Google x Infobip: Reinventing customer interactions in India
In India, the communication process has shifted from one-way to two-way, with most brands gearing up to provide conversational experiences. Discover how Infobip and Google have been helping businesses create impactful customer journeys.
Looking back at a few years, communication was largely one-way, with brands informing customers about their products, services, and offers through both offline and online channels. Today, that approach no longer works as customers want to ask a quick question, understand a product, and get recommendations from their favorite brands. That’s why conversational experiences are no longer a “nice to have.” They are becoming central to how businesses grow, connect, and stay relevant.
At the ET Brand Equity MarTec Summit, Infobip and Google came together on stage to share a joint vision for the future of conversational experiences in India. Shankar Iyer, Director – Business Strategy, India, Revenue at Infobip, and Spandana Dhaduti, Go-To-Market Manager, RCS for Business at Google, explored how the two companies are working together to help brands move from one-way messaging to intelligent, two-way customer engagement at scale.
Evolution across the entire customer funnel
India witnessed a rapid adoption of digital messaging in the last decade. Credit goes to the increasing smartphone penetration, availability of data, and messaging apps, which have reached beyond the tier 1 and tier 2 cities, touching even the remote areas. Today, customers are more comfortable interacting with brands through messaging channels rather than dialing the support numbers.
For businesses, it provides them with the opportunity to get to know their customers better. “When a conversation happens, a brand truly understands how consumers are acknowledging them on that platform. Conversation plays a very important role in helping businesses understand consumer sentiment,” says Shankar.
India is leading the chart in business messaging, where users and businesses have adopted conversational messaging very well. According to our messaging trends report, there has been an 8x growth of RCS for Business messaging in India.
“We may have started with just awareness and brand discovery, and product consideration. But today we are talking about in-conversation purchase, post-purchase support, retention, and loyalty globally,” says Spandana Dhaduti.
The shift from broadcast to conversations
In India, the communication process has shifted from one-way to two-way. Earlier, many brands used messaging only for festive greetings or promotional alerts, but now, those one-way messages are transforming into conversations. Spandana shares an interesting example. “It could be a simple festive greeting, where I can just wish you and be done with it. But the moment I say, hey! Diwali is coming up soon, what are your plans? Then we are into a conversation rather than just saying happy Diwali.”
Conversations are a great way to stay top of mind for users and build a relationship, because customers now see the brand as more than just something trying to sell them a product.
Spandana Dhaduti
Go-To-Market Manager, RCS for Business, Google
The role of RCS in powering conversational experiences
Messaging channels such as RCS are key drivers of two-way conversations, enabling customers and businesses to stay connected with each other. Initially considered as an evolution of SMS, RCS enables brands to create rich, interactive journeys directly inside the user’s inbox.
Spandana highlights some exciting features of RCS, such as Location Service, Add to Calendar, Add to Google Wallet, and Web View, which help brands create a smooth customer experience. For example, RCS for Business enables businesses to send documents such as signed contracts, boarding pass, and even QR codes, which can be saved in Google Wallet with one tap. While using Web view features, customers can open web pages, fill forms, and check out directly within the RCS chat interface.
“What RCS exactly brings for brands is enabling them with these tools, so that they can leverage it to make their customer journey much more intuitive, interactive, rather than creating everything text-based”, says Spandana.
Together, Google and Infobip are enabling businesses to move faster into this new conversational era. While Google provides the rich RCS experience inside the inbox, Infobip powers the orchestration, automation, and analytics behind the scenes, helping brands turn RCS interactions into connected, measurable customer journeys.
Today, with our attention spans being so short, when you’re looking to transact or engage with a business, the turnaround needs to be faster, more intuitive, and quicker. And that’s exactly what RCS brings to the table.
Spandana Dhaduti
Go-To-Market Manager, RCS for Business, Google
Challenges brands face in delivering conversational experiences
It is a fact that every brand wants to connect with its customers and engage them throughout their journey. However, the real challenge comes during the execution process. Shankar highlights three main challenges brands need to address to create the right conversational experience.
Mindset shift
As a one-size-fits-all approach does not work for all, strategies that are working today may not work tomorrow. For example, many brands are doing well without being conversational, but customer behavior is changing today. “A lot of customers are preferring today a chat conversation, rather than reaching out to a brand or walking into a store or even visiting a website or downloading an app”, says Shankar. He adds that although apps are quite popular today, 10 years down the line, it is unlikely that customers will download the apps to make a purchase.
Solution
Brands need to adopt a customer-first mindset by acknowledging changing consumer preferences. Instead of viewing conversational experience as an add-on, they should be treated as a core engagement process. It is important for brands to at least start with pilot use cases and gradually scale based on learning experiences.
Technology and data readiness
Marketing has evolved from a theoretical approach to a performance-driven environment, where data and technology play a crucial role. The advancement in technology enables brands to deliver the next-level personalization to customers. “There’s a lot of customization done before a message is sent to the end user, which means brands exactly know whom they are going to send the message to, and how that user might respond. So, they can build plan A, plan B, and plan C.” says Shankar.
Although most brands want to leverage data, many face challenges when it comes to unifying data. Scattered data is a major problem area, which results in poor customer experience.
Solution
Brands should start using customer data platforms and orchestration tools to unify and use data to deliver personalized experiences. This enables a single customer view, better targeting, and more relevant conversations. Along with technology adoption, teams should be trained to use data effectively to design adaptive and personalized conversational journeys.
ROI concerns
Many brands that are willing to shift to a conversational module often have ROI concerns, which hold them back. They prefer to stick to the traditional marketing model, which includes getting impressions, driving users to web pages to make a purchase, and so on. Therefore, the real challenge for brands is to come out of their comfort zone and experiment with conversational marketing.
“Every brand today has a cohort of users who are savvier to conversational chat. Then there is a certain percentage of users who are still physical in nature, and that’s the mix of consumers in India”, says Shankar.
Solution
Instead of short-term ROI measurement, brands should evaluate conversational marketing through long-term metrics such as engagement rates, repeat interactions, customer satisfaction, and lifetime value. The benefit of going conversational shows up over time, which includes:
- Better engagement compared to traditional campaigns
- Higher trust building through helpful and timely conversations
- Emotional connection established with customers
How do you feel when you receive a message that isn’t trying to sell you anything? It feels great because in the middle of all the clutter, someone is simply saying, ‘You can reach out to us if you need anything.’ That’s a very different kind of experience you’re creating, and it’s something brands should start measuring very soon.
Shankar Iyer
Director – Business Strategy, India, Revenue, Infobip
The future of conversational experiences: Advanced AI as the game changer
When it comes to conversations, customers expect brands to assist them with 24/7 instant and personalized responses. For brands, it’s often a challenge to remain always on and provide timely and customized responses to their huge customer base. Advanced AI, such as Agentic AI, comes to the rescue here, providing customers with relevant recommendations based on their past purchasing history and browsing behavior.
Agentic AI enables systems to autonomously perform real-world tasks by making decisions and taking actions without human intervention. These agents can manage complex, multi-step workflows by planning and executing tasks to achieve defined goals. By connecting decision-making with execution, agentic AI delivers more meaningful, goal-oriented, and conversational support to customers.
Shankar highlights that a typical Indian customer, when visiting a physical store, expects the salesperson to recommend the best product to buy because they consider them as the expert in suggesting the right thing. AI does a similar job to make life easier for customers and also reduces the contact center load for brands.
“You don’t have to go and decide out of 100 SKUs, like what is the best fit. You are just going to ask a question like, you know, this is Valentine’s Day, and I need to decide on something to wear, and that’s it. AI will start recommending,” says Shankar.
Adding to the discussion, Spandana highlights three major shifts in the conversational experience:
- Growth of Advanced AI: Technologies like GenAI will be adopted by businesses, as it will enable them to deliver hyper-personalization based on behavior, timing, and mood, as well as boost operational efficiency through AI-driven agents.
- Rise of the app-less app store. Users don’t want dozens of apps anymore, so businesses will live inside the messaging inbox. This will make RCS for Business a promising channel.
- User-initiated conversations: Customers will prefer to reach out to brands rather than the other way round. So, brands must develop intelligence to understand customers’ needs and respond meaningfully.
Infobip is driving conversational experiences with a unified AI-native platform
Customer journeys today are often fragmented across channels, systems, and teams. Data lives in silos, conversations lack context, and customers are left repeating themselves. This is where orchestration becomes essential. Our platform brings AI, data, and channels together in one unified platform so businesses can design, run, and optimize end-to-end conversational journeys from a single layer. By combining AI automation, cloud contact center, customer data, and messaging channels, brands can move from isolated interactions to truly connected experiences.
Our AI-powered platform enables autonomous agents to handle routine conversations, provide recommendations, and resolve requests in real time while seamlessly handing off to a live agent when needed. Every interaction is enriched with context, so customers never have to start over. At the same time, we help brands use customer data and AI to automate workflows, personalize journeys, and drive measurable business outcomes without losing the human touch.
Together with partners like Google, we are helping businesses across India and beyond turn conversations into lasting relationships and transform how they engage customers at every stage of the journey.
