Mobile Messaging at Work and Play – Beyond Conversation

Over the last few years, mobile messaging usage has exploded.It now dominates smartphone usage. While consumercommunication grew rapidly a few years ago, the more recentand interesting phenomenon is the rise of “messaging as aplatform” — a platform for developers and enterprises to engagetheir customers and build advanced conversational experiences.Messaging and conversational experiences are graduallytransforming every aspect of the human-computer interface.

The rise of Alexa and Assistant shows that, dependingon context, users will seamlessly use both oral and textualconversations to get things done. For example, in private spaceswith busy hands (e.g., when driving or cooking), audio is thepreferred conversational medium. However, in public spaces (e.g.,meeting room or noisy street), screen-based textual or visualinteraction is usually the preferred mode.

Even as other channels mount a bid to be viable alternatives,SMS continues to remain the preferred channel for enterprisemessaging given its ubiquity. Globally, enterprises send 2 trilliontext messages to consumers worldwide. These are mostly transactional messages notifying customers about informationrelated to their transaction. While SMS does have its limitations,such as plain-text, restricted-length format, it more than makes upfor it with its reach and ubiquity.

While other channels continue to develop, the gold standardworldwide for rich messaging functionality remains WeChat,along with similar apps Line and Kakao. These messagingapps enable users to not just communicate but also do a widevariety of transactions, including shopping, banking, insurance,payments, travel, taxis, food delivery, jobs, music, news, etc.These have now become super-apps that subsume many otherapps within them. These are powerful illustrations of the visionof “messaging as a platform.”

Messaging channels and conversational experiences continuetheir rapid growth even as the hype cycle has moved on. As theysay, it is easy to overestimate the short-term and underestimatethe long-term; that is certainly the case with messaging andconversational experiences.

—Beerud Sheth, founder and CEO ofGupshup (www.gupshup.io)