Business Messaging: Everything You Need to Know

Common Business Messaging app Channels
Common Business Messaging app Channels
Tips for Adopting Business Messaging
Measuring the Business Impact of Business Messaging apps

Business Messaging apps: What Do they Mean for Your Business?

In the simplest terms, business messaging is a way for businesses to communicate with each other and their customers. This can include anything from notifications about an order to delivery updates or questions about a product or service. Business messaging can be a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes. It can help you keep your customers informed and updated on your products or services, and it can also help you to build better relationships with your customers.

Additionally, business messaging can help you to improve your communication with your team and with other businesses. If you’re looking for a way to improve communication within your business, or if you’re looking for a way to better communicate with your customers, business messaging may be the solution you’re looking for.

Business Messaging and How it is Different from Chat

Business messaging is a term often used to describe the use of chatbots and other automated messaging tools for business purposes. While the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, chatbots and other automated messaging tools are typically used for more informal communication, such as customer support or marketing, while business messaging is more often used for more formal communication, such as between employees or between a customer and a business.

Chat: This technology entails a one-to-one conversation that takes place in real time (synchronous) with a fixed beginning and end, requiring both the sender and receiver to be connected for the duration of the interaction. Synchronous chat has struggled to deliver on the promise of cost savings and deflection of voice contacts, primarily because:
- Chat is website-centric. Our research shows that the website typically only accounts for 25% of service interactions, while other touchpoints such as mobile apps, direct interactions from eBills, and other channels make up the other 75%.
- Live chat keeps both the customer and agent captive for a set timeframe. This forces the consumer to take time out of their day to respond, typically increasing handle time by 20-30% compared to the voice channel.
- Chat impacts customer experience (CX) scores due to shorter wait times than voice channel.
- Managing the staffing demands needed to handle an influx of chats and reduce wait times can be difficult.

Business messaging: Messaging addresses all of these challenges by using asynchronous communication protocols—meaning the interaction isn’t constrained to a real-time, two-way exchange. Instead, asynchronous technology allows message buffering, which lets the sender do other things as soon as a message is sent. For customers, this means they can start, pause, and resume a conversation at their convenience, and around their life—giving them back their time and putting them in control. Asynchronous messaging also provides a better experience for complex issues requiring more than one sitting or agent to fix. For agents, it means they can handle multiple conversations at once.

Types of asynchronous communication:

Text messaging: Customers connect with the brand using traditional SMS, MMS, and the more recent RCS technology.
Business messaging: Customers connect with the brand using consumer messenger applications such as Facebook Messenger, Apple Messages for Business, Google Business Messages, WhatsApp, or WeChat. These apps offer rich native functionalities such as carousels, quick replies, calendar integration, and emoticons. Unlike SMS, business messaging does not impose any character limits.

Advantages of business messaging:

Allows for continuous, long-lived conversations.
Gives the customer full control over the timing and pace of the conversation for total convenience.
Available 24/7/365.
Allows you to pick up the conversation from where it was last left—no more starting over every time.
Enables agents to handle more conversations per hour (concurrency of five to eight).
Allows agents to focus on accuracy and responding completely rather than on speed.
Helps manage contact center spikes by distributing volume evenly instead of overstaffing.

Asynchronous Business Messaging: Watch

Common Business Messaging app Channels

Consumers prefer messaging, but when they search for a brand the phone number is usually the first thing they see. As your company defines your digital strategy, think of business messaging as a holistic initiative rather than a channel-specific one. Consolidate multiple, disparate communication modes into a centralized location that powers messaging across the website, mobile apps, or popular consumer apps. If done well, messaging can yield cost savings of 20-30% over the voice channel while driving experience and resolution scores that are at least 20% higher.

Here are the top consumer messaging apps you should consider adding to your lineup.

Apple Messages for Business

A powerful new way for businesses to connect directly with customers through a completely integrated and native Apple Messages experience on their iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple Watch.

Google Business Messages

A mobile conversational channel that combines entry points on Google Maps, Search, and brand websites to create rich, asynchronous messaging experiences.

Facebook Messenger

Facebook’s dedicated messaging app where consumers connect with friends, family, and businesses. The platform supports text messaging, voice, and video calls, and is also becoming a popular advertising, commerce, and customer service channel for brands.

A Facebook-owned, cross-platform messaging tool that allows over 2 billion users worldwide to send text and voice messages, make voice and video calls, and share multimedia content. Many WhatsApp users prefer it over device-native messaging apps to connect with friends and family in other countries.

Benefits of Messaging—for your Customers & Your Business

Messaging benefits customers, contact center agents, and brands in a multitude of ways. If it’s not part of your operation today, you’re probably leaving money on the table.

Put customers in control: Messaging lets customers engage when it’s convenient, with minimal effort—giving people back their time. For example, a customer can use their phone to “park” a message while on their morning commute, check back in using their laptop during lunch, and then complete the conversation on another device at home that evening—or even days later. There’s no time constraint and none of the frustration that comes with having to keep starting over. And when it’s easier to get the information that they need before making a purchase, customers are less likely to make returns.
Empower agents to get more done: Moving to asynchronous communication makes life easier for agents, too. They don’t have to worry about timing out when a customer gets distracted or rushing to answer a complex inquiry. Instead, they can focus on quality, accuracy, and solving the problems that really matter. Removing the pressure of trying to keep up allows contact centers to manage spikes by spreading the volume out over time instead of overstaffing. Adding intelligent automation into the equation also takes the mundane and repetitive tasks of your agents’ plates, increasing job satisfaction and productivity.
Manage costs and increase volume: With around half of customer service calls originating from a web search, messaging offers a huge opportunity to deflect calls and lower costs. Transform the way customers interact with your brand by adding the option to message directly from search results. Agents handling multiple concurrent conversations can manage higher volumes without driving up costs. AI-powered prompts and visual tools accelerate resolution even more. Plus, integrating existing chatbot services using a chatbot API extends the value of your investment.

Tips for Adopting Business Messaging

If you’re new to messaging, follow these guidelines to create the seamless experiences your customers expect.

Business messaging: Start with Discovery

The first step is to decide which messaging apps to use and where in your customer journeys to offer them. Look to your customer data for insights. Are more of your customers using iOS devices or Android? Which channels or messaging platforms are they using the most? For example, if more queries come through your native mobile app than your website, start by offering in-app messaging. If more are from iOS devices, start with Apple Messages for Business.

Next, ask yourself these questions: Where can we resolve issues immediately? Where can we improve processes? Where can we add value? Pinpoint where in your customer journeys people are asking for help or running into roadblocks, and offer messaging support at these pain points. It’s all about making it easier to connect. Once you’re up and running, be sure to run an awareness campaign to spread the word.

Business messaging: Define Your Goals

Success starts with strategy—so decide what you want to achieve. Is your goal to divert traffic from higher cost channels? Improve agent efficiency and increase volume? Bring in new traffic and boost sales? Cost savings is always top of mind, but consider other key metrics you want to move the needle on, too.

Clearly defining your goals can also help to determine the best entry points on common customer journeys. Start with the queries you can easily solve, such as FAQs or simple account inquiries. A partner like [24]7.ai can help guide you in the right direction if you’re struggling to identify or prioritize your goals.

Business messaging: Design Your Experiences

Don’t just add messaging for the sake of it—create satisfying experiences and solve the problems that matter for your customers. Open every conversation with an intelligent AI chatbot that can predict intent, authenticate users, and collect basic information using natural language processing. Ensure seamless escalation with the full conversational context so agents can pick up right where the bot left off.

Keep text content brief, clear, and accurate, and use visual aids wherever you can—including images, videos, and interactive forms. Quick replies let users on both sides save time by tapping instead of typing. Bear in mind that every messaging platform has unique UI elements. Centralizing messaging content into a single orchestration platform allows you to re-use content across channels, increasing efficiency. [24]7.ai has the added advantage of automatically adapting content for each platform.

Train Your Team

Synchronous chat and asynchronous messaging use many of the same technologies, but the experience is different. Mindset is key, so be sure to prepare your contact center team for this new approach before you deploy. Update your agent console to support asynchronous communication and provide new skills training—make sure agents can multi-task, prioritize, and are familiar with the platforms you’re deploying.

Be sure to set performance goals and adjust KPIs for this new mode of communication, too. You may need to change the way you measure average handle time, or look at the number of concurrent chats or resolved chats per hour instead. It’s also important to monitor performance and provide ongoing support and training. We suggest starting with minimal traffic while your team ramps up and increasing volume once you’ve ironed out any wrinkles.

10 Ways Business Messaging Will Transform Your Contact Center

Measuring the Business Impact of Business Messaging apps

Tracking metrics lets you improve overall results and align your people and processes with organizational objectives. While many of the traditional metrics that are used to gauge program and agent performance can be reused in messaging, consider additional metrics that will allow you to benefit from the continuous (asynchronous) nature of this mode of communication.

Staffing Savings

Evolving from pure chat or blending synchronous communications with chat and the asynchronous messaging model can reduce required staffing hours by an average of 20%.

Greater Efficiency

Compared to live chat, asynchronous messaging agents can manage more concurrent conversations and complete each conversation faster on average. With fewer turns, transfers, and escalations, conversations take less time and are more satisfying.

Chat: 35.2 conversations/day (or 4.4/hour), each 10.6 minutes long—cost per contact: $3.43
Asynchronous messaging: 40.8 conversations/day (or 5.1/hour), each 7 minutes long—cost per contact: $2.94

Business Messaging Improves CSAT and resolution scores

Compared to chat, asynchronous messaging results in:

CSAT scores that are 18% higher
Resolution scores that are 21% higher

Fewer turns

Asynchronous messaging conversations are very nearly one-and-done.

Chat: Customers turn six times, agents turn seven
Asynchronous messaging: Customers and agents both turn twice

Fewer re-contacts

Asynchronous messaging resolves more issues that stay resolved.

Chat: Up to 35% of customer contacts are re-contacts for the original intent
Asynchronous messaging: Only 17% of customer contacts are re-contacts for the original intent

Table 1. Sample Messaging Scorecard

Metric	Chat	Messaging
Net Promoter Score (NPS) Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) Customer Effort Score (CES)	Measured after every interaction	Measured post resolving a query – could span across multiple interactions
Resolution	Measured as first contact resolution (FCR)	Measured as total time taken to resolve the particular query
Closed conversations	Not a primary metric	Measured on daily closed conversations being over multiple interactions by visitors
# of turns	Not a primary metric	Measured by calculating agent lines / customer lines
Repeat rate	Primary metric to gauge agent efficiency	Tracked at a contact and an intent level, not at interaction level

Scale Your Business with Messaging

For modern brands, business messaging is no longer a luxury—it's a necessity. Its proliferation is undeniable. Within the next two years, messaging is destined to profoundly change the way businesses and customers interact. Companies that fail to recognize this or adopt business messaging risk being left behind while those who do will attract new customers, and keep existing customers happy. Messaging has become a key ingredient to business success.