Alex Klose, VP of Marketing at IMImobile, looks at the opportunity for enterprises to differentiate customer experience by combining new rich-media messaging channels such as RCS (Rich Communication Services) with customer journey automation platforms. There is no doubt that consumers have a huge desire for messaging-based experiences. In fact, 66% of consumers prefer to reach brands, or be reached by brands through messaging apps, and two-thirds expect to increase their engagement with businesses via messaging channels over the next two years.
The role of messaging is becoming instrumental for how consumers interact with brands and with increasing app fatigue, enterprises must ensure they adapt to the shift in consumer behaviour towards new messaging channels.
Not only is it about meeting customer expectations for how they want to engage and access services, but also about responding to increasing competition from agile start-ups who have enabled their entire service offering on channels such like Facebook Messenger.
The race to engage, win and differentiate through messaging-based experiences is well and truly on. So how can enterprises get ahead?
The need for customer communication orchestration
The battleground amongst companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google to provide rich media messaging services is well under way. There’s Facebook who launched Messenger 2.0, WhatsApp who earlier this year launched ‘WhatsApp Business’ in five markets, as well as Google’s latest support of Rich Communication Services (RCS) for Android devices, and there are even rumours about an Amazon messaging app.
But no matter which company or messaging service, the objective is very simple – they all seek to be the medium for consumers and businesses to talk to each other. Whether that’s through the use of AI-powered chatbots, high-res image carousels, videos, audio, action buttons, and much more, to transform conversational messaging experiences.
