MESSAGING IS AN intimate medium to share private views and feelings. It’s a cocktail party whisper in digital form, as a user of WhatsApp, a Facebook service, put it. Now some of the biggest brands in the world are venturing into this personal space. A few years ago, aware of the limits of conventional communication channels such as call centers and e-mail, companies began using WhatsApp and its sister app Facebook Messenger as well as Apple’s iMessage and independent apps such as Line.
The pandemic gave a boost to all of these apps. Message delivery on Instagram, Facebook’s photo sharing app and Messenger increased by 40%. Four fifths of the time on mobile devices is now spent on chat apps. Organizations can usually rest assured that they will go where customers are. As a result, messaging has become not just experimental, but essential for companies, says Javier Mata, founder of Yalo, a startup whose technology connects companies with messaging platforms. In the past, companies used them mainly for customer service. Now they want to get people to buy things through chat like hundreds of millions of Chinese do on WeChat, owned by Tencent, China’s most powerful technology giant.
Since many popular messaging platforms are encrypted, data about transactions is difficult to obtain. But growth is undoubtedly taking place. Over 1 billion people now chat with businesses, not counting China. Every day, 175 million people send a message to WhatsApp business accounts (WhatsApp channels for businesses). Yalo’s customers include consumer goods giants such as Coca-Cola, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever, as well as Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. Apple Business Chat, launched in 2017, is used by Home Depot Home improvement Stores, Hilton Hotels and Burberry, a fashion brand. Facebook’s list includes Sephora, a cosmetics retailer, and IKEA, a furniture giant. LVMH, a French luxury goods company, is testing messaging, said Jeroen van Glabbeek, CEO of CM.com, a Dutch conversational commerce platform.
In Asia and Latin America, “C-Commerce” is already firmly anchored, where incomplete access to broadband and high-quality devices makes e-commerce and company-specific apps inaccessible for many. Now, western consumers are starting to appreciate the simplicity, speed, personalization, and convenience of messaging. For companies, the return on investment seems to be higher for messaging than for call center exchanges or email chains, says Emile Litvak, head of business messaging at Facebook.
Business messaging boosters claim that c-commerce will supplant e-commerce in a decade or two. But messaging is best understood as a refinement of e-commerce and a sibling of “social commerce” (shopping on social media). Most large business-to-consumer messaging conversations begin on corporate e-commerce websites that have a “Click to Message” button. Many start on social networks.
In a way, C-Commerce is…
