Conversational support grows as AI improves the chatbot experience

Dive Brief:

More brands are using conversational messaging to interact with customers, according to an Infobip report released last week. The report, which analyzed 473 billion interactions on Infobip’s global cloud communications platform, found that mobile app messages between brands and consumers increased 137% year over year.
Social media messages increased 73%, and in-chat app messages increased 63%, Infobip found.
Support was the main reason customers got in touch with a brand via conversational messaging. Brands largely depend on WhatsApp for conversational support; 90% of support messages were sent on the chat app, according to Infobip.

Dive Insight:

Brands are expanding conversational messaging in response to customer demand for more self-service options. Businesses are also routing more customers to use conversational messaging as it costs less than putting customers in touch with live agents and as generative AI has improved chatbot quality, according to Ivan Ostojić, chief business officer at Infobip.

“These channels enable you to insert generative AI within them to solve for basic queries in a very automated way,” Ostojić told CX Dive. “So that's actually driving cost reduction in the customer support because [brands] would be deflecting calls from agents down to messaging.”

Demand for self-service options is on the rise, especially among younger generations. More than one-third of millennials and Gen Z will simply give up on service issues if they can’t solve the issue through self-service methods, according to a Gartner study.

With conversational support, “consumers can actually solve their problems faster,” Ostojić said. “It's always available 24/7.”

The advent of generative AI has made conversational messaging more effective, with chatbots trained on a company’s knowledge base and previous customer inquiries.

“It's a lot more pleasant for consumers to interact with,” Ostojić said.

It also helps meet customers where they are.

“We have a real ability to serve people the way they want to be served,” Ostojić said. “So if you're looking at something at Instagram, you can go quickly into your Instagram messenger and chat with the business, and then if you're traveling to work you, and you remember you need to solve some problem, you could chat with the business on your favorite messaging app, whether it's an IM message or SMS.”