People use messaging extensively in their daily lives, which reflects the rapid change in how people communicate online and their desire to communicate with a business, in the same manner, they communicate with their friends and family.

In fact, the demand from customers for personalized experiences is at an all-time high, and businesses are communicating with customers more frequently more than ever before. For instance, a recent study from Meta and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) revealed that over 40% of respondents claimed they messaged businesses more regularly than they did before the pandemic, with one in three customers doing so at least once per week.

This demonstrates how business messaging is becoming more widely used throughout the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. It was shown that this trend was consistent across all age groups, particularly among Millennials and Gen Zs who message firms up to eight times per month.

In the study “Business Messaging: The Quiet Channel Revolution Across Tech,” 6,500 respondents were surveyed from Australia, Indonesia, Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. It demonstrated how, as it continues to gain traction in the APAC region and is further propelled by the pandemic, business messaging has become essential to both enterprises and consumers.

The state of business messaging in APAC

According to Tarandeep Singh, Managing Director of BCG, the COVID-19 pandemic compelled nations all over the world to implement stringent social distancing regulations, impose lockdowns, and limit in-person corporate operations. More consumers went online as a result, and firms in numerous industries increased their spending and participation in online channels for customer engagement.

“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. Seven in 10 large businesses rated messaging as very or extremely important to their overall business,” he added.

The study also found that:

• Messaging is a crucial avenue for corporate and consumer communication with 90% of companies acknowledge the value of messaging applications for commercial success. Another 80% of customers intend to keep communicating with businesses via messaging.
• Financial services are emerging as a high potential vertical for business messaging. Consumers in APAC stated that it was critical for them to message a business before registering for a financial product.

Could it make its way into the metaverse?

With the evolution of business messaging and the trend of using the metaverse as a form of communication in the future, will business messaging eventually make its way into that space? Dan Neary, VP for Meta APAC, claims that Meta believes the metaverse is essentially the next development of how people will communicate and that it is more immersive in many ways.

“The business models surrounding that will undoubtedly emerge over time. But the primary design of it revolves around human connection. Therefore, as we go closer to the metaverse, we firmly believe that communications will play a significant role. However, I think it’s still evolving as we go as to how it actually shows itself, both business-wise and on the consumer side,” said Neary.

He noted how the metaverse is not something that Meta is building; but the connection layer will play a significant role in what Meta is doing for the metaverse, which he has no doubt will be a collection of many different firms creating various experiences.

“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,” he concluded.