The following article will give you an idea about the importance of messengers in customer service and how to best fulfilly your customers needs .

Welcome to Part 1: Customer Service & Messenger: WhatsApp & Co. more popular than E-Mail or Social Media! Find out why: 

1. Why Customer Service plays an ever more important role for companies
2. Customer Service equals Customer Frustration a Lot of Times!
3. Messenger and Chats more popular than phone or email when it comes to customer service
4. Customers Want to Contact Companies via Messenger like WhatsApp

1) Why Customer Service plays an ever more important role for companies

When people want customer service support, they prefer to do so using their everyday communication methods. Today’s customer service could better be called a “customer experience”. In Facebook’s study "More than a message", 53% of the respondents said they are more likely to buy from a company which provides customer service via chat on WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger than one that does not.

Why is that? Because people spend more time on messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Co. than on any other app. Messaging platforms are a central part of their daily life experience. So, the question is: why aren’t there more companies offering their customers a service that fits their daily needs and routines? For example, a customer service platform over WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger?

Digital and global trends are moving towards 1:1 communication between customer and company. Recently,  the communication agency Edelman published their yearly study, the Trust Barometer. One of the key conclusions is that respondents consider direct dialogues with a company to be more important than sales and promotions.

2) Customer Service often means Customer Frustration: Blame the Channel!

You have a problem and need to contact a business – which ends up taking up a huge chunk of time and leaving you with even more problems. This situation is well known for most customers.

A quick Google News search with the term “customer service” reveals exactly how prevalent bad service is: The first three results refer to a globally known telecommunications provider and its terrible customer service.

What’s wrong with the current customer service models?

1. Customer service via phone: being stuck in waiting loops for what feels like eternity, just to be connected with an employee who is not in charge of the issue you are facing. Sound familiar?
2. Customer service via e-mail: often feels like “snail mail” busines.: You send an email and wait 24 hours just to get an automated standard response. When you inquire further, you just don’t receive a response – or if you do, it’s delayed by a few days and still doesn’t fully address your issue.
3. Community Management via Facebook or Twitter: in most cases, this just doesn’t work at all. If it does, then primarily for large companies and often with a referral to the hotline or email support. (see points 1 and 2)

3) As a Customer Service platform, Messengers and Chats are More Popular than Calls or Emails

There is one communication channel that is clearly preferred by people all over the world. Global usage statistics of WhatsApp, WeChat, Apple Business Chat and more messengers clearly show that the digital world has long been dominated by messaging apps. When it comes to customer service, all generations prefer a direct chat via WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or another messaging app, rather than a potentially drawn-out phone call or email conversation.

4) Customers Want to Contact Companies via Messengers

Another common problem: you need to contact a company because you recently purchased a product; got an inquiry about your flight or train ticket or want to track your order that hasn’t arrived yet. And of course, you’re short on time, so being stuck in a waiting loop for 30 minutes is simply not an option. You need to contact the company as quick and easily as possible. A survey on digital transformation shows: 65% of today’s customers explicitly want to contact companies via chat!

The time for customer service change has come. Messenger services like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Apple Business Chat have finally realized this trend and are introducing new features to specifically focus on customer care, and provide todays’ customers with modern service that fits their schedules. For more in depth analysis of these diferent options, read our analysis of Apple Business Chat, or the WhatsApp Business API.