New research from Meta and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows the growing adoption of business messaging across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. According to the findings, over 40 percent of those surveyed said they were messaging with a business more frequently than compared to the pre-pandemic period, with one in three consumers chatting with businesses at least once a week.
The report noted that the trend was similar across all age groups, especially among Millennials and Gen Zs who are messaging businesses up to eight times every month.
The study, “Business Messaging: The Quiet Channel Revolution Across Tech” surveyed 6,500 respondents across Australia, Indonesia, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
“The Covid-19 pandemic forced countries around the world to go into lockdowns, enforce strict social distancing rules, and restrict in-person business operations,” said Tarandeep Singh, Managing Director at BCG.
“This resulted in more people going online, and businesses across many industries to increase their investment and engagement on online channels to connect with customers.”
Singh added that messaging adoption is gaining traction beyond small businesses.
“While smaller businesses have been using Business Messaging to digitise and scale their online presence for years, large businesses now recognise messaging as a critical component of their business model. Seven in 10 large businesses rated messaging as very or extremely important to their overall business,” he added.
Key findings
- Messaging is an integral communication channel for businesses and consumers
- 90 percent of businesses recognise that messaging apps are important for success
- 80 percent of consumers plan to continue using messaging to interact with businesses
- Financial Services (FinServ) is emerging as a high potential vertical for Business Messaging
- Across APAC, consumers said it was important for them to message a business before they signed up for a financial product.
- Use cases for Business Messaging continue to expand across industries such as CPG, retail, finserv and e-commerce, ranging from basic enquiry, lead generation, one-to-one consultation, customisation, gaining feedback, re-marketing and signals collection.
- More than half of businesses say that they use Business Messaging for after-sales services
- 61 percent of retail and eCommerce businesses use it to process pre-sales enquiries
- An average of 50 percent of businesses said they use messaging to process orders and transactions
“We are seeing fundamental shifts in how people and businesses connect and the last few years have accelerated these shifts,” said Dan Neary, VP for Meta APAC.
“This report shows that the ability to message a business is emerging as a consumer baseline expectation. As business messaging largely takes place across social and messaging platforms, we are committed to enabling businesses of all sizes with capabilities to activate this channel for growth,” he added.
The report also provides recommendations for businesses on how they can start their business messaging journey.
- Define clear objectives for messaging. Evaluate the potential of messaging throughout the whole customer journey and see where it can help solve unique pain points in each phase depending on business context and challenges.
- Prioritize business messaging in your marketing strategy. Customers want to hear from businesses when the information is timely, personal and relevant. Build conversations that are seamless and go deeper, providing customers a convenient and smooth shopping experience.
- Adopt third-party messaging technology solutions and providers to rapidly scale messaging capabilities. This can result in higher chat conversion rates and ability to handle large volumes of enquiries.
Commenting on the value of business messaging, Charnae Morris, Head of eBusiness, Nestle IndoChina said “We are very encouraged by the integration of business messaging.
“The business and brand value proposition for Nestle has been to really engage the consumer and shopper end-to-end from the moment they might have a question about our product, providing them with rich information, and for them to decide whether to purchase the product.”
To download the full report, please click here.
