Attendees at Clickatell’s Connect Interact and Transact’s annual event in November heard how chat commerce can assist companies, especially banks, connect with customers who are increasingly demanding a new way of engagement and shifting their trust from traditional organisations to startups.
The event, normally hosted in Lagos for Clickatell’s Nigerian and other African customers and partners, was hosted virtually this year and chaired by Clickatell’s Chief Commercial Officer, Hannes van Rensburg.
He introduced the speakers by positioning the importance of digital engagement in a pandemic-challenged world.
“Covid-19 has changed customers’ buying behaviour and how they interact with brands. For this reason, it has accelerated digital investments for many organisations. Companies are now urgently turning to chat channels to help them meet these new expectations. Clickatell is investing and innovating in this space so we can enable commerce where your customers are,” van Rensburg explained.
Featured speaker, principal analyst at Forrester, Alyson Clarke, kicked off her keynote titled, ‘The Future of Banking,’ by sharing some of the company’s research findings.
These showed how banking business priorities “have changed during the pandemic.” Of note was banks accelerating their shift to become digital businesses, ranked as the third top priority post-pandemic, closely following growing revenue and reducing costs.
Forrester stated that the next decade in banking would be all about insights and who consumers trust to use them.
According to the firm, consumers want personalised experiences and products, with a level of guidance and assistance set by customer preference, among other things.
An engaging panel discussion following the keynote focused on the importance of chat when it comes to empowering consumers in a digital world.
Business Development and Partnerships at WhatsApp, Gareth Bray, opened the discussion by sharing how COVID-19 had accelerated existing trends.
“We’ve been working with our partners, such as Clickatell, to onboard new businesses, whether it’s their first foray into conversational commerce or to vastly increase the efficiency of their customer service by using asynchronous chat apps. We have multiple use cases in the fintech space in Africa.
“One company began onboarding new customers through their chat channel, which meant they could still grow their business even in the throes of a pandemic,” he said.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Clickatell, Pieter de Villiers, confirmed the trend saying chat was faster, simpler, and smarter for both the customer and for the bank.
He said Clickatell believed banks, particularly in the emerging markets, could increase their reach by a factor of three if they implement chat.
“The goal should be no pain for your customer and ultimately zero hold time,” de Villiers added.
Clickatell’s West Africa Director, Samson Isa, underpinned these findings when he shared the results of an online poll event attendees had taken earlier.
When asked how comfortable their customers were transacting digitally, 60 per cent of attendees responded “very comfortable;” 44 per cent responded “somewhat comfortable” and just six per cent said their customers were “not very comfortable” transacting digitally.
“We can see that African customers want to engage with brands via digital channels. Enabling chat commerce provides a huge opportunity, particularly for banks in the region,” said de Villiers.
