By Dan Neary
Meta recently announced the first-ever conference on business messaging called ‘Conversations’ which will take place in May.
This is exciting, even more so for people in APAC, as it reflects the shifts in the way that people interact with businesses. The immense power of messaging to fuel the next generation of business growth is being witnessed by all.
A lot of people in their personal experiences have shifted from calling to just messaging businesses via WhatsApp and Messenger. For instance, making travel arrangements for personal or family trips is a breeze!
From communicating with the diagnostic laboratory on your pre-departure COVID-19 test results to checking in to your hotel and making a reservation at your favorite restaurants, everything takes place over a few messages. The general preference now is to chat versus calling and staying on hold.
And clearly, a lot of people appreciate this convenience. More than 1 billion users around the world connect with a business account across Meta’s messaging services every week.
This is not new behavior. Conversational commerce has been talked about for years and the fact that people want to connect with a business the same way they chat with their friends and family.
They don’t want to call and wait on hold, or send an email and not know whether it’s been read – they just want to send a message and get a quick, personalized response. But what’s new is that this behavior has only accelerated with the pandemic.
In Asia Pacific, and particularly in South Asia and Southeast Asia, entire businesses are run on WhatsApp and Messenger. One such merchant told that going to a website these days is like going to a store with no one there to help you.
In the APAC region, millions of businesses have adapted to these tools and are finding value in being conversational. There are inspiring stories from Meta teams in Thailand and Vietnam – two of the most active countries for business messaging in the world, which provide a window into the future of customer communication.
Take the story of HomeHuk, a Thai online furniture retailer with an inventory of over 5,000 products. They wanted to make it possible for customers to chat, ask questions about products and provide an automated experience to facilitate the purchase.
They worked with Chatpify, an end-to-end conversational commerce solution provider, to build out the Messenger experience. HomeHuk ran ads that click to Messenger to bring people into the experience.
Once there, they could ask questions about specific products, make purchases and receive order confirmations, tracking numbers, and delivery status updates in real-time all within Messenger.
The team developed custom automation for HomeHuk with quick replies, buttons, and interaction flow tailored to the available products. They used a third-party natural language processor to improve conversations and reduce drop-offs, and also included a handover protocol so customer service agents could take over when the automation couldn’t answer a question.
When it launched the experience, HomeHuk didn’t see instant success. After running several trials to figure out the different interaction flows and automation, they listened, learned, built, and optimized a successful Messenger experience.
The team also split-tested different ad creative and targeting to make sure the campaign was reaching the right people.
As time went on, HomeHuk learned that the fastest, and most direct flows worked the best. The team made sure that there were only three to four steps before customers could check out.
They learned that the best ads and creative were the ones that felt real and informational. Customers just wanted to see real images of products, reviews, and demonstration videos.
This approach is part of what is called the Meta Discovery Commerce system and it helped HomeHuk turn its Messenger experience into an important new sales channel for the company.
Jed Charungcharoenvejj, the CMO of HomeHuk, told, “In just a little over a year, we were able to sell to over half a million customers across Thailand purely through chatting on Messenger.” This is just one of many success stories in the region.
Yet, many businesses continue to rely on legacy channels that are time-intensive, ineffective, expensive, and not preferred by their customers. Realistically, the time has come for every business to think about its conversational quotient.
As the region opens up and people come to expect a more hybrid shopping experience, business messaging will only grow. There is no longer one way to shop online.
People want the flexibility to order in-store and have it be delivered or be able to enquire about product availability before going in person to pick something up. Messaging can make all of these touchpoints possible and weave them into a seamless and connected experience.
Frankly, making the shift to being a conversational business can feel daunting at first. If you are looking to take the leap and want to learn about what’s possible, join Meta virtually on May 19 for the “Conversations” conference.
From the latest messaging tools across the Meta family of apps to hands-on knowledge through technical deep-dive sessions and demos, you can hear how businesses have found success through Meta’s messaging tools.
It’s a great first step to driving deeper connections with your customers and setting your business up for continued growth.
You can register here.
Dan Neary is the Vice President of Asia Pacific at Meta.
