Leading collaboration and workflow company, Zendesk, recently announced its 2020 State of Messaging report. This is the third annual report highlighting expert analysis of the biggest trends in the conversational business landscape. The report combines interviews with market leaders across the landscape, with proprietary research and third-party data.
According to Zendesk, the messaging space has changed the way that we communicate drastically over the last decade. Messaging apps have now surpassed social media in numbers of global monthly active users. What’s more, people around the world spend more time messaging than on anything else. 87% of smartphone users access messaging tools, and 42% of people worldwide have a smartphone.
Messaging in the Enterprise
According to Zendesk’s Vice President, Warren Levitan, this is the year of connecting conversations in the enterprise, with more businesses embracing messaging than ever before. Zendesk’s State of Messaging reports examines some of the emerging trends in conversational business, offering insights into how smart speakers and voice assistants are converging with messaging, as well as how brands can navigate the new demand for messaging.
Zendesk noted that the leading application in the environment today is WhatsApp, which recently hit a total of 2 billion users, with Facebook Messenger in second place. WhatsApp is now the leading chat application in 112 countries, although WeChat continues to be more valuable in China. As more businesses connect to the WhatsApp Business API, Zendesk is seeing the number of messages flowing through the Sunshine Conversations platform growing at an incredible pace – at more than 3000%.
At the same time, although they’re not messaging platforms per se, voice assistants and smart speakers are standing out as an essential part of the conversational puzzle for companies. These tools are changing the way that we interact with brands and communicate. While Amazon might have been the first provider to grab our attention, countless new companies are entering the space. According to Zendesk, around 74% of customers are using voice assistants for research and browsing, while 54% use them for buying products, and 53% use them for customer support.
Exploring the Emerging Trends in Customer Experience
The trends in customer experience are growing more advanced. Zendesk noted that chatbots have been so thoroughly hyped in the environment that seven out of ten people say that they have chatbot fatigue. However, these tools are becoming a crucial part of the fabric of digital commerce.
At the same time, CX Trends reports by Zendesk highlight the fact that businesses are gradually embracing the idea that every customer interaction is part of a bigger conversation. These conversations now happen across a range of channels, with messaging and chat emerging as crucial for business and customers alike. New modes of conversation will continue to emerge in the year ahead. More businesses will discover the benefits of chat in 2020.
According to Zendesk, businesses are adopting messaging as a solution or the same reasons that customers appreciate it. 30% of companies offer messaging for a faster time to resolution, while 27% say it’s for 24-hour support, and 22% believe it improves agent efficiency. These tools allow agents to deliver more personal experiences to customers, while speeding up interactions.
Messaging is particularly common in the retail industry at present, where customer support can be offered along with conversational customer. Additionally, messaging apps now have the highest customer satisfaction rating of any channel at 98%.
Big Players Emerging in Messaging
Zendesk notes in their study that Facebook’s plan to merge the back-end performance of WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram will create a messaging ecosystem with more than 4 billion users. As big players continue to open their apps to businesses, there are new battles to wage in the quest to attract customers. One possible route forward, according to Zendesk, could be in-chat payments.
