MessengerPeople Study 2018 reports an increase in messenger services used by businesses

MessengerPeople, a Germany-based provider of professional messenger communication software, has released the MessengerPeople Study 2018, providing insight into the past three years of digital communication between businesses and consumers. The results of the study were yielded from 10m messenger services users, 18m daily sent messages, more than 1,600 customers and nine billion data sources.

MessengerPeople’s software is used by messaging platforms WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Insta App, and Telegram, to enhance the customer service experience and facilitate faster communication. From 2015 to 2018, MessengerPeople grew from 500 messenger service users to over 3 million.

“Three years ago, we were one of the first providers facilitating WhatsApp customer communication for businesses,” said Matthias Mehner, chief marketing officer at MessengerPeople. “Since then, we’ve been gaining new users daily and should hit the 50 million milestone in 2020.”

According to the study, WhatsApp was the most-used channel for messenger communication, with 87 per cent of users subscribing to the messaging app newsletters on their platform. Other platforms fell behind, with 7 per cent of users subscribing to Facebook Messenger, 5 per cent to Insta App, and 1 per cent to Telegram. MessengerPeople also found that users subscribe to an average of 1.6 newsletters, suggesting consumers are showing a singular preference and “choosing quality over quantity.”

After examining billions of messages sent using MessengerPeople software, the study found that links sent in the newsletters have an average click through rate of 32 per cent, which is a key performance indicator of messenger services. Mehner said: “Not only the opening rates, but also the click rates are much higher than in e-mail marketing. The unsubscribe rate for messaging app newsletters is 0.1 per cent – much lower than for e-mail newsletter, where you can already be happy with a 0.5 per cent unsubscribe rate.”

Research showed that the most successful branches in messenger marketing for 2018 were media, e-commerce, banks, B2B-communication, and sports, in that order. The branches with the biggest growth in 2018 were ranked cities and communities, transportations and utilities, human resources & internal communication, and parties, politicians & teams. This past year, WhatsApp was also used for political announcements by the Washington Post and the German government.

“Media companies, in particular, have started to dramatically improve their reach by using messaging apps. 41 of the top 100 IVW-listed German websites are our customers,” said Mehner. “eCommerce companies use WhatsApp and Co. to spread their deals. Our customer Mydealz, a leading internet deal platform, has even crashed the Amazon server by sending out an extremely popular deal.”

“More and more public transportation services like the Deutsche Bahn are using messaging apps for an innovative, fast, and secure way to distribute information to riders. Their customer service is constantly being expanded further,” said Mehner.

As communication channels become more convenient and user-friendly, companies received over 117m inquiries from users over messaging apps, with WhatsApp accounting for 98 per cent of those inquiries received.

“117 million inquiries per year is just the beginning,” said Mehner. “The demand for customer service via messaging apps is there. WhatsApp and Co. already far overshadows social media in terms of customer dialogue. The customer is ready – what’s missing are companies that are willing to use this opportunity.

According to the MessengerPeople study, 62 per cent of all companies answer customer service inquiries within 24 hours. Mehner said: “We all know that speed is the most important thing in customer service. Messaging apps as a medium have a huge advantage in this regard, because people are used to quick responses. We see that the majority of businesses have understood this point and can successfully implement it.”

To optimize the customer service experience, companies are adopting Chatbots for their apps and websites. These Chatbots are able to reply to customer inquiries in real-time and offer a personalized conversation. MessengerPeople found that 44 per cent of all customer inquiries are answered by Chatbots, and these personable Chatbots say “thank you” an average of 636 times a day.

“Almost 80 per cent of inquiries are repeated”, reports Mehner. “Chatbots can be put to excellent use raising the efficiency and quality of customer service. A Chatbot should have a personality. Ideally, he is patient, polite – but also funny. Our Chatbots have mastered this tone and are always polite”.