Why should marketers tread carefully with messenger

Around 75% of the world’s Internet users use messaging services. In markets like Asia, consumers not only chat with friends and family members, but they also connect with businesses, consume content, browse and purchase merchandise, and get help with products and services.

With the launch of the Messenger platform, Facebook is making a huge bet that consumers in the US will adopt messaging to interact with companies.

As brands begin to enter this sacred space, the successful ones will understand the rules of engagement or risk losing the opportunity to take their consumer relationships to the next level.

Messaging has redefined our relationships

Messaging has evolved beyond the short, text-only limits of SMS. Apps now allow users to enhance and enrich their conversations with pictures, emojis and stickers, custom keyboards, voice recordings, videos, and even in-app games.

These visual and auditory features aren’t solely for entertainment — they add layers of emotion, nuance, and context that text can’t convey on its own.

Believe it or not, Japanese mobile messaging giant LINE discovered that its app helped repair relationships between parents and children and husbands and wives. Messaging is no less meaningful or genuine than speaking over the phone or face to face — and, in some cases, is superior.

This perception of messaging as an authentic medium for connections is extending beyond personal relationships into consumers’ relationships with brands.

The beauty of messaging lies in continuous partial connections. Family and friends are seconds away by text, whether they live in the same city or on a different continent.

This persistent connection extends to brands too; people are no longer customers only when they’re in the store. Once connected, they are personally identified and recognised as a customer, wherever they might be.

Messaging will radically transform the relationship between people and brands

This opens up a new paradigm for both parties. When a consumer has a problem post-purchase, they often struggle to find a readily available brand representative.

But with always-on connections, consumers can ask for and receive help on their terms. And since messaging apps now attract more monthly active users than social networks, it’s no surprise that brands are keen to engage with customers through mobile messaging.

Don’t send a bot to do a human’s job

In recent months, there’s been a great deal of buzz around AI-based messaging apps and their potential to reinvent customer service. In March, KLM airlines partnered with Facebook Messenger to let passengers receive flight confirmations and boarding passes through the app.

Now that Facebook has unleashed a platform for chatbots, businesses will be able to develop their own automated customer support channels. But these bots mostly concentrate on solving problems that don’t need to be fixed — like telling you the weather or hailing a cab.

Artificial intelligence isn’t yet equipped to deal with the more complex or more nuanced situations customers face on a daily basis.

Though we should be excited about bots, it is also critical to remember that the main reason people love messaging is because of the human being on the other end.

Bots have their uses, but a real danger with the hype around AI messaging replacing humans is over-promising and making consumers reticent to re-engage in the future. Negative experiences with bots early on may erode the goodwill for brand messaging that actually works.

Consumers are giving brands their trust: Don’t screw it up

Conversational commerce is creating a centralised communications channel where consumers conduct transactions, engage with brands, and get support. Uber’s partnership with Facebook Messenger harnessed the popularity of group chats; users can not only order a car, but their friends will also know when they’re on their way.

Later this year, WhatsApp will open up to banks and airlines and begin testing tools that let customers communicate with businesses and organisations.

Chinese app WeChat is further ahead than most, offering banking, bill payment, and even dating in addition to messaging and video chat.

The popularity and the possibilities of messaging apps might tempt some brands into using them for aggressive or intrusive marketing campaigns.

Consumers are attached to messaging because that’s where their real-world relationships and communities live, and brands that enter this world need to adhere to certain ground rules.

The more intimate a technology is, the more engaged its users — but the more sensitive they are to change, too. Early adopters need to tread gently into this intimate territory or risk losing trust and credibility.

And that means they have to offer value-added services, not endless marketing messages.

Messaging will radically transform the relationship between people and brands. The main focus of every business should be to make the experience a satisfying and engaging one for the consumer.

Businesses once again are learning to join customers where they are, and people will welcome companies that use messaging thoughtfully and unintrusively.