In a response to the growing trend to bring digitalisation to business workflows, enterprise mobile messaging company Clickatell has introduced a chat-based solution for business-to-consumer communications.
According to the company, the cloud-based solution Clickatell Touch aims to transform the entire customer service experience for companies and their customers by bringing one-touch, on-demand mobile customer service to enterprises.
Touch combines online chat and bot-driven interactions including the benefits of machine learning, with workflow automation, through its proprietary Touch-card technology, it says.
Together, these three services form a powerful layer over the existing enterprise applications, such as customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning systems, says Nirmal Nair, head of products, senior vice president marketing and digital sales. Touch cards can also be customised based on an enterprise's existing workflow requirements, he adds.
"This is not a rip and replace installation. Clickatell will work with organisations to integrate the system, ensuring it augments the complete customer support ecosystem within the organisation."
Clickatell says the solution enables up to 1 million simultaneous customer interactions, massively reducing the time between customer query and resolution.
"Clickatell Touch is the evolution of 15 years' worth of insight into the complexities of business-to-consumer communications (B2C)," says Deon van Heerden, CEO at Clickatell Messaging.
According to Van Heerden, customers have shifted the way they engage in the digital world. They are used to communicating with one another in real time through messaging apps.
However, the majority of live business-to-consumer communications are still conducted through voice calls to call centres, business offices and agents, he adds.
Van Heerden points out customers dread the long wait times, tedious self-identification processes, dropped calls and other negative experiences.
For businesses, this negative customer experience translates into poor customer satisfaction scores, higher abandonment rate, increased churn and ultimately, missed revenue, he notes.
"The solution to the challenge lies in the hand of every customer. While we used to speak about mobile first, we should be thinking mobile always."
Until now, there was a gap in how big businesses were connecting with their mobile customers, says Van Heerden. He believes Touch not only closes that gap, but it allows real-time, always-on connections which is transforming customer care.
"We can use a mobile phone to summon a car with a single touch of a button and we believe it should be just as easy for customers to connect with brands."
Clickatell Touch will initially target enterprise clients and is currently available in India and
SA.
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