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Pieter de Villiers CEO and Co-Founder, Clickatell

“If a customer is picking up the phone to contact a call centre, then it’s likely the organisation has already failed them, and their journey has stalled,” says Pieter de Villiers, CEO and co-founder of Clickatell. “The role of a call centre is reactive, rather than proactive. In order to satisfy and delight today’s customer, communication should not just be seamless and instant, it should actually predict what the customer needs.”

Customers in general, and particularly millennials and Generation Z, expect to have a ‘chat-like’ experience in all their interactions, whether it’s booking seats for a concert or dealing with a financial institution.

“Ideally, customers shouldn’t need to make a call or download an app in order to have what they require during the service journey,” De Villiers says. “Our vision is to facilitate a frictionless process where information arrives intuitively in the chat channel on their phone before they need it, providing the ultimate in seamless service. For example, a chat message invites an airline passenger to check in with one click, receive their boarding pass, and be updated with important flight information, saving time and stress. This process not only delights your customer and expedites the service, it also puts your brand inside their address books.”

The team at Clickatell is able to replicate almost any app or website journey that a brand has built, while ensuring that the customer is already known when the chat journey begins. “Chat is the number one interface where AI shines. We are perfectly placed to enable you to make your customer service simple and seamless. Consumers today want instant verification and resolution. Our brand promise is that you will not have to place your customers on hold,” De Villiers says.

Chat has a 94% reach in the South African market, far more effective than using a website or an app. Chat has higher open rates, higher response rates, and there is even the facility to make payment in a chat thread. With your organisation having invested in the ERP and interface, Clickatell can unlock a massive improvement in your outcomes by adding the chat facility that the majority of clients prefer to use.

Sometimes, human intervention is necessary, and the chat system allows for this to be efficiently enabled. Whether booking an in-person appointment or being transferred to a human agent for a more detailed discussion, having the basics handled by the online agentic system means that the human agents can focus on more specialised services. This also gives human agents the time and opportunity to upsell clients and offer personalised value-adds.

Having routine enquiries and basic assistance handled through a secure, automated chat thread improves safety, compliance and governance. “Clickatell’s offering, the Chat Commerce Platform, is compliant with regulatory standards, including ISO 27001, SOC2 Type 2, GDPR, and POPIA. We take enterprise security and governance very seriously and a huge amount of our resources are focused on this. Personal records and data create a massive risk if they are compromised; having a human in the loop increases the risk of exposure to that data. Syndicates can infiltrate organisations, so having data accessible only through locked-down automation machinery helps to keep the bad actors out,” De Villiers says.

Agentic commerce offers a seamless, intuitive and frictionless interaction that adds enormous value to organisations and customers alike. “It can be overwhelming to know where to start in the journey to adopting this technology,” De Villiers says. “Our advice is to start small and do a proof of value with a trusted and capable organisation. From there, you can embark on the journey that will best suit your business’ needs.”

www.clickatell.com