Thailand Continues Growing Adoption of Business Messaging : New Study by Meta

According to the report, over 40 per cent of Thais surveyed said they were messaging with a business more frequently than compared in the pre-pandemic period, with nearly one in two consumers chatting with businesses at least once a week.

The trend was similar across all age groups, especially among Thai Millennials and Gen Zs, who are messaging businesses up to 11.7 times every month. 

The new study, “Business Messaging: The Quiet Channel Revolution Across Tech” surveyed 6,500 respondents across Thailand, Australia, Indonesia, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and showed how having seamless and deeper conversations is emerging as a baseline expectation and has become an integral communications channel for both businesses and consumers.

For Thai businesses, 90 per cent recognize that messaging apps are important for success, while 80 per cent of consumers plan to continue using messaging to interact with businesses, impacting the future of business’ commercial and customer experiences as business messaging gains traction following the pandemic’s acceleration.

Tarandeep Singh, Managing Director at BCG explained, “The Covid-19 pandemic forced countries around the world to go into lockdowns, enforce strict social distancing rules, and restrict in-person business operations. This resulted in more people going online, and businesses across many industries to increase their investment and engagement on online channels to connect with customers.” 

“Based on our research, business messaging adoption is gaining traction beyond small businesses. While smaller businesses have been using Business Messaging to digitize and scale their online presence for years, large businesses now recognize messaging as a critical component of their business model. Nine in 10 large Thai businesses rated messaging as very or extremely important to their overall business,” he added. 

The study also shows the immense potential of business messaging for the financial services sector. Consumers across Apac said it was important for them to message a business before they signed up for a financial product, with 69 per cent of Thai consumers believing it was of high and very high importance to their consideration. This was further reflected by 75 percent of local financial services companies, who perceive Business Messaging as extremely or very important to their business.

This extended adoption also means the continued expansion of use cases across industries such as Consumer Products, Retail, Financial Services, and e-Commerce – ranging from basic enquiries, lead generation, and one-to-one consultations to customization, feedback, re-marketing, and information collecting.

More than half of Thai businesses say that they use Business Messaging for after-sales services, while 59 and 67 per cent of retail and e-commerce businesses, respectively, use it to process pre-sales enquiries. Further, an average of 44 per cent of local businesses said they use messaging to process orders and transactions.

The end-to-end potential of Business Messaging can be seen in Thai beauty brand N’LIGHT 10, which built a conversational experience that manages customer conversations and drives sales. Their innovative experience, which involved click-to-Messenger photo ads and automated responses, made it easier for customers to converse with N’LIGHT 10 and purchase its products within Messenger using Facebook Pay. This helped the beauty brand increase its sales by 600% and played a key role in N’LIGHT 10’s increased confidence in achieving business success.

Prae Dumrongmongcolgul, Country Director, Facebook Thailand for Meta, said, “We are seeing fundamental shifts in how people and businesses connect, and the last few years have accelerated these shifts. This report shows that the ability to message a business is emerging as a consumer baseline expectation. As business messaging largely takes place across social and messaging platforms, we are committed to enabling businesses of all sizes with capabilities to activate this channel for growth,” she added.

The report also outlines key recommendations for how businesses can start their messaging journey, including defining clear objectives for messaging throughout the entire customer journey; prioritizing business messaging in the marketing strategy so contacts are timely, personal, and relevant, and adopting third-party messaging technology solutions and providers to rapidly scale messaging capabilities.

Commenting on the value of business messaging, Charnae Morris, Head of eBusiness, Nestle IndoChina said “We are very encouraged by the integration of business messaging. The business and brand value proposition for Nestle has been to really engage the consumer and shopper end-to-end from the moment they might have a question about our product, providing them with rich information, and for them to decide whether to purchase the product. We are using this as a proof-of-concept to potentially scale the solution to other businesses from coffee to pet care. As a next step, I would encourage marketers to understand the role business messaging can play in their overall brand strategy and channel mix. After which, they should allocate resources to orchestra ways of working to ensure success.”