Communication services provider Infobip held a roundtable last week to launch its omnichannel cloud contact centre solution, Conversations.
Conversations is a communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) solution, the company said, and it enables businesses to deliver omnichannel customer support through a single interface. It can manage in-house chatbots and messaging services such as SMS, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.
According to Infobip’s sales team lead Dharshan Naidoo, customer-centred tech and customer experience (CX) should be at the heart of digital transformation.
Naidoo cited a 2019 Gartner report that says by 2025 AI-embedded customer services will improve operational efficiencies by 25%, with chatbots handling basic queries and passing complicated matters onto human agents.
As remote working becomes the new normal, Naidoo said a cloud contact centre is the only way to maintain business continuity because it allows the transfer of consumer information through all channels, never losing the history.
Infobip's regional manager Douglas van Wyk said automation is a key part of digital transformation because by using solutions like Conversations organisations can support more customers with the same number of agents.
He shared the example of an unnamed automobile manufacturer that had two objectives for its South African digital transformation journey: a real-time online presence and a media-rich, two-way digital channel to alleviate call centre traffic. A WhatsApp chatbot was chosen as the two-way channel, allowing consumers to attach multimedia. The bot helped reduce call centre traffic by 30%.
“There’s inertia in the market when it comes to chatbots because they’re a new technology, but this company wanted a 24-hour digital presence,” said van Wyk.
Global consumer goods company Unilever released a new product line through Conversations last year, running a conversational campaign in Brazil over WhatsApp.
Conversations, answers
Conversations can be used in conjunction with Infobip’s code-free chatbot builder, Answers. It allows the design, building and deployment of AI or keyword-based bots. All consumer-bot interactions can be monitored in real-time.
Van Wyk added that a new marketing tech solution, Moments, is in an early access stage but will be debuted around August. He promised marketers ‘so many toys and tools it’s going to be a joy’. The direct-marketing service can track Web site movements and shopping cart abandonment.
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