The global messaging landscape

People around the world spend more time messaging than nearly any other activity online, and everyone has their favorite chat app. While the landscape remains diverse and fragmented, a few Big Tech behemoths have dominated the conversation.

42% OF PEOPLE ON THE PLANET HAVE A SMARTPHONE

87% OF SMARTPHONE OWNERS USE MESSAGING

Source: Statista

The messaging wars continue

As Facebook works toward merging its messaging apps into one mega messaging platform, WhatsApp has hit 2 billion users, and Messenger has held steady in second place. Tencent retains its grip on China with WeChat and its older but more youth-oriented sibling, QQ.

JIAQI PAN, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, LANDBOT - “With the continued adoption of the WhatsApp Business solution, the western market will finally have a messaging player that could replicate the WeChat-universe.”

MOST POPULAR MESSAGING APPS BY MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS (IN MILLIONS)

Source: Statista

There’s a WhatsApp for that

WhatsApp is the leading chat app in 112 countries, up from 104 last year. WeChat remains ubiquitous in China, while Korea’s KakaoTalk, Japan’s LINE, and Eastern Europe-oriented Viber retain their regional strongholds (obscure Android app imo remains an outlier in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). Note that this map does not include telco-based texting (SMS/RCS) or iMessage, Apple’s default texting solution, which is used by 45% of active smartphone users in the U.S.

TOP MESSAGING APP IN EACH COUNTRY

Source: SimilarWeb

KAKAOTALK IS USED BY 90% OF SOUTH KOREAN SMARTPHONE USERS

Source: Asia Times

Sibling rivalry

As more businesses connected to WhatsApp’s Business API over the course of 2019, we saw the number of WhatsApp messages flowing through the Sunshine Conversations platform grow by more than 3,000%.

GROWTH IN MESSAGING VOLUME ON ZENDESK’S SUNSHINE CONVERSATIONS PLATFORM

Finding their voice

They’re not messaging platforms per se but smart speakers and voice assistants are key pieces of the conversational revolution, changing the way we communicate — and how we interact with brands. Amazon was first out of the gate, but Google is nipping at Alexa’s heels, while Alibaba, Baidu, and Xiaomi battle it out for Chinese market penetration.

LAUREN KUNZE, CEO, PANDORABOTS - “The industry is making rapidly accelerating breakthroughs on previous technology hurdles, including speech synthesis, artificial emotions or the "uncanny valley," and natural language processing. It's critically important that corporations and organizations dedicated to AI ethics continue actively developing tools for things like deep fake detection or fighting algorithmic bias to ensure AI for good and AI for all.”

GLOBAL SMART SPEAKER MARKET SHARE: 2016-2019

Source: Statista

Just browsing

Consumers are still using voice assistants for information and guidance rather than making purchases.

AKHIL TALWAR, DIRECTOR, PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, BOLD360 - “2020 will be the year that single or limited-purpose conversational bots will find themselves on the chopping block. Bots will be increasingly reviewed based on their performance and common metrics – in the same way human agents are – and those that offer limited capabilities and can’t scale across different tasks and responsibilities will find their days numbered.”

HOW CUSTOMERS ARE USING VOICE ASSISTANTS FOR CONSUMER PRODUCTS AND RETAIL

Source: Capgemini

74% OF CONSUMERS ALREADY USE VOICE ASSISTANTS FOR RESEARCHING OR BUYING PRODUCTS

Source: CapGemini

Chatbots are dead. Long live chatbots.

Chatbots have been through the hype cycle so many times that seven out of 10 people have “chatbot fatigue,” according to one headline. But the truth is they’ve simply become part of the fabric of digital commerce. Businesses are deploying bots across marketing, sales, and support, and they’re doing so with a distinctly human touch.

NEWS COVERAGE OF CHATBOTS OVER TIME

Source: CB Insights

Banking on bots

Nearly half of finance and insurance businesses have embraced bots for everything from lead generation to customer support.

PERCENTAGE OF BUSINESSES USING CHATBOTS PER INDUSTRY

Source: CapGemini

“BY 2022, 70% OF ALL CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS WILL INVOLVE EMERGING TOOLS LIKE CHATBOTS, MACHINE LEARNING, AND MOBILE MESSAGING, UP FROM 15% IN 2018”

Source: Gartner, Magic Quadrant for the CRM Customer Engagement Center, Brian Manusama, Nadine LeBlanc, Simon Harrison, 11 June 2019

EVA TAYLOR, SR. MANAGER, SOCIAL AND MARKETING OPERATIONS, HOOTSUITE - Automation can help reduce the workload, but a human touch will still be important for building deeper customer relationships at scale.

The rise of conversational business

Each year Zendesk uncovers the top trends in customer experience and engagement, based on industry surveys and data from 45,000 customers across 140 countries. This year’s CX Trends report showed that businesses are slowly embracing the notion that every customer interaction is part of a conversation. These conversations are taking place across a number of channels, with messaging and chat emerging as favorites for businesses and customers alike.

IN 2019, THE NUMBER OF MESSAGES EXCHANGED BETWEEN BUSINESSES AND CUSTOMERS ON ZENDESK’S SUNSHINE CONVERSATIONS PLATFORM INCREASED 500%

It’s still early

While conversational business channels like SMS, chatbots, voice assistants, messaging apps, and chat still aren’t as common as phone and email, that’s about to change. A growing number of businesses plan to add them in 2020.

CESAR MIGUEL, HEAD OF THE INNOVATION FACTORY, ACCOR“ - Customers want answers now, not in 24 hours (like email), not in a week (postal mail). And today most companies are not organised to provide that. This speed can only be done with real-time interaction platforms, and that's chat and voice.”

CHANNELS COMPANIES OFFER OR ARE PLANNING TO ADD IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS

Source: Zendesk Benchmark

The need for speed

Businesses are adopting messaging for the same reasons consumers love it. Messaging is fast, personal, convenient, and secure. Unlike traditional live chat, messaging is also asynchronous and sessionless, which means customers can pick up where they left off and agents can serve more customers at a time, armed with the context they need to offer more personal experiences.

REASONS COMPANIES OFFER MESSAGING

Source: Zendesk Benchmark

SARAH MARION, ASSOCIATE, INOVIA CAPITAL - “2020 will be the year we start to see meaningful industry maturity. I'm seeing startups raise big money, while incumbents are bolstering their conversational strategy through acquisitions. 2020 is the year of billion-dollar conversational businesses.”

Conversational commerce is here

Messaging is most common in the retail industry, where conversational commerce is emerging alongside support.

LAWRENCE LEWIS, SR. DIRECTOR OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, DYME

“Conversational technology in 2020 will make an already competitive commerce landscape significantly more competitive. Adding conversational to your tech stack now will help separate your business from the pack.”

PERCENTAGE OF BUSINESSES USING MESSAGING

Source: Zendesk Benchmark

LATAM leads the way

Latin America — where WhatsApp is queen — is embracing conversational business faster than other regions, with Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa following closely. In many developing countries, messaging has leapfrogged web, email and mobile apps to become the digital commerce channel.

PATRICK NGUYEN, CTO, [24]7.AI - “As business messaging volumes jump in 2020, many companies will suffer the pitfalls of increased costs and degraded customer experiences associated with new channels. They will need to rethink their current voice-centric contact centers and implement the operational systems required to make messaging an effective channel for customer service.”

PERCENTAGE OF BUSINESSES IN EACH REGION USING MESSAGING

Source: Zendesk Benchmark

B2C you in the conversation

Business-to-consumer brands are adopting messaging faster than B2B companies, with only 4% of businesses leveraging messaging for internal operations.

WHO ARE BUSINESSES MESSAGING WITH?

Source: Zendesk Benchmark

DIANA HELANDER, HEAD OF DEVELOPER MARKETING, TWITTER - “While many brands have a dedicated Twitter handle for customer service inquiries, marketers often aren’t leveraging this valuable public conversation to understand the voice of the customer. Brands that invest in CX can tap into this real-time conversation to inspire product discovery and fuel innovation.”

Satisfaction (almost) guaranteed

Businesses still on the fence about messaging should look no further than this stat: Messaging apps have the highest customer satisfaction rating of any channel, with a CSAT of 98%.

ED BICE, CEO, MEEDAN - “As politicians, advocacy groups, and bad actors increasingly realize that political shifts are driven by narratives and memes, the ability to respond to divisive campaigns in messaging spaces will be a key part of every serious comms playbook.”

MEDIAN CSAT PER CHANNEL

Source: Zendesk Benchmark

https://www.zendesk.com/message/state-of-messaging-2020/