Chat apps & the evolution of consumer engagement

Vishrut Chalsani

Chat have transformed from being a place to find a new friend or perhaps love to be a powerful tool for customer service. The first forms of online chat can be traced back to 1973 when Talkomatic was created by Doug Brown and David R Woolley in 1973 at the University of Illinois. The modern form of online chats, however, took shape in the mid- 1980s and by the late 1990s and early 2000s there was a mass proliferation of online chat.

Online chat has now evolved to the next level in the form of apps, as smartphones and tablets have become all pervasive in our lives. To understand how chat has reached the stage of an app and why both customers and businesses have embraced it – we have to return to some of the inherent problems with earlier channels of communications.

Evolution of customer service channels

For the longest time letters were at the forefront of communication with a brand. For a consumer facing brand, this would mean letters from around the country would land on their doorstep – some with grievances, some with a query and some with suggestions. Letters were difficult to sort through and proved to be a huge drag on time and resources when it came to filtering them or acting upon them. In-person visits are easier to manage if the query or grievance could be sorted at the local level. However, in-person visits were not conducive to reach to higher management or when it came to escalating a problem. With the advent of phone calls things became simpler, but as companies grew and the consumer base increased, complex call centers had to be set up. This was a costly affair and often proved unreliable in carrying out a number of functions.

In the last two decades, digital communication became a viable option and medium for communication. Emails quickly replaced letters as consumers now had the ability to reach the people who could provide the information they needed. However, as with letter there was no guarantee of a reply and that the mail has been read and acted upon.

The internet subsequently enabled real time two way communications between a brand and the consumer and companies scampered to set up their chat services. Despite its ease of operations, chat on a desktop meant if the consumer was on the move, he had to wait to get back to a computer to find information. This meant when someone needed information immediately, chat was found wanting.

Very soon with the social media burst into the scene and every company had its own Twitter and Facebook account. While it was great to have a social presence, it also exposed brands to consumer anger when things did not go down well. This meant each brand needed its own social media strategy and how to deal with such issues. However, in the midst of all this the ubiquitous chat was slowly making a comeback.

Instant messaging for instant customer service

While technology was undergoing change, consumers were also in a constant state of flux. The amount of time that consumers spend on an activity has dramatically reduced. People now want more in a reduced timescale and patience is a virtue that is increasingly missing from the consumer of 2015. They want information on the go and at the press of a button. Being on hold to speak to a customer care executive is passé and information at the tap of a button is the new norm. Vital conversations may never take place if today’s customer is not attended to at the earliest.

This was largely because of an instant messaging app that was launched in 2009 and soon revolutionized the way communication took place. While there were many instant messaging services before and after it, but Whatsapp changed the paradigm when it came to communicating. Very soon the most popular communication platform led to a change in individual tastes and preference. Whatsapp worked on the same principle of providing a free and instant communication as chats did, but with the significant advantage of being mobile. Before anyone realized, chat was again a part of our mainstream and this time in a significantly better way.

This, then, led to a surge in demand for smartphones. According to research firm IDC the overall mobile phone market in India stood at 64.3 million units in Q4 2014 and smartphones formed a healthy 35% of the overall mobile business in the same period, which is up by 13% from the same quarter a year ago.

The natural progression of having a greater number of smartphones has meant there are huge opportunities for apps that can connect businesses to customers. From talking about a new deal, discount or promotion to providing general information or settling grievances, chat apps on mobiles have a huge role to play. This means every individual now has the potential to reach out to a brand from a device he carries in his pocket and vice versa. What has helped such apps is that instant messaging platforms like Whatsapp has made chat a part of our habit. As research has shown, habit once formed is very difficult to shake.

Mobile app is the way forward

Brands have to now wake up to the fact that customers want information instantaneously when they need it and want minimum fuss about it.

A brand that understands this is perceived as an efficient company and one that values its customers. A third party app that connects a customer with the company seamlessly is the key to providing great customer service on chat.

Chats apps have also evolved to third party operated ones that now have the ability to connect every brand with their customers. For a customer it is a pain to download a chat app for every brand they interact with and an app that looks to aggregate brands on one side and the information a customer seeks on the other side will be the game changer. Need of the hour is a platform that connect users with businesses on demand.

As English author Samuel Johnson says “Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.” Chat apps go a long way in bridging how we as consumers find that information and how brands make it available to us. Chat apps are the future of consumer engagement and one that is immediate, personal and has the power to be evenly distributed.

The author is co-founder, Helpchat (earlier, Akosha)