If you are a legit user of a business but you don’t like receiving too many promotional messages and you only want to receive transactional messages about your orders or delivery confirmations, you also have the ability to block promotional messages and maintain only the non-promotional notifications. As a consumer, you have full control over how often you interact with businesses in the app.
The same goes for SMBs: They do not see the user’s phone number. This is very important because consumers don’t want people to start calling them. It is also only now — and that’s why these features are paid — that they can purchase packages of messages to send. We have also limited the number of forwards because this is how spam happens.
We also employ AI behind the scenes, much more for product focus rather than consumer features, because it acts as a deterrent to any possible fraud.
With all these tools, is there a trend as to which one businesses tend to get better ROI from, or which is more popular?
Constandache: It depends on the focus. Business messaging is typically used to engage with existing customers; it’s not a tool to acquire new customers. But engaging with existing customers means pushing new products and promotions to them as well as providing after-sales care.
Anything relating to advertising — from the simple ad to the ads that lead to a bot—are normally tools meant to drive new sales
By using both, you go for the entire marketing funnel, from prospecting to completing sales and after-sales. They don’t serve the same purpose; you just need to use them in conjunction if you want to do a 360-degree campaign.
The trend has been that digital platforms replaced traditional channels, then social media came in and is taking over. Do you see messaging as the next step, or what’s the trend? How is it going to fit into this whole picture of the evolving market?
Constandache: I see messaging in conjunction with other channels. This is a trend that we’re seeing on social media as well. First, social media was promoting a lot of products and was used for brand awareness or as a sales channel. But now, we see that the trend is to enable consumers to speak to businesses.
Messaging is at the heart of everything. It’s what started it all, and it’s the other channels that caught up with messaging — rather than vice versa. All other channels have introduced messaging, not the other way around.
Asia is very spoiled for choice when it comes to super apps, and we are by no means trying to copy what super-apps like WeChat, Grab, or Line are doing. They are very specific to the markets where they originated from.
Our definition of a super-app is adding relevance to people’s lives and serving businesses of all sizes. We do not invest as much into social features anymore. We used to have channels and communities that were very much driven by user-generated content.
We stopped all that because we saw that our users, at their core, want relevance and simplicity. They use Viber for messaging, and they use Viber for messaging with businesses of all sizes. We need to enable this in the simplest way and be the best that we can be because this is a trend that will not go away.
People will continue to speak to each other, and people will continue to interact with businesses, and vice versa. We’re not trying to be anything else. There’s enough entertainment and other platforms out there; that’s not our core business.
Finally, social media is great for many things, but it’s not necessarily known for its privacy and security. While the topic is not the sexiest — nobody gets excited about privacy and security — it is crucial, especially now in the age of AI and social media.
