Today customers no longer just want to buy product or avail services but want an exceptional and memorable customer experience. Customers rely on various digital channels to communicate with brands for all support and information. They demand a personalized experience and expect brands to know their preferences. Therefore, organizations emphasize on enhancing the digital customer engagement via adopting next-generation technologies. They drive actionable insights to form effective engagement strategies and improve customer experience. Most of the companies have increased their investment in acquiring best digital customer engagement solutions to build the brand value. Twilio is one of the market players enabling the companies to offer best-in-class customer experience. Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal recently spoke to Ved Antani, Vice President of Engineering and Managing Director, Twilio India. Mr. Ved elaborated about their offerings, new trends, and much more. Read below the excerpts:
Rajeev: How has the growth journey been for Twilio so far in India?
Ved: Twilio launched its Bangalore R&D centre in April 2020 and within 15 months of inception, it became the largest Twilio site outside of the US. Some of our key customers in India include Dream11, Edureka, Callify.ai, and Rapidops.
Over the years, Twilio has forayed into sectors like retail, healthcare, fintech, and edtech, targeting businesses from the public and private sectors. As Twilio takes on the next big industry - Marketing -, we no longer remain just the communications layer. We are transitioning to become the customer layer for the internet -- the platform B2C businesses use for all their engagements, whether sales or marketing support. With 268,000 active customer accounts, our customer base is constantly growing, and we are committed to providing companies of every size the tools they need to smartly approach their customers, tackle the next generation of marketing, and drive business.
Rajeev: What is the recent adoption trend when it comes to digital customer engagement solutions?
Ved: We are in the midst of the biggest digital transformation era. According to Twilio’s 2022 State of Customer Engagement Report, B2C companies in the Asia-Pacific and Japan regions say that the pandemic has accelerated their digital transformation strategies by an average of 7 years.
Fueled by the technological advancements, broad internet coverage across the country, and the societal shift to digital, businesses are striving to deliver differentiating experiences for their customers on their preferred channels. Additionally, the depleting customer attention span and growing competition in the market have further led businesses to adopt several strategies to build a deeper level of connection with their customers.
According to the same report, 68% of APJ companies have increased their investment in digital customer engagement, and this investment has generated more than 60% of average top-line revenue over the past two years. This rapid adoption of digital engagement strategies is making multichannel customer communications and engagement solutions crucial for any business in India.
Rajeev: What is Twilio offering that’s different from other solutions?
Ved: With its Customer Engagement Platform, Twilio brings together globally trusted digital channels, data-driven personalisation, and leading engagement tools such as Twilio Flex, Twilio Frontline, and the recently launched - Twilio Engage. Twilio Engage combines Twilio Segment’s world-class customer data infrastructure with Twilio’s robust communication APIs to deliver personalised unique customer experiences in real-time across every channel. In addition to email and SMS, Twilio Engage offers over 400 integrations right out of the box into one platform, enabling companies to go from idea to campaign in minutes instead of weeks. This removes the dependency on data scientists to offer insights into customer data and enables marketers to build direct relationships with their customers and accelerate campaign delivery, personalise every interaction, use any combinations of tools, data integration, and analytics, and monitor every campaign in one place.
Rajeev: How can businesses prepare for a cookie less world and embrace a digital engagement that puts customer trust and privacy first?
Ved: Today, the marketing strategies of the majority of APJ companies (78%) are reliant on third-party cookies, and more than half (55%) of the companies are not fully prepared for the impending cookieless world. As browsers are blocking third-party cookies by the end of 2023, businesses need a new approach to understanding their customers. Hence, it is time for businesses to shift to first-party data because it is the right thing to do and because it won’t be a choice soon.
With regulations maturing worldwide, data protection and consumer trust are increasingly gaining prominence. Consumers today are more aware and concerned about how businesses use their data and are keen for more transparency from brands. However, Twilio’s report shows a trust gap between consumers and brands. While 69% of consumers want greater data privacy from brands, only 50% of APJ brands believe this is what consumers want. Additionally, 90% of B2C companies believe consumers trust their ability to protect data, but only 71% of consumers trust these companies.
Embracing a digital engagement that puts consensual data usage first will be the basis of all great customer experiences. 83% of consumers wanting brands to use only first-party data is a testimony to first-party data becoming a competitive advantage and table stakes for survival. The changing customer preferences for privacy have spotlighted businesses to decrease their reliance on third-party data and build their first-party data.
Rajeev: What are the major challenges brands face today in communicating with their customers? How do you help them in resolving such challenges?
Ved: Today brands are losing market share and loyalty to digital giants due to the changing technologies, diminishing value of third-party cookies, lack of profiled targeting, and customer’s growing expectations. Businesses struggle to provide meaningful experiences, resulting in digital fatigue for customers, a growing problem today. Twilio’s report shows that globally, over 1 in 3 consumers have experienced digital fatigue in the past 30 days. Additionally, frustrating customer support experiences may be contributing to this problem. More than half of APJ consumers are frustrated by inconsistent digital interactions with brands, and 90% of APJ consumers are willing to stop doing business with a company after frustrating customer experiences. To overcome these challenges and stay ahead of the competition, businesses need to engage smartly with their customers.
Twilio’s vision is to empower every B2C company with the ability to deliver custom, personalised experiences the way Amazon, Google, and Netflix do. With robust first party data, communication, and AI layer, Twilio democratises the ability for every business. In short, Twilio is on the frontlines of helping businesses shed the cookie, increase their customer base, and engage with them deeply to build direct customer relationships, enabling businesses to win in today’s digital world.
