How technological interventions are influencing the omnichannel ecosystem: Vishal Rally, Tata Tele Business Services and Ravi Garg, Meta

Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) recently announced the strategic expansion of its cloud communication suite Smartflo with WhatsApp Business Platform. The move aims at offering an enhanced business communication experience, thus accelerating user engagement, enhancing customer experience, and ensuring impactful customer interactions. 

In view of the same, Vishal Rally, Senior VP and Head, Product, Marketing and Commercial, Tata Tele Business Services, and Ravi Garg, Director - Business Messaging, Meta spoke to Dataquest about the strategic importance behind this move, is the role played by WhatsApp Business Platform, and much more.

DQ: What is the strategic importance behind integrating the WhatsApp Business Platform with Smartflo?

Vishal: The idea behind integrating Smartflo cloud communication suite with WhatsApp Business Platform is to offer an advanced unified omnichannel experience, an easy and trusted solution for businesses that provides multiple channels, enabling seamless and impactful communication in the way customers want to engage in today’s business ecosystem.

This will enable Tata Tele Business Services (TTBS) to provide secured and customized services for customers across channels. It will further enhance customer experience with unified hyper-personalized interactions and multi-touch attributions which includes simultaneous collaboration across different channels such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and phone calls which can be thought of as a single-point system to optimize interaction experience collectively.

DQ: What is the role played by WhatsApp Business Platform in enterprise communication?

Ravi: In India everybody is on WhatsApp. We are connecting with our friends, family and even businesses on WhatsApp all the time. And we are seeing a major shift in how people and businesses communicate through messaging. In an earlier survey this year, over 70% of online adults in India said they prefer messaging rather than emails or calls. (Source : Kantar online survey commissioned by Meta -  April 2022 ). 

For businesses, ‘messaging’ presents a huge untapped opportunity. Having personalized rich conversations directly with customers, they can improve customer service, operational efficiencies and most importantly, nurture customers through their purchase life cycle. Customers find these immersive experiences very valuable. They receive an instant and personalized response they need at the touch of a button all within the familiar environment of WhatsApp that they are anyway comfortable using because of its simple, intuitive, and reliable user-interface. 

DQ: How is TTBS helping SMEs to recalibrate their functions with this new offering?

Vishal: TTBS is committed to delivering bespoke smart solutions that help modernise our customers operations and build efficiencies across the value chain. With the strategic expansion of its Smartflo cloud communication suite with WhatsApp Business Platform, it will help businesses to map various customer operational needs over multiple channels. This will further enhance the customer experience with unified hyper-personalized interactions and multi-touch points which includes simultaneous channel collaboration. 

Our new offer to deliver Smartflo cloud communication suite unified with WhatsApp Business Platform will allow SMEs to adapt to new challenges and provide exceptional assistance to the customers on the messaging platform in the manner in which they like to be assisted. We are able to provide a superior user experience based on the trust of our valued customers. 

DQ: How is the WhatsApp Business Platform helping businesses manage their customers better?

Ravi: We believe that in the dynamic digital universe there’s always an opportunity to make a user’s digital journey more convenient and seamless. With WhatsApp Business Platform, our aim and vision is for users to be able to find all their digital solutions within WhatsApp itself. So for any requirement a user has, from morning till night, whether it's for personal banking, or travel and ticketing, or ordering groceries - she can very conveniently connect with the business of her choice, from within WhatsApp. 

Retailers, airlines, banks and many other industry leads in India have already made this switch and are seeing gains in customer satisfaction, agent efficiency and improvements in marketing and sales – ultimately driving better results, at scale. Moreover, with WhatsApp’s over 400 million users, businesses now want to tap the potential opportunity to connect with the ‘new’ /‘next 100 or 200 million’ customers who aren’t perhaps available to them through other modes. We think with Business Messaging we have another meaningful role to play in the next phase of the country's digital transformation.

DQ: How are new technological interventions influencing the current omnichannel ecosystem?

Vishal and Ravi: As businesses are modernizing their operations, they want to provide their customers with seamless support and experiences across all digital touchpoints. To stay ahead of the curve, organizations across industries and sectors are embracing new technological interventions that have revolutionized the current omnichannel experience. 

With the adoption of Artificial Intelligence, Chatbots, and IoT, among others, businesses are able to provide seamless customer experience on the go and unite both physical and virtual world. Businesses on messaging platforms like WhatsApp have grown significantly as well. It is as simple as sending a ‘Hi’ to a business on WhatsApp. 

Smartflo cloud communication suite integrated with WhatsApp Business Solution, will provide a unified omnichannel solution experience involving different channels and methods of connecting with customers. This will boost the overall customer experience to be smoother, regardless of the channel they use.

WhatsApp is playing a meaningful part in the evolving omnichannel ecosystem as more businesses realize the potential they have with WhatsApp Business Platform. Several small and big businesses have adopted the WhatsApp Business Platform to improve efficiencies and provide personalised service and an enhanced customer experience, at scale, and customers are finding value in such immersive experiences.