at around eighty billion dollars, and it’s no surprise that brands want to use this as a catalyst for their digital transformation. The continued advances made by WhatsApp provide the ideal platform for our clients to turn their imagination into reality, and we expect many more ground-breaking use cases to emerge over the next 12 months.”