With COVID, we saw a lot of micro-businesses using personal messaging tools for business purposes. All of a sudden, from one day to the next, businesses were closed. For example, in the Philippines, many family-owned and small businesses had to communicate with their consumers, especially in the food industry. These businesses started using group chats to create group messaging with their clients, and this was very widespread. After the pandemic finished, we expected these chats to end because businesses opened physically again. But they continued.
This was actually the first instance of two-way conversations because businesses were responding in these group chats and communities, and talking to users. We realized that communities and group chats are not meant for business use. There are lots of people there, and users can see each other’s phone numbers. There was a lack of privacy, and businesses could message people at all hours. That wasn’t okay, so we said: “Okay, we’re going to give you a tool that is tailored to your needs, similar to what enterprises have.”
So, we decided to allow users to create business accounts from where they can invite their customers. As a business account holder, you do not have access to your customers’ phone numbers; you’re just going to know their IDs, and then you can message them on a one-to-one basis, and they can message you.
We first allowed users to message the business, to maintain privacy and security and to allow consumers to really control how they connect with businesses. From there, we recently rolled out a range of “Business Plus” plans aimed at allowing these businesses to purchase promotional packages that give them messages and other features they can use to promote themselves or their products to consumers.
In parallel, we also launched a self-serve ads platform where micro-businesses can now go in by themselves and purchase ad inventory to advertise themselves on Viber. We aim this directly at SMBs. Large businesses and enterprises already benefit from these features, but we manage the process for SMBs. We create the business account for them, everything is verified, it’s vetted, and everything has the verification mark to ensure that businesses are who they truly say they are.
They benefit from advertising campaigns that are run and set up by our teams to ensure that we meet their marketing KPIs.
That’s a very long answer to your question, but we have created tools dedicated to allowing businesses of all sizes to interact with consumers. This is very important for us because we don’t want to create an environment where people are spammed with promotional messages and ads all the time. The user has to have control at all times over the type of promotions that they are shown and engage with.
Can you expand on privacy and data use? It is a huge concern, and besides just phone numbers, I’m sure consumers have other data that they’re sharing with businesses.
Constandache: First of all, this is very important: on a private level, Viber doesn’t collect any data because none of the private conversations are transited through the app on our servers. Whatever you are sending as a message sits on your phone and the phone of the person receiving the message, not on our server. We cannot access any of the private conversations.
When it comes to businesses of all sizes, they can only message people that they already have in their database. If you have not bought from a company or you haven’t signed up to their database, they should never be able to send you a message on Viber.
Ads are obviously different in the sense that we use the public information of the user in the app. “Public” means, for example, you follow a group or a community about fashion or news, so we infer that you are interested in fashion. Therefore, you’re going to see an ad from a fashion brand. But if you have shared with your friends that you want to buy a dress and that you found it in this shop on this street, we simply don’t know that. This is information that we don’t have as it does not exist.
Quite often, we just don’t remember that we signed up for something and we then receive a message we don’t want. Very importantly, if for whatever reason a business is violating our strict policies you as a user have full control over blocking or reporting the business, and making sure you don’t receive messages from the business anymore.
If you are a legit user of a business but you don’t like receiving too many promotional messages and you only want to receive transactional messages about your orders or delivery confirmations, you also have the ability to block promotional messages and maintain only the non-promotional notifications. As a consumer, you have full control over how often you interact with businesses in the app.
The same goes for SMBs: They do not see the user’s phone number. This is very important because consumers don’t want people to start calling them. It is also only now — and that’s why these features are paid — that they can purchase packages of messages to send. We have also limited the number of forwards because this is how spam happens.
We also employ AI behind the scenes, much more for product focus rather than consumer features, because it acts as a deterrent to any possible fraud.
With all these tools, is there a trend as to which one businesses tend to get better ROI from, or which is more popular?
Constandache: It depends on the focus. Business messaging is typically used to engage with existing customers; it’s not a tool to acquire new customers. But engaging with existing customers means pushing new products and promotions to them as well as providing after-sales care.
Anything relating to advertising — from the simple ad to the ads that lead to a bot—are normally tools meant to drive new sales.
By using both, you go for the entire marketing funnel, from prospecting to completing sales and after-sales. They don’t serve the same purpose; you just need to use them in conjunction if you want to do a 360-degree campaign.
The trend has been that digital platforms replaced traditional channels, then social media came in and is taking over. Do you see messaging as the next step, or what’s the trend? How is it going to fit into this whole picture of the evolving market?
Constandache: I see messaging in conjunction with other channels. This is a trend that we’re seeing on social media as well. First, social media was promoting a lot of products and was used for brand awareness or as a sales channel. But now, we see that the trend is to enable consumers to speak to businesses.
Messaging is at the heart of everything. It’s what started it all, and it’s the other channels that caught up with messaging — rather than vice versa. All other channels have introduced messaging, not the other way around.
Asia is very spoiled for choice when it comes to super apps, and we are by no means trying to copy what super-apps like WeChat, Grab, or Line are doing. They are very specific to the markets where they originated from.
Our definition of a super-app is adding relevance to people’s lives and serving businesses of all sizes. We do not invest as much into social features anymore. We used to have channels and communities that were very much driven by user-generated content.
We stopped all that because we saw that our users, at their core, want relevance and simplicity. They use Viber for messaging, and they use Viber for messaging with businesses of all sizes. We need to enable this in the simplest way and be the best that we can be because this is a trend that will not go away.
People will continue to speak to each other, and people will continue to interact with businesses, and vice versa. We’re not trying to be anything else. There’s enough entertainment and other platforms out there; that’s not our core business.
Finally, social media is great for many things, but it’s not necessarily known for its privacy and security. While the topic is not the sexiest — nobody gets excited about privacy and security — it is crucial, especially now in the age of AI and social media.
