Brands embrace messaging apps to transform the customer experience

To see how the pow­er of mobile mes­sag­ing enhances cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, look no fur­ther than KLM. The airline’s cus­tomers can use Face­book plat­forms Mes­sen­ger and What­sApp to check flight infor­ma­tion, receive board­ing pass­es and even book a tick­et.

“Every sin­gle year we’ve been grow­ing dou­ble dig­its in vol­umes in mes­sag­ing,” says Mar­tine van der Lee, direc­tor of social media at KLM. “We expect­ed some growth, but not growth this strong.”

KLM’s shift to Mes­sen­ger may have been ground­break­ing, but it makes busi­ness sense. In the last year alone, the num­ber of mes­sages sent between peo­ple and busi­ness­es on Mes­sen­ger glob­al­ly has dou­bled, reach­ing 20 bil­lion a month. “People’s expec­ta­tions of busi­ness­es are evolv­ing,” says Jen­ny Barthe, strat­e­gy direc­tor at Lon­don-based cre­ative agency We Are Social, which has worked with brands such as adi­das on Mes­sen­ger expe­ri­ences. “Con­sumers expect per­son­alised inter­ac­tions at a time and place that suits their busy lives.”

adi­das turned to Mes­sen­ger and What­sApp to con­nect with a Europe-wide com­mu­ni­ty of foot­ball micro-influ­encers for its Tan­go Squads pro­gramme. “The per­son­al feel of Mes­sen­ger allowed us to cre­ate a more con­nect­ed and tight-knit com­mu­ni­ty,” says Ms Barthe, who led the We Are Social team work­ing with adi­das. “It made com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the world’s biggest foot­ballers feel up-close and per­son­al.”

Brands don’t need to cre­ate new plat­forms, but rather be where their cus­tomers already are

Per­son­alised con­nec­tions

The con­sumer shift to mes­sag­ing tells us some­thing about how peo­ple now want to com­mu­ni­cate: con­ve­nience, spon­tane­ity and infor­mal­i­ty are key. Some 64 per cent of peo­ple would pre­fer to mes­sage, rather than call, a busi­ness and six in ten are favourable to receiv­ing per­son­al mes­sages from com­pa­nies, accord­ing to the 2018 Nielsen’s Face­book Mes­sag­ing Sur­vey. Messaging’s con­ver­sa­tion­al nature means cus­tomers “can ask what they real­ly care about”, says Marek Wro­bel, head of media futures at Havas Group Media.

Con­ver­sa­tions over mes­sag­ing plat­forms feel inti­mate, one to one and per­son­alised. And per­son­al­i­sa­tion is some­thing peo­ple want: 91 per cent of con­sumers say they are more like­ly to shop with brands that recog­nise and remem­ber them, as well as pro­vide rel­e­vant offers and rec­om­men­da­tions, accord­ing to Accenture’s 2018 Per­son­al­iza­tion Pulse Check report.

Vic­to­ria Beckham’s epony­mous fash­ion brand used Mes­sen­ger to cre­ate a high­ly per­son­alised expe­ri­ence around its tenth anniver­sary col­lec­tion last year. Adver­tis­ing on Insta­gram and Face­book were among the tech­niques used to entice poten­tial cus­tomers into a Mes­sen­ger con­ver­sa­tion. Once peo­ple clicked into that con­ver­sa­tion, they began chat­ting with a bot mas­ter­ful­ly script­ed to feel like Vic­to­ria Beck­ham her­self where they could learn about the new col­lec­tion, make pur­chas­es and get updates from Ms Beck­ham on her lat­est events and launch­es. This per­son­alised expe­ri­ence led to peo­ple spend­ing an aver­age of 8 min­utes 24 sec­onds a ses­sion engag­ing with the col­lec­tion con­tent.

Cus­tomers often com­plain about infor­ma­tion over­load and are reluc­tant to down­load brand apps for fear of get­ting even more noti­fi­ca­tions. But Mr Wro­bel says: “Brands don’t need to cre­ate new plat­forms, but rather be where their cus­tomers already are.”

The close con­nec­tion with cus­tomers made pos­si­ble by mes­sag­ing not only builds trust, it also cre­ates a tight feed­back loop that quick­ly gen­er­ates insights such as whether a prod­uct is res­onat­ing with its tar­get mar­ket.

Per­son­al­i­ty with pur­pose

Brands that want to cre­ate a suc­cess­ful mes­sag­ing expe­ri­ence should first iden­ti­fy their pur­pose and the cus­tomer need. Where is the fric­tion that mes­sag­ing could reduce? What prob­lems can automa­tion solve? Does the con­cept align with the brand’s over­all pur­pose and could it be expressed in a com­pelling nar­ra­tive?

Once those cru­cial ques­tions are answered, busi­ness­es should link up with a plat­form devel­op­ment part­ner to sup­port their work. This will involve dream­ing up an appro­pri­ate name for the bot or live agent, and estab­lish­ing a per­son­al­i­ty that reflects the brands tone and nar­ra­tive.

“Brands should talk in a social man­ner through the apps,” says Ben Marder, senior lec­tur­er in mar­ket­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh Busi­ness School. “Always use the sender’s name, reply using emo­jis where appro­pri­ate and sign off with a first name only. Reply­ing in a swift man­ner, by aim­ing to answer queries with­in 60 sec­onds, is also vital as it shows you care and helps move cus­tomers through the pur­chas­ing process.”

Final­ly, mea­sur­ing suc­cess is a cru­cial ele­ment to any brand mes­sag­ing project. Met­rics may vary between com­pa­nies and indus­tries, but the com­mon denom­i­na­tors for mea­sure­ment are chan­nel effec­tive­ness, qual­i­ty of con­ver­sa­tions and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion.

“Brands can also eval­u­ate suc­cess through ana­lyt­ics tools linked to the mes­sag­ing apps, mea­sur­ing aspects such as click-throughs and bounce rates,” Dr Marder adds.

The future of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence is instant, seam­less inter­ac­tion with employ­ees or high­ly trained bots that goes beyond func­tion­al­i­ty, such as answer­ing ques­tions or per­form­ing trans­ac­tions. The whole expe­ri­ence needs to feel per­son­alised and leave the cus­tomer feel­ing warm towards the brand. Mes­sag­ing apps are cen­tral to enabling such inter­ac­tions to occur.

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it fb.me/messengerbiz