Build Your ExperienceChat apps for better customer service.

Chances are, you have a social chat app or two installed on your smartphone. And if you don’t, your kids almost certainly do. Chat apps have become the conversational medium of choice, especially for the new generation. As of this writing, WhatsApp has over 2 billion users, Facebook Messenger has 1.3 billion users, Viber has 1.1 billion users, Line has 217 million users and Zalo has 100 million users. And there are many more social chat apps.As consumers, we use these apps to communicate with friends, but increasingly we’re using them to communicate with businesses.

The two biggest differences between chat apps and SMS:

• Chat apps support rich content: SMS messages are plain text, while chat apps can relay video, images, files, and more.
• Chat apps offer more insight: While SMS can only track delivery rates, most chat apps enable the sender to track open rates and more.

Some of the common ways that chat apps are used include:

• Customer service: Provide your customers an additional avenue to reach you, with 2-way conversation support.
• Reminders and notifications: Ensure your customers are aware and ready for an impending delivery or status of an order.
• Live updates: Keep your customers and followers updated on the latest industry happenings through timely messages, and drive traffic to your website via links.
• Two-factor authentication (2FA): send customers a one-time passcode to increase security through two-factor authentication.

Social chat apps are a great way to reach your customers on the channels they prefer. And by reducing the number of support inquiries coming through inbound phone calls, they can also create cost savings. Many call centers report that after incorporating chat, call volumes decrease, and cost per customer interaction dramatically decreases. Importantly, support agents can handle multiple chat conversations at once, while phone calls require undivided attention.

As you think about adopting chat apps into your support workflows, it’s important to think about your call center design and maturity:

Early stage:

These smaller teams use a lightweight CRM or contact center, or none at all. At this stage, we recommend looking at chat app providers with a portal to collect incoming messages, assign conversations to agents, and respond to each inquiry. Also, we recommend using a provider that allows you to initiate contact to the customer as well. There are some times when you will want to send a message to your customers and not want to wait for an inbound query.

Mid stage:

Companies in this stage typically use a support system such as Zendesk, Freshdesk, or Salesforce to support a medium-sized team. They probably support voice as a channel for support but have not yet enabled chat apps as a support channel. For these organizations, it can be helpful to use a chat app provider with out-of-the-box integrations with your primary support tool. This way, your support team can continue to live inside their existing tool.

Advanced stage:

Organizations in this stage typically have advanced support software and multiple support teams. They most likely have custom tools and services integrated by dedicated engineers. For these types of organizations, we recommend finding a provider that offers a chat app platform through APIs. This will enable their engineers to build it into existing systems.

An open platform like 8x8 provides solutions supporting all of these maturity levels, including an online portal, integrations, and one API for 7 chat apps.

The 8x8 Chat Apps API has a built-in orchestration system to send messages to 7 chat app channels based on user preferences. If all channels fail to deliver, it can fall back to SMS. The same capabilities are available through integrations as well as through the portal.

This enables you to:

• Reach customers on their favorite messaging apps, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, Line, Zalo, and SMS.
• Track metrics like deliverability, message engagement, and link clicks.
• Increase engagement through the use of rich content that automatically adapts to various chat app channels.
• Ensure deliverability through SMS fallback when users lack cellular data connectivity.
• Reimagine customer engagement through two-way conversations in multiple chat apps.

Not interested in using a chat app platform provider? While it is possible to do it yourself, it is much more complicated. Here are the top considerations you’ll need to know in order to do the custom software engineering integration work yourself to handle each chat app directly:

• WhatsApp requires end-to-end encryption, so you will need to set up a Docker container, a SQL database, and ensure high availability.
• Learn which chat apps allow marketing messages to be sent, because some, including WhatsApp, do not.
• Opt-in and consent policies vary between chat apps. For example, WhatsApp requires active user consent to receive messages unless the user initiates the conversation.
• You must choose whether to integrate with your existing support software or build a standalone app.
• Ensure ticketing and support agent assignment requirements meet the needs of the business.
• Each chat app has its own unique user identifier that will need to be mapped to your internal systems’ unique customer identifiers.
• Each chat app uses its own delivery notification mechanism.
• Each chat app supports a different set of functionality, including a variety of actions and payment mechanisms.
• If a user is out of data coverage, your message may be delayed and you will need a fallback channel such as SMS.
• Thoroughly plan redundancy and resilience. Missed or undelivered messages can be very costly in terms of customer experience.

Using out-of-the-box integrations with CRM systems such as Salesforce, Zendesk, and Freshdesk, 8x8 Chat Apps enable agents to use digital channels and rich media to accelerate customer outcomes.

Helpful Resources

Datasheet: 8x8 Chat Apps API

Case Study: OKO Leverages 8x8 Chat Apps API to Support Farming Communities Across Africa

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With increasing privacy regulations and laws, it’s more important than ever to keep private information private. In the next chapter of our eBook, Build Your Experience, we will take a look at how our Voice API features a phone number masking function that keeps numbers anonymous and stays in compliance with privacy policies and regulations.