Infobip - Building Customer Relationships in Today’s World

As consumer behaviour across the globe shifts, businesses need to adapt their sales communication strategies to reflect those changes. It is always a challenge for marketing teams to keep up with customer engagement trends and make sure they are talking to their customers in the right way and on the right platform.

 

Infobip, as a global leader in omnichannel communication, has been helping businesses deal with their communication needs for more than a decade. This exclusive interview with Mr Sandesh Sarang, Enterprise Director- Infobip, India Region, goes into the workings of the company, and how its products and solutions are suited for businesses operating in today’s world. 

 

About Infobip

 

Infobip is a globally renowned omnichannel communications platform established in 2006. The platform gives businesses “the power to build connected and personalised customer experiences through contextualised interactions over a customer’s favoured communication channel.”

 

Sarang says that their goal is to simplify the complexity of communication by enabling businesses to reach out to their target demographics over the right communication channels, with the right messages, at the right time.

 

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For five consecutive years, Infobip has been rated the best A2P messaging provider in ROCCO surveys of mobile operators and enterprises and was also named a leader in the IDC MarketScape for Communications Platform as a Service this year. They have a history of long-standing success and customer satisfaction.

 

“Creating an ecosystem of trust and innovation is at the core of Infobip’s mission to build a world of connections.” 

 

“This reflects not only our vision to connect the physical worlds supported by our global presence and local reach, but also to connect the different “worlds” of communication channels, whether that of SMS, WhatsApp, voice, Viber, or email,” Sarang explains. 

 

According to him, their secret is that they know that now more than ever, consumers like to contact brands in different ways, depending on the service they need.  

 

This deep local presence allows them to react faster, offer relevant solutions aligned with global best practices, and tap into a greater reach than any of the other competitors in the field. Sarang quotes numbers in support, saying the platform currently reaches 7 billion people and things across more than 190 countries. 

 

Sarang adds that the second factor involves their guiding principles of simplicity, relevance, and empathy. “Our service suite is simple to implement, allowing brands to create sophisticated engagement strategies without needing cumbersome IT support or coding skills,” he says. “Our cloud-based solutions are also scalable and flexible, which enables businesses to scale their operations in tandem with changing business demands and trends. This empowers businesses to create sincere customer relationships through relevant, personalised communication.”

 

Finally, their impeccable round the clock technical support is the cherry on top. “We endeavour to provide the best messaging practises and consultancy on the back of round-the-clock, 24/7 customer support and network monitoring,” Sarang says, and this service is available in over 60 major cities across the world. He credits these factors as the reason for their remarkable growth, customer appreciation, and sectoral acclaim.

 

 

Infobip- Products and Services

 

Infobip has a comprehensive toolset of solutions to cater to the sales communication needs of any business. “Infobip’s proprietary full-stack offerings help modern enterprises to drive powerful omnichannel engagement and create personalised campaigns to hold contextualised interactions with the customer at the right time, including on or around milestone events such as birthdays, anniversaries, etc,” Sarang says.

 

They also offer an automated chatbot solution to enable 24/7, self-service customer support. And all of this is made available to enterprises through a single, scalable user-friendly interface.

 

They also prioritize security with their recent launch of a Mobile Identity service that allows businesses to authenticate and protect their users’ identities through features such as Silent Mobile Verification (SMV), Know Your Customer (KYC), and SIM Swap Detection.

 

The solutions also put a focus on social media marketing, a promising domain for B2C interactions, with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger integration.

 

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“WhatsApp is one of the most popular message-sharing channels in the world. Our WhatsApp business API integration enables businesses to capitalize on WhatsApp’s reach through self-service chatbots, rich media, and clickable links to drive product retention, enhance recall value, and promote interactions.”

 

“With provisions that enable WhatsApp to link with local contact centres, the possibilities of personalised customer interaction are boundless, paired with round-the-clock customer support,” Sarang explains.

 

Infobip’s product catalogue also includes a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)-based solution that claims to drive 300% more engagement than regular SMS campaigns. The MMS API solution allows brands to boost brand perception through videos, text, images, GIFs, and audio clips to increase conversion rates. 

 

“We also offer support to our customers on voice channels in over 100 languages, through tools that leverage interactive voice response, powerful text-to-speech engines, and advanced language recognition,” Sarang adds.

 

With Facebook Messenger integration, Infobip enables direct connections to businesses’ pages and Facebook ads, offering multiple entry points to customers, integration of embedded product carousels and provisions for lead generation. 

 

The second element of Infobip’s offering is enabling optimal customer engagement through three premier SaaS-based solutions: Moments, Conversations, and Answers-

 

Moments is an omnichannel customer engagement platform that provides businesses with a holistic picture of customer engagement with a brand. Conversations, launched in March 2020, allows businesses to engage conversationally with their customers over their preferred channels through a full-stack customer service centre.

 

Finally, Answers is a self-service chatbot solution that, through the deployment of smart virtual assistants, brings a new level of automation, speed, and round-the-clock availability to conversational campaigns. “This allows businesses to offer efficient customer feedback and support strategies, freeing human agents up to handle more intensive and complex tasks,” Sarang says.

 

Sarang also talks about their IoT solution Things, which offers cross-device connectivity, enabling businesses to remotely manage IoT connectivity services and communications across the globe. “Businesses can control and manage network parameters and device performance in real-time and carry out IoT scaling which works across operators and network types,” he says.

 

 

Infobip in India

 

Infobip has five offices situated in key geographies in India, and a robust regional presence that allows them to cater to the requirements of clients and partners across the subcontinent.

 

The company has helped businesses navigate the transition to a digital-first, tech-driven mode of operations in wake of the pandemic, offering a wide range of solutions catering to their specific business communication challenges.

 

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“For instance, when nationwide lockdowns were first enforced, many brands in India were left grappling with a major challenge: how do they market to and engage with their target audiences across multiple digital channels? They knew that they needed to introduce greater personalisation, both in their end-user message and the channel of outreach but lacked the technological sophistication and capabilities to execute it.”

 

This is where Infobip stepped in, Sarang explains. With a cutting-edge communications platform and suite of tools for advanced customer engagement, support, security, and authentication, the company helped brands across India drive high-impact campaigns during the pandemic and engage their customers with the right message, at the right time, through the right channels. 

 

“One of our biggest India success stories highlights is with Angel Broking, one of the largest retail broking houses in India,” Sarang cites, to illustrate the point. “They wanted to reach out to the emerging wave of digital-first professionals seeking a point of entry into the stock market. This required a two-way, real-time messaging solution that facilitated seamless, swift, and convenient customer journeys – from onboarding to trading and query resolution.”

 

Following an in-depth exploration of AngelBroking’s requirements, Infobip concluded that their WhatsApp API solution was the perfect solution. This was because WhatsApp has a massive user base in India; it is one of the app's biggest international markets, with over 390 million active monthly users, Sarang notes.

 

The deployment has been a stellar success according to Sarang. “Since the integration, 39% of customers at Angel Broking have been brought on board via WhatsApp and nearly half (47%) engage through the messaging app,” he explains. “More importantly, 70% of the customers acquired through WhatsApp were new to stock trading, highlighting the impact of having a two-way communication channel to address customer queries.”

 

In line with its activities in India, it was announced in recent months that Infobip was partnering with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea to provide Mobile Identity services. Sarang talks about the motivation behind this collaboration.

 

“Since the launch of the 'Digital India' initiative in 2015, India has made rapid strides towards becoming a digital-first nation. The country, by February 2021, was home to 624 million internet users, marking an increase of almost 100% from the 354 million internet users in 2015. This number is expected to increase to 900 million by 2025. Most of this growth will be driven by mobile; smartphones are already the medium of choice for Indians looking to access digital services, including financial services, e-commerce, etc.” 

 

“However, a significant portion of India's internet customer base is new-to-digital, leaving both them and service providers vulnerable to digital frauds and malpractices,” he adds. It is this need-gap that Infobip is addressing with their Mobile Identity solution. It is a powerful, unobtrusive verification solution that enables automatic authentication of an individual's identity through their mobile phone number, allowing for swift and seamless verification of the user's credentials.

 

“This enables the identification and prevention of fraudulent and/or malicious campaigns to minimise losses while bolstering essential metrics such as customer engagement and customer experience,” Sarang explains. And so their associations with Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea, two of India's biggest telecom companies, provide a strong foundation for their Mobile Identity solution in the country.

 

“Through these partnerships, we are enhancing the efficiency and seamlessness of authentication operations for Indian businesses by facilitating a mobile identity-based, hassle-free, and secure login option,” he says. Beginning with the Silent Mobile Verification (SMV), they have plans to expand the product catalogue to include identity services capable of handling more complex objectives, such as eKYC verification and updating information, through the corroboration with the latest digital records.

 

 

Catering to Today’s Consumers

 

The world has seen many changes in recent times, owing to the pandemic and the rapid advancement and spread of technology. Virtual communication has obviously seen accelerated growth in these years. Sarang offers his view of the recent trends-

 

“The COVID-19 pandemic has sent the global digital communications landscape into a state of flux, making enterprises reconsider how they communicate with their customers. Consumers have become unresponsive to depersonalised targeting methods, highlighting the need for effective communication and outreach strategies.” 

 

He says that the period has been one of both introspection and outward growth for Infobip. Following the acquisition of US messaging heavyweight OpenMarket, Infobip had achieved a Q1 YoY revenue growth of 57%. “At the same time, we were prompted to analyse and refine our communication strategies to enable greater collaboration with our customers,” he says.

 

45 government and health organisations across the world turned to Infobip’s FAQ chatbot over WhatsApp to keep the public informed during this time according to Sarang. He cites examples including Infobip’s work with the Pakistan Government to launch a chatbot that worked as a COVID-19 helpline, up-to-date with the latest guidelines, contacts for local health providers, travel advice and testing locations.

 

“Through our “Worlds connected for the greater good” initiative, we have offered our communication services to public health and government institutions free of charge,” Sarang adds.

 

Trends in marketing show that modern-day entrepreneurs have very particular visions for their businesses and want to see them reflected in their communications. Today’s tech-savvy millennial customers with their ideas and innovations need a more personalized treatment.

 

“The key is awareness,” Sarang says.

 

“In our 2020 survey, we found that consumers have become averse to brand communication efforts that are depersonalized and lacking in moments of human connection. Nearly half (47%) of the surveyed consumers ignored campaigns they found insincere, while 21% of consumers switched their choice of brands due to less-than-satisfactory engagement experiences.”

 

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Discerning brands are aware of this shift in customer sensibilities, Sarang says.

 

“The rise of the internet has enabled quicker and easier access to information,” he explains. “News travels at the speed of light and modern consumers like to remain on top of everything that is happening in the world, not just in their immediate surroundings. Besides democratizing access to information, the advent of social media platforms has also made it easier for people to express their opinions and ideas.”

 

He also notes that the modern consumer base, as well as the modern workforce, consists of younger generations, namely millennials and post-millennials, who expect businesses to take a firm stance on matters that affect society.

 

“Infobip research corroborates the progressive sensibilities of the modern customer, showing that nearly a quarter of Brits aged 18-24 (24%) are more likely to engage with a business if they receive information on how it is giving back to society through sustainability, environmental, or charitable initiatives.”

 

Sarang also adds that 90% of consumers firmly believe that a company’s trustworthiness is underscored by the actions it takes in the face of a crisis. “These actions involve not just the efforts a brand puts in to understand and meet the expectations of its consumer base but also how it treats its employees,” he says.

 

Taking such trends into consideration emphasizes the value of empathy as the guiding force of business communications, both internal and customer-facing.

 

He also cites a recent poll commissioned by PepsiCo North America, which found that nine out of ten consumers in the US want brands to show empathy. Brands that exude empathy have a higher chance of driving loyalty, as per 86% of the respondents.

 

“This is precisely the need that we are helping our clients address,” Sarang explains. “Personalized, event-triggered messages informed by empathy and relevance will continue to dominate the business communications landscape for the foreseeable future. Our solutions are designed to help modern brands create and execute personalized and empathetic campaigns aligned with their target consumers' requirements.”

 

A part of the conversation of personalization is the separation of businesses who prefer automating conversations with chatbots and those who prefer to divert to human personnel as much as possible.

 

To the question of why businesses should invest in chatbots, Sarang says that as technology becomes smarter, AI-driven chatbots will become more capable of handling complex consumer queries at scale, thereby delivering improved customer experiences.

 

But he also agrees that it is unlikely that chatbots will replace human operators entirely. “This is because customers, as discussed above, seek human connection when they are engaging with brands,” he elaborates. “Chatbots are optimal for providing 24/7 customer support to address FAQs and minor queries. Human operators will still be needed to manage queries of a more complex nature and in cases where a customer is not satisfied with engaging with a chatbot.” 

 

The increased focus on human interaction also brings attention to the relevance of social media marketing, and whether or not it has become an unavoidable part of any good digital marketing strategy.

 

Sarang talks about the transformation of the digital communications landscape as a result of the pandemic and how, previously, digital marketing just used to be a nice-to-have advantage.

 

“The lockdown-led restrictions ensured that having a robust online presence was no longer an option but a critical business imperative. One can argue that the pandemic has blurred the line between a B2C and a D2C brand.”

 

Infobip has also recently added Instagram messaging to its available channels for businesses to communicate with customers. “Modern customers are now inhabiting the internet and exerting their digital identities across different platforms, including Instagram,” Sarang says, and therefore, “A brand looking to engage this target group must therefore have engagement strategies designed specifically for Instagram to achieve optimal results.”

 

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According to him, this holds primarily for B2C and D2C brands, especially the enterprises whose target demographic comprises the millennial and post-millennial population.

 

 

Exploring the B2D Space

 

Infobip is said to be on a growth trajectory to expand rapidly into the B2C vertical, or more specifically, the Business-to-Developer (B2D) space. Sarang talks about this focus on developers-

 

“Developers have become one of, if not the most, important buyers of technology and infrastructure. Demand is rising in sync with the growing startup culture, where product architecture is created from the ground up using developer platforms that offer interchangeable building blocks and collaboration. Ultimately though, there has been a change in approach, with companies realising that selling to a developer isn’t just about securing a ‘big deal’. It’s about working with developers to understand and solve problems and promote a ‘try and test’ approach. That’s where the wider value lies.”

 

Their acquisition of Shift Conference and appointment of its founder and CEO Ivan Burazin as Infobip’s Chief Developer Experience Officer has also signalled a strategic shift to put developers front and centre.

 

“With a decade of experience in producing developer, fintech and Artificial Intelligence conferences, Shift has positioned itself as a leading regional tech conference producer,” Sarang explains. “The acquisition is set to provide us with new expertise and business opportunities that will not only boost our own conference offering but also form the basis of our exciting Developer Experience department.”

 

It’s an exciting time, he says and adds that they are looking forward to hosting the conference in the city of Zadar in September.

 

 

Future of Infobip

 

“Infobip has worked with brands across the spectrum, collaborating with every vertical from hospitality, automotive, and fast food to banking, fintech, and retail. Our dynamic and scalable solutions have been developed to adapt to the constantly changing market and communication trends at speeds and levels of security that modern businesses demand.”

 

Talking about the future, in terms of expansion plans and product strategies, Sarang says that they believe that IoT and RCS-based services will command increased attention in the years to come.

 

“What’s more, as mobile identity moves closer to becoming a global standard, enterprises looking to become not just a part but also the drivers of the digital transformation would be well served through new-age authentication tools,” he adds.

 

Sarang describes their overarching goal, which is to keep moving towards enabling unified and personalised customer experiences for businesses and end-customers across the globe, expanding their reach in the US market specifically, as well as across the Indian subcontinent. He concludes by saying that their focus remains to empower clients to deliver memorable customer experiences.