Chris Caesar

From Ancient Greeks haggling face-to-face in the Agora marketplace to customers tweeting for a refund, it’s clear that communication is a timeless, central element of any relationship between a business and its customers — even if its nature is always changing.

The collective imagination has always unconsciously feared and longed for the emergence of sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI). Whether HAL-9000 or R2-D2, cataclysmic disaster or utopian hope, a simulated mind equal to (or potentially surpassing) our human minds present many possibilities. The power of AI-driven tech hasn’t quite reached the dramatic heights of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine’s musings. However, there have been a number of impressive advancements in recent years....

You talk to your friends with it. And your family. And sometimes, even your boss. So, why not your customers? As consumer patience continues to wane for waiting on hold, automated phone menus, and days-long email exchanges, business messaging — that is, sending text or chat messages to brands — is quickly emerging as the preferred channel for both businesses and shoppers alike.

Remember the 1980s? Big hair, huge synth noises, and gigantic deals on TV’s newly launched home shopping networks. Revolutionary for their time, the networks combined the art of storytelling, salesmanship, and live product demonstrations that many home shoppers found — in the words of one of the era’s iconic crooners — “simply irresistible.” In its first year of sales alone, the QVC TV shopping network reached an estimated 8 million American homes and reaped sales of more than $110 million.

In marketing, communication is everything — much like the proverbial tree in the forest, your customers won’t hear a peep from your marketing campaigns if they aren’t around to see or hear it. It’s why they’re called “touchpoints,” after all: interactivity is key.

Typically speaking, in nearly every context, keeping one’s head attached is seen as a smart move. And losing it? Well. That’s almost never good. However, new trends in ecommerce may well turn this sort of thinking on its — you guessed it — head.

Marketing strategy often involves the search for a particular “sweet spot” – where the interests of both customer and merchant, supply and demand, want and fulfillment, perfectly align in a mutually beneficial arrangement. Increasingly, this proverbial sweet spot is inching closer and closer to business messaging channels.

In a world so often dominated by misinformation, it’s more important than ever to confirm you know exactly what you’re talking about. It’s why, when Meta commissioned an online study asking 300 marketing leaders about their views on business messaging solutions, we made sure to ask respondents about the biggest challenges they felt they’d face integrating such a platform.

Collect customer feedback? That’s a great start! We found 83% of businesses who describe themselves as “successful” measure customer satisfaction. In fact, research published in the Harvard Business Review shows just the act of asking customers for their feedback makes them happier—and can increase their likelihood of shopping with a brand again. But if you’re like many companies who listen to customers, it’s probably not enough.

Expert insights on how brands will continue to adapt into this “next normal” phase of the industry.