Vodnjan, Croatia, February 23, 2023 – Global cloud communications platform Infobip has launched live video support to help businesses resolve customer queries more quickly and shorten customer wait times. Designed for businesses with high customer contact, Call Link is the simplest way for agents to escalate customer queries to live one-to-one video and audible calls.

When customer experience is essential to success, businesses must resolve customer queries quickly and effectively. Sometimes type-based chat support is not enough to solve technical queries, enable customers to properly show or explain a problem they are experiencing or understand how to resolve their issue. By providing a live one-to-one video and audible calls, Call Link now removes these issues.

With a simple web link, customer service agents or technical support engineers can instantly escalate advanced customer queries from type-based chat to a live video or audible call. By generating a unique URL, Call Link removes the need for businesses to build their own video experience, which takes a long time and is expensive.    

Available now, Call Link eliminates time-consuming back-and-forth between the agent and customer while enabling businesses to connect with their customers anywhere, anytime. Agents can share a link over any channel, including WhatsApp, SMS or email, across desktop or mobile. When customers increasingly want to use chat apps such as WhatsApp, this new feature reflects Infobip’s broader strategy to help businesses to connect with their customers on their preferred channel at their preferred time.

Call Link has several applications for businesses looking to enhance the customer experience, boost retention and reduce costs. It enables real-time diagnosis where customers can show and explain a fault or query over a video call, so the customer services agent can troubleshoot and resolve issues immediately. It also allows remote field inspections and readings. For instance, if a customer struggles to submit a meter reading, the agent can escalate the query to video and remotely guide the customer through the process. Such remote support reduces the costs and environmental impact of in-person visits. 

Adrian Benić, Chief Product Officer at Infobip, said: “For businesses looking to improve the customer experience, Call Link enables agents to troubleshoot and resolve queries quickly and efficiently, reducing wait times and costs while boosting satisfaction. From our customers already using the feature, we know that such communication helps them address more queries in a shorter time, enhancing productivity and providing a more convenient experience for end users.”  

“Call Link enables businesses to offer live one-to-one video and audible support without having to spend time or expense on developing their own solution in their tech stack. For businesses and brand with high customer contact, it helps accelerate their ability to escalate queries to video and solve customer issues more quickly. Call Link demonstrates how Infobip is committed to being the full-stack omnichannel communications platform for every platform.”

Call Link is a feature available to customer-centric organizations. It works across any device including desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones and is compatible with main browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. End-users’ calls can be configured to reach any customer application that has implemented Infobip’s Web Real-Time Communication Software Development Kit, to Infobip Conversations, or any phone number.

Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey. Accessed through a single platform, Infobip’s omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact centre solutions help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications to grow business and increase loyalty. With over a decade of industry experience, Infobip has expanded to 70+ offices globally. It offers natively built technology with the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices and ‘things’ in 6 continents connected to over 9,700+ connections of which 800+ are direct operator connections. Infobip was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutić, Roberto Kutić and Izabel Jelenić.

Vodnjan, Croatia, January 4, 2023 – Global cloud communications platform Infobip reveals its top five trends for customer experience and omnichannel communications for 2023. According to global market research firm Forrester better customer experience leads to higher revenue growth. So, as the world enters a more challenging economic climate, Infobip advises businesses to focus on the following five trends to delight customers and maintain a competitive advantage this year.

In an increasingly cost-conscious environment, businesses and brands will look for composable technology platforms to reduce implementation time and deliver transformation more quickly. In the past two years, 50 percent of companies have had to transform at great speed, according to an Accenture survey of 4,053 c-suite executives. To meet this speed of change, businesses will need to adopt plug-and-play composable tech platforms. Such interoperable solutions enable organizations to quickly integrate new capabilities through easy integration, increasing time to impact while reducing infrastructure costs and implementation timelines. Data from Accenture shows that companies with high interoperability unlocked up to five additional percentage points of revenue growth than companies with low or no interoperability. Composable tech platforms will drive innovation, augment customer experience and deliver faster and more extensive digital transformation. For instance, our integration with Adobe Marketing Cloud enables firms to engage with their customers via SMS and WhatsApp, ensuring global reach and high delivery rates.

Automation can come in many forms, but the breakthrough in customer experience will be in the adoption and scaling of automated bots. As ChatGPT shows, chatbots continue to advance by leaps and bounds. We expect to see scaling text bots alongside progress with voice and video bots. As a result, businesses and brands will create and deploy bots that bring a new level of automation, speed, and availability. Such intelligent virtual assistants will help scale customer service, drive efficiencies and enable businesses to up and cross-sell. More advanced bots will also enable brands to enhance marketing and sales automation. Such bots will answer product or pricing questions, schedule deliveries and take payments – all within a customer’s favorite channel.

Businesses will look for more intelligent ways to operate to drive efficiencies. Hyper personalized end-to-end customer experiences enabled by artificial intelligence and analytics will become a critical part of the customer journey, providing better experiences for customers and agents. AI and analytics can already respond to basic queries. Next year, Infobip expects organizations to use AI and analytics to predict customer behavior and drive real-time responses. For instance, companies will provide hyper-personalized messaging that instantly adapts to each individual and their preferences and ways of communication. Businesses will look to apply such tools to all parts of the customer journey to create hyper-personalized experiences to increase loyalty and drive sales. This trend will be accelerated by the increasing shift to first-party data and automation in writing AI code. 

In 2023, Infobip expects a world where the physical and digital meet to create immersive experiences that customers want, where and when they want them. Such experiences help enhance customer engagement while providing greater convenience around ordering, paying and delivery. Retailers will continue to integrate technology into their stores, using data to personalize what customers hear, smell and see. For instance, geofencing, a location-based marketing tool, enables retailers to send automatic alerts, such as coupons or promotions, when a customer enters the area around the store. Meanwhile, eCommerce platforms will use virtual and augmented reality to create a 21st-century digital store. Brands are enabling customers to ‘try on’ clothes through virtual dressing rooms. Customers can see how they look in the clothes they might want to buy, all from the palm of their hand. Infobip expects the first launch of a digital replica of a product using AR or VR.

Some companies such as Amazon and Alibaba are combining the retail and eCommerce experiences. Hema, Alibaba’s fresh food-focused ‘New Retail Store’, allows customers to shop in-store or through its app. It provides customers with augmented reality integrations in-store, where they can scan products to reveal their origins, deliver items and pay with facial-recognition technology. Amazon is harmonizing the physical and digital to deliver highly personalized customer experiences. It uses customer data from many sources – from online browsing activity to how customers navigate stores – to tailor store experiences to everyone.

Everything will become conversational next year. Customers now have access to more channels and devices than ever before. Whether for marketing, support or sales, they increasingly want conversations with a business or brand on their preferred chat channels. By creating a richer and more proactive experience, Infobip expects to see two-way conversations scale hugely across the customer journey. This year, we will see greater app-like experiences in chat apps. For instance, Infobip has developed an AI-powered chatbot for Uber that enables its customers to order a ride through WhatsApp, creating a seamless booking experience. Many the major tech companies including WhatsApp, Google and Apple will launch new features this year that enhance their conversational capabilities. There is also speculation that others like Microsoft will enter the conversational market with a new ‘super app’. Moreover, Infobip expects to see such user experiences expand across sectors from ride sharing to healthcare and even the public sector as it adapts to conversational everything.

Ivan Ostojić, Chief Business Officer at Infobip, said: “Customer experience can make or break a business. So, against a more difficult economic climate, we expect brands to focus on delighting their customers to remain competitive. But organizations may struggle to meet customer demands and provide the experiences their customers have come to expect without scalable and easy-to-use omnichannel communications. That is why Infobip continues to innovate and co-create with our clients and partners to ensure we are the one communication platform for every platform that helps businesses connect with people that are best for them.”

About Infobip

Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey. Accessed through a single platform, Infobip’s omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact centre solutions help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications to grow business and increase loyalty. With over a decade of industry experience, Infobip has expanded to 70+ offices worldwide. It offers natively built technology with the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices and ‘things’ in 6 continents connected directly to over 700 telecom networks. Infobip was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutić, Roberto Kutić and Izabel Jelenić.

Recent award wins include:

Infobip named a leader in the CCaaS Leaderboard, Juniper Research (Aug 2022)

Omdia Ranks Infobip as Leader in CPaaS Universe Report (May 2022)

Ranked the leading service provider in CPaaS by Juniper Research in its new Competitor Leaderboard CPaaS Vendors (October 2021)

Infobip named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) 2021 Vendor Assessment (doc #US46746221, May 2021)

Best A2P SMS provider for the fourth year running by mobile operators and enterprises in ROCCO’s annual Messaging Vendor Benchmarking Report

Best CPaaS Provider of the Year, Best RCS Provider of the Year, and Mover & Shaker in Telco Innovation at the 2021 Juniper Digital Awards

Vodnjan, Croatia, 20 December 2022 – Research from global cloud communications platform Infobip shows that Black Friday and Cyber Monday interactions on its platform reached new highs this year, as rich conversational channels become important for customer communications. Black Friday interactions increased to 2.36 billion this year. Cyber Monday interactions to 2.12 billion.

Infobip’s analysis shows a 112% increase in multimedia messaging (MMS) and a 10% increase in WhatsApp interactions on Black Friday compared to a typical November Friday this year. Meanwhile, MMS and WhatsApp interactions increased by 120% and 13%, respectively on Cyber Monday compared to a typical Monday in November.

Interactions on both days reached new highs this year as businesses and brands messaged their customers earlier to drive sales. Highlighting the continued popularity of the promotional days, Black Friday interactions were up 48% compared to an average Friday in November. Cyber Monday interactions increased by 44% compared to an average Monday in the same month.

The U.S. was the main driver of growth, where interactions increased 66% on Black Friday and 65% on Cyber Monday compared to 2021.

Ivan Ostojić, Chief Business Officer at Infobip, said: “Our data shows that businesses and brands increasingly favor rich and more conversational communications channels to communicate with their customers across Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Conversational experiences and same-day sales offers drove an increase in multimedia, chat app, and mobile app interactions. Meanwhile, in the year of its 30th anniversary, SMS continues to remain a critical channel, especially on Black Friday itself”.

“This year, we focused on increasing our presence in the U.S., which is visible in the uplift Black Friday and Cyber Monday interactions in the region. We made growth possible by understanding customer needs and enabling enterprise customers to drive meaningful communication through our platform, supported by U.S. operators providing on-time delivery capacity.”

Infobip’s research also shows brands can achieve conversion rates as high as 39% through marketing automation across multiple channels. This can be attributed to messaging channels which have much higher open rates than some others. For instance, consumers open some 98% of all SMS messages.

Infobip’s analysis also highlights the trend towards conversational experiences across a range of sectors:

Goran Juršić, Vice-President of Business Intelligence at Infobip, continued: “Our insights demonstrate that sectors worldwide now want to offer their customers more conversational experiences when it matters. But to offer such experiences, businesses and brands must first embed global real-time omnichannel communications to create meaningful relationships that boost loyalty and drive sales.”

About Infobip

Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey. Accessed through a single platform, Infobip’s omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact centre solutions help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications to grow business and increase loyalty. With over a decade of industry experience, Infobip has expanded to 70+ offices worldwide. It offers natively built technology with the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices and ‘things’ in 6 continents connected directly to over 700 telecom networks. Infobip was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutić, Roberto Kutić and Izabel Jelenić.

Recent award wins include:

Infobip named a leader in the CCaaS Leaderboard, Juniper Research (Aug 2022)

Omdia Ranks Infobip as Leader in CPaaS Universe Report (May 2022)

Ranked the leading service provider in CPaaS by Juniper Research in its new Competitor Leaderboard CPaaS Vendors (October 2021)

Infobip named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) 2021 Vendor Assessment (doc #US46746221, May 2021)

Best A2P SMS provider for the fourth year running by mobile operators and enterprises in ROCCO’s annual Messaging Vendor Benchmarking Report

Best CPaaS Provider of the Year, Best RCS Provider of the Year, and Mover & Shaker in Telco Innovation at the 2021 Juniper Digital Awards

Vodnjan, Croatia, December 15 2022 – Global cloud communications platform Infobip has appointed Ben Lewis as Vice President of Marketing and Growth. Ben will lead Infobip’s global marketing and growth function and is responsible for increasing the firm’s market share and brand awareness to meet its ambitious growth targets. Taking a customer-centric approach, he will ensure Infobip is positioned as the full-stack omnichannel communications platform for every platform.

His immediate priorities include launching Infobip’s One Communications Platform brand positioning across all audiences and channels to drive awareness. He will also enhance Infobip’s customer marketing and growth capabilities by, for instance, introducing new initiatives such as account-based marketing. In addition, by bringing together the firm’s marketing and growth teams globally, Ben will align all regions behind the same objective.

In the medium term, Ben will build Infobip’s brand equity globally and drive greater engagement with its critical tier-one platform business customers. He will also ensure greater visibility for Infobip’s self-service offer.

Ivan Ostojić, Chief Business Officer at Infobip, said: “Infobip is focused on profitable growth, and the marketing and growth team is critical to our success. But to achieve that success, every team worldwide must be aligned and focused on the same objective. Combining the marketing and growth teams under Ben’s new leadership unifies our end-to-end go-to-market functions from strategy to campaigns. Now everyone is focused on how they can help our customers succeed and, by doing so, how we can achieve ambitious profitable growth.”

“Ben is an exceptional marketing leader with vast industry experience. What’s more, having been with the firm for some time in understands our business inside out. At Infobip, we’re committed to developing our people, helping them perform at their best and make the step up, which Ben exemplifies with this new appointment.”

Overseeing a global team, Ben has significant experience in global omnichannel communications. He was previously VP of Strategic Commercial Innovation at Infobip. Before Infobip, Ben was Director of Revenue Operations at U.S. messaging heavyweight OpenMarket. Acquired by Infobip in 2020, Ben joined OpenMarket from a tech start-up in 2016. Following the acquisition of OpenMarket, Ben managed the transition of the sales and accounts teams, working closely with Infobip’s executive team.

Ben Lewis, Vice President of Marketing and Growth at Infobip, said: “Having worked with Infobip and its executive team since its acquisition of OpenMarket, I’ve seen first-hand the breadth and depth of its people. Infobip has been hugely successful to date, and it has strong relationships with customers such as Microsoft and Adobe and partners like CRM platform HubSpot and workflow platform ServiceNow.”

“With a more agile and collaborative approach, we can enhance that success and ensure Infobip achieves ambitious profitable growth. I’m looking forward to working with colleagues to ensure customers understand how our full stack communications infrastructure is so powerful that other providers run their platforms on it.” 

About Infobip

Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey. Accessed through a single platform, Infobip’s omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact centre solutions help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications to grow business and increase loyalty. With over a decade of industry experience, Infobip has expanded to 70+ offices worldwide. It offers natively built technology with the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices and ‘things’ in 6 continents connected directly to over 700 telecom networks. Infobip was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutić, Roberto Kutić and Izabel Jelenić.

Recent award wins include:

Infobip named a leader in the CCaaS Leaderboard, Juniper Research (Aug 2022)

Omdia Ranks Infobip as Leader in CPaaS Universe Report (May 2022)

Ranked the leading service provider in CPaaS by Juniper Research in its new Competitor Leaderboard CPaaS Vendors (October 2021)

Infobip named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Communications Platform-as-a-Service (CPaaS) 2021 Vendor Assessment (doc #US46746221, May 2021)

Best A2P SMS provider for the fourth year running by mobile operators and enterprises in ROCCO’s annual Messaging Vendor Benchmarking Report

Best CPaaS Provider of the Year, Best RCS Provider of the Year, and Mover & Shaker in Telco Innovation at the 2021 Juniper Digital Awards

From Gen Z to Boomers, new research from Infobip dials into the texting (and sexting) habits of Americans

Seattle, US – December 2, 2022: Infobip, a global leader in omnichannel communications, today announced new data from its 2022 “30th Anniversary of the SMS” survey, which sheds light on how, where and when Americans are communicating with each other.

The report was commissioned to commemorate the anniversary of the first text message, sent on Dec. 3, 1992, by Neil Papworth, a software programmer from the U.K. who had been working as a developer and test engineer to create a short message service (SMS). That very first text simply said, “Merry Christmas.” In the three decades that ensued, SMS has exploded in popularity, and today, the humble text message has emerged as the go-to form of communication for billions of people and an ever increasing number of businesses.

Making the vast majority of this messaging possible, Infobip is the biggest chat and text communications player in the world. With hundreds of billions of messages going through its platform each year, the communications as a platform company (CPaaS) reaches more than 70% of the mobile phones across the globe.

Polling more than 1,000 consumers across the U.S., Infobip’s survey found that Americans would rather communicate via SMS, Whatsapp or another form of instant messaging (41%) than a phone call (24%). This trend was even more apparent among younger respondents — with approximately half of Gen Zers (48%) and millennials (53%) preferring messaging over calling, and Americans having fully embraced the text message as an integral tool of daily life.

Texting etiquette? Rewriting the rules of communication

Where are our manners? The survey found that when it comes to text messaging, for many respondents, no place or occasion was off limits. In fact, even the open road is fair game, with more than half (52%) of millennials admitting to the dangerous habit of texting while driving, compared to 40.7% of Gen Xers, and about 30% of baby boomers and Gen Zers.

Other surprising stats about when and where people are texting include:

With 27.5% of respondents checking their text messages within one minute, and 40% checking them within one to five minutes, it’s clear that we are a nation of texters.

Americans’ love affair with the text message

Instant gratification is just an SMS away, as the survey found that sexting — sharing sexually explicit messages or images through electronic means, cell phones in particular — is a popular pastime for many Americans. In fact texting is an important part of romance for a solid majority of millennials (63%) and Gen Zers (61%) who have sent a sext message. The numbers decline among Gen Xers, with less than half (46%) fessing up to sexting and only a small subset (14%) of baby boomers sending salacious SMS messages.

Other racy replies from respondents include:

Hold the phone! Communication preferences among the generations

Our phones have become our primary source for information, relationship building, banking, shopping, interacting with brands and a host of other daily activities. The survey found that phone preferences and messaging must-haves break down along generational lines.

When asked how they prefer to receive marketing communications from their favorite brands, a majority across the generations chose email, with text messaging coming in second. Unsurprisingly, the demographics skewed younger for those who preferred to communicate with brands via messaging, with 33% of Gen Zers and 32.7% of millennials embracing the concept.

Conversational messaging will continue to be the way of the future

“The findings show that SMS and other chat and messaging options are the most effective means of communication at our fingertips,” said Silvio Kutić, co-founder and CEO of Infobip. “As the way we communicate evolves, we are seeing more engagement between consumers and businesses. In the future, consumers will be increasingly connected to the brands they love, as businesses continue to meet people where they are — on their phones.”

About Infobip

Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey. Accessed through a single platform, Infobip’s omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact center solutions help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications to grow business and increase loyalty. With over a decade of industry experience, Infobip has expanded to 70+ offices worldwide. It offers natively built technology with the capacity to reach over 7 billion mobile devices and ‘things’ in six continents connected directly to over 700 telecom networks. Infobip was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutić, Roberto Kutić and Izabel Jelenić.

About the survey

Infobip commissioned a survey from Propeller Insights of 1,000 adults, gender-balanced and distributed across age groups from 18 to 65+ in the United States. Propeller Insights is a full-service market research firm based in Los Angeles, using quantitative and qualitative methodologies to measure and analyze marketplace and consumer opinions, extensively across industries. This survey was conducted in October of 2022.

Vodnjan, December 2, 2022 – Research from global cloud communications platform Infobip shows the global popularity of Short Message Service (SMS) within customer communications, 30 years after a software programmer sent the first message on 3 December 1992. Infobip’s analysis shows that despite the rise of new communication channels, SMS remains popular, with a 75% increase in use in 2022 compared to 2021.

Infobip analyzed more than 153 billion communications interactions on its platform from the first half of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021. It shows that SMS remains a top three channel in every region worldwide, including Europe, Eurasia, North America, Latin America, Middle East and North Africa, Africa, India and Asia-Pacific.

With the highest open rates and return on investment, Infobip’s analysis shows that businesses and brands continue to use SMS for timely alerts and security solutions, including two-factor authentication. What’s more, highlighting the versatility of the channel, the data also shows that SMS made up 16% of total customer engagement and marketing interactions.

Ivan Ostojić, Chief Business Officer at Infobip, said: “As we reach the 30th anniversary of SMS, our data shows that it remains as popular as ever. SMS has evolved from a personal messaging platform to a key tool for business to consumer communications. Infobip has played a critical role in this evolution, enabling businesses and brands deliver billions of messages every year through our 700 direct telecom operator connections. As one of the most reliable and practical ways for brands to ensure their message reaches their customers, it is the go-to channel for time-sensitive alerts and security notifications. With its global reach and no reliance on internet connectivity, we expect SMS to continue to play a key role in future business-to-consumer communications.”

Infobip also finds that many sectors continue to rely on SMS. For instance:

Ivan Ostojić, Chief Business Officer at Infobip, continued: “The original SMS message sent 30 years ago by 22-year-old software programmer Neil Papworth helped forge a path to global connectivity. That connectivity has evolved and rapidly grown in recent years, and Infobip now handles hundreds of billions of messages every year, reaching 75% of mobile phones globally. We look forward to continuing to be at the forefront of innovation and transformation in omnichannel communications, delighting customers on any channel, anywhere in the world.”

About Infobip

Infobip is a global cloud communications platform that enables businesses to build connected experiences across all stages of the customer journey. Accessed through a single platform, Infobip’s omnichannel engagement, identity, user authentication and contact centre solutions help businesses and partners overcome the complexity of consumer communications to grow business and increase loyalty. With over a decade of industry experience, Infobip has expanded to 70+ offices worldwide. It offers natively built technology with the capacity to reach over seven billion mobile devices and ‘things’ in 6 continents connected directly to over 700 telecom networks. Infobip was established in 2006 and is led by its co-founders, CEO Silvio Kutić, Roberto Kutić and Izabel Jelenić.