Mobile messaging will become the communication platform of choice for consumers, as they are looking to contact organisations the same way they do their friends - most people today aren't calling, they are using a chat interface.
This is according to Darryl Marcus, GM of Pypestream, in an interview with ITWeb, who notes customers want to communicate using mobile messaging apps. These days they do not want to talk to companies through telephones.
He says the millennials are driving the adoption of these digital channels of communication and the generation X are following suit.
Referencing Dimension Data's 2016 Global Benchmarking Report, Marcus says last year alone, phone transactions handled by contact centres fell another 12%, but traffic increases were recorded across almost every digital channel. The report says by the end of 2016, digital volumes will overtake phone interactions.
People are moving away from the call centre and the telephone, and rather than find a call centre to engage with, they will go to social media where they know they will get a quick response, says Marcus.
"Because of the consumer's hunger and desire, for instant gratification and instant response, they are adopting chat-like applications, and social media to get immediate response from the consumer.
"In the same breath, the enterprise is looking at ways to make the communication more effective, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the one way of doing that is by going to play in the space the customer is in already."
The more companies embrace things like enterprise mobile messaging or mobile messaging, combined with artificial intelligence and chatbot technology, the more adoption they will see from the consumer, says Marcus, adding the telephone will become a channel that will be used for more complex queries.
By creating a direct, private and secure line of communication between businesses and their customers, enterprise mobile messaging connects companies with customers and employees via mobile chat, says Marcus.
The ubiquitous use of chat as a channel today by the consumer and the enterprise' ability to communicate and engage with the consumer in that environment, will help enhance customer experience and service, he adds.
Today's enterprises have realised they are operating in a customer-centric world - the customer is one the most important part of a businesses, says Marcus.
"The success of the business actually depends on how happy the customer is. And we are finding that with our deployment of our messaging app service, customer experience and satisfaction rating is increasing"
He warns though that the human touch will still be needed in a call centre environment. "We believe that however good the self-service channel is, in a chatbot world, 80% of the calls can be handled by the chatbot, 20% will still need to be handled by the human being."
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