CNN’s Connecting Africa looks at the initiatives and strategies e-commerce companies are taking to connect African consumers with online products and learns what needs to be done to increase online access, seamlessly deliver purchased goods, and expand product offerings across the continent.

CNN’s Eleni Giokos spoke with tech savvy businesses about accessing the fast-growing youth population in Africa.

Clickatell in South Africa is leveraging messaging platforms to connect businesses with customers.

Pieter de Villiers, one of the co-founders of Clickatell, explains how they utilise this ‘chat commerce’,

“We provide all the toolkits that you need to create the entire customer journey from discovery to ordering a product, to giving a survey, to checking out on that chat platform that you and I already use every single day.”

The company has evolved to provide brands with the technology to engage with their customers through messaging platforms.

He continues on the increasing demand to provide consumers with mobile interactions and transactions, “Today we do more than 1.5 million payments per day. We service more than 60 million active customers for many banks across that market. We’ve $130 million plus business with SMS. We had multiple countries presence in the US, Canada, Nigeria, South Africa.”

The director of communications at Clickatell, Rozz Atanassova, explains the role of AI in promoting the future of e-commerce, “Clickatell is really excited in leveraging AI across the African continent due to the diverse nature of the African continent. So, there are lots of different cultures, lots of different languages, different dialects and AI really provides us the ability to help businesses better communicate with their consumers. So, we are looking at leveraging private AI so that it still feels secure and safe and encrypted to help businesses enable use cases with real time sentiment.”

Atanassova and de Villiers end the interview by explaining the success of chat commerce, “There isn’t a vertical that we currently don’t engage with and that hasn’t found chat is to be an effective way to get to their customers.”

De Villiers furthers this within the context of the continent, “I’m the eternal optimist in terms of Africa’s potential, not just South Africa, but Africa’s potential. I think that with our diaspora and our borderless trade that’s happening, there’s incredible opportunities. So, with these technologies that break down barriers, that break down borders, and they really bring an equal playing ground for the average man and woman on the street to be able to find the best services and the best quality of care they deserve.”

This interview was featured in a recent episode of Connecting Africa on CNN International.

This ground-breaking platform enables businesses to seamlessly connect, interact and transact with their customers on the messaging platforms they already use. Clickatell’s April 2023 release of the first Chat Commerce Platform as a Service delivers full, authenticated commerce experiences within the most widely adopted mobile messaging environments, such as WhatsApp, Apple Messages, SMS and USSD.

This next evolution of Clickatell’s Chat Commerce Platform allows businesses to create chat commerce experiences that drive sales and increase customer satisfaction. Businesses stay ahead of the conversational commerce trend by conducting commerce in the world’s largest messaging apps. 

Clickatell’s CCPaaS also allows businesses to save time and reduce costs by providing relevant, in-context brand experiences and secure payment capabilities to their customers through the convenience of messaging. New platform features include card tokenization and integration with WhatsApp Commerce functionalities that allow the display of product information and images in the brand’s WhatsApp channel.

New Innovative Payments in Chat

CCPaaS is the first SaaS solution to provide secure payment processing by integrating with leading payment gateways, allowing businesses to efficiently process transactions within the chat interface. With card tokenization, consumers can securely pay via a link in any messaging channel, leading to a Clickatell-hosted checkout that tokenizes the user’s payment information and saves it for future use — making subsequent purchases streamlined for the consumer with ‘one tap pay.’ The platform is PCI-DSS, ISO27001 and SOC2 compliant, ensuring the highest security standards for data protection and privacy.

“The launch of Clickatell’s Chat Commerce Platform as a Service marks a significant milestone in our company’s mission to revolutionize customer engagement and facilitate frictionless commerce within messaging apps,” said Pieter de Villiers, CEO and Co-Founder at Clickatell. “We run our lives within messaging apps; whether arranging a lunch with a friend or scheduling a school drop-off, messaging is convenient and simple.

‘Our new platform enables our favorite brands to serve us in these same messaging platforms with a full commerce experience, such as checking into your next flight and paying for a seat upgrade. As the first of its kind, CCPaaS sets a new standard for the future of chat commerce and reinforces Clickatell’s pioneering position in the industry. We made history in 2000 when we became the first company to connect the world’s fastest growing commerce platform – the internet – with the world’s fastest growing communications platform – the mobile phone – via our SMS Gateway. I am proud to see our team continuing the innovation and executing on the vision.” 

Simple CCPaaS Packaging for Customers’ Needs

Clickatell’s CCPaaS is offered through three distinct packages:

Clickatell Connect − The Communication Package

Connect is the foundation package that enables businesses to send and receive enterprise-grade mobile messages over multiple messaging channels via a RESTful API or a web-based campaign management tool. This package delivers high-volume services and campaigns, adhering to strict security and compliance requirements, delivering billions of messages reliably to customers all over the world. Key features include high volume queuing and routing, message encryption, anonymous messaging and number management.

Clickatell Interact − The Engagement Package

Adding to Connect, the Interact package enables businesses to have meaningful conversations with their consumers delivering the kind of digital experiences that today’s mobile-first consumers have come to expect. Brands can now easily and quickly build messaging workflows to deploy chatbots and mini-apps from a low/no-code web interface. 

Interact allows an instantaneous response to the customer through a chatbot with powerful features including keyword management, assets library and integrations with leading CRM and OMS solutions. Interact also includes live agent enablement through an advanced web-based application that provides real time sentiment insights, agent assist, chat transfers and agent performance metrics, all designed to improve agent performance and drive better customer experience.

Clickatell Transact − The Commerce Package

Transact enables businesses to sell products and services directly within messaging channels by sending the customer a payment prompt that initiates a secure and simple payment experience. Transact builds on the foundation of Connect and Interact, allowing businesses to create full commerce experiences within messaging. 

Businesses can accept payments on the Clickatell Platform with no development required, and with secure link and OMS integration, businesses can provide unparalleled check out experiences that are fully cloud native and turnkey. State-of-the-art payment capabilities include tokenization for frictionless user experience, PCI-DSS security and GDPR and local privacy compliance and legacy processes integration.

“As commerce continues to evolve yet again, we are helping brands to engage with their customers in this emerging chat commerce space,” said Jeppe Dorff, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Clickatell. 

“Our vision has always been to create a chat commerce platform that is focused and built around the key performance metrics that matter most to our customers, performance and operational efficiencies, customer satisfaction and increased business improvements. Our Chat Commerce Platform as a Service not only achieves that vision, it also provides an unparalleled user experience for both brands and their consumers, while fostering digital transformation and in context communications with the click of a button. With our innovative low/no-code platform, businesses may rapidly implement and customize their chat commerce solutions, regardless of technical expertise.”

To address this emerging chat commerce opportunity, Clickatell’s CCPaaS includes several powerful features designed to transform customer engagement into delightful commerce experiences and drive brand loyalty:

Customizable chatbots: Capabilities to develop and deploy chatbots to automate conversations, handle customer inquiries and drive sales.

Live agent chat: Smooth escalation from chatbots to live agents, enabling brands to offer personalized and efficient customer support when needed. Live agents can access conversation history and customer information for a seamless transition and enhanced customer experience.

Real-time analytics and reporting: Access to valuable insights into customer behavior, chatbot performance and transaction data, enabling data-driven decisions and optimization of chat commerce strategies.

Easy integration with existing systems:  A point and click embedded solution for seamless integration with CRM, ERP and other business systems. The platform comes pre-integrated with popular solutions like Shopify, Zendesk and Salesforce, ensuring a faster time to market for businesses.

Embedded payments: Embedding payments into chat allows brands to engage in transactional commerce as easy as a reply to pay. The feature comes with a secure link, hosted order pages, check out with Order Management integrations and a rich user experience in available channels.

Telkom’s millions of customers can now make payments via WhatsApp, the country’s largest chat channel.

Responding to the growing demand for fast, digital, self-help services, Telkom now deploys to its customers the Chat 2 Pay pay-by-link capability on WhatsApp, providing them with the convenience of safe and effortless mobile payments. Telkom post-paid and prepaid customers can pay their phone and xDSL/fibre bills, and buy airtime, data and SMS bundles.

Currently, Telkom’s chatbot offers customers mobile support by accessing their accounts and billing information, plus allows them to view sales deals, check for mobile or fibre upgrades, do cancellations, make directory inquiries and more. With the addition of Chat 2 Pay, customers benefit from a convenient and personalized service to pay bills and VAS top-ups via Mastercard and Visa debit and credit cards.

“User behaviour has shifted, and organizations are relying more and more on digital channels for revenue generation. But, asking customers to make payments through a different channel creates a break in the customer journey and challenges companies to convert sales,” said Werner Lindemann, ​​Clickatell’s Senior Vice President Enterprise Sales, Growth Markets.

“Payments in chat give telcos the tools they need to help their customers complete payments simply and safely in the channel they already know and trust, significantly boosting customer experience and revenue.”

With Chat 2 Pay, the payment process is exceptionally simple. Telkom customers can transact by simply making a menu selection to trigger a payment request. A link is then sent to the customer in a WhatsApp message. When they click on the link, they access a fully hosted checkout page. The customer then can securely enter payment details and submit, receiving a confirmation of the payment and receipt in a chat message.

“Telkom continues to look at ways to advance our customers’ digital experiences, and our digital channels are core for future delivery,” said Gugu Mthembu, CMO at Telkom. “Chat 2 Pay helps us optimize our payment channels and payment collection. What’s more, the ease of and availability of VAS services is expected to further boost revenue opportunities.”

“With 93% of conversations transpiring on Clickatell’s Chat Commerce Platform and ending in a transaction, Chat Commerce, including Chat 2 Pay, is especially relevant for telcos that are looking for new revenue channels and better efficiencies. Chat Commerce doesn’t just respond to your customers’ needs, it fulfills many of your shareholders’ needs too,” said Lindemann.

In 2023, mobile messaging will emerge as the ideal channel to create these holistic commerce experiences for consumers as well as to accelerate business demand and grow revenue, according to Clickatell’s leaders.

This and the five additional mobile messaging trends are likely to be the most relevant priorities in 2023 to help brands build and maintain consumer loyalty.

1.  Chat Commerce is the next wave of digital commerce

“The next wave of digital commerce will strongly emerge in 2023. Shopping digitally, whether on the web or on a mobile device, is now widely adopted by consumers.

But strong demand by consumers for even more convenient shopping will make 2023 the tipping point for Chat Commerce, with more consumers engaging with their favorite brands within the messaging apps they use every day, such as SMS, Apple Messages and WhatsApp.

In 2023, the commerce experience within messaging apps will evolve to be more functional, with experiences that rival that of other mobile apps,” said Pieter de Villiers, CEO and Co-Founder at Clickatell.

2.  Convenience adds a critical layer of satisfaction for consumers

“Brands add a layer of convenience by offering a real-time mobile option for consumers to receive order updates, new offers and the ability to simply shop and transact through the messaging channels they already use daily, rather than shopping at a separate digital destination such as a website or mobile app.

According to Clickatell’s Chat Commerce Trends Report: Retail Edition, 51% of consumers want access to special offers via mobile messaging and 46% () of consumers want to receive personalized promotions for things like last-minute deals.

Retailers need to be meeting consumer expectations and that points to messaging commerce,” said Jennifer Shambroom, CMO at Clickatell.

3.  Providing customer service exclusively online is a smart move

“With increasing costs and labor shortages, brands are looking for ways to simplify and consolidate, and leveraging mobile messaging with chatbots and the convenience of asynchronous communication with customers is a good decision. Millennials and Gen Z are more likely to view messaging as a preferred communication channel. Our Chat Commerce Trends Report: CX Edition revealed 99% of customer service executives recognize the benefits of using chat with customers to bolster customer experience and drive revenue and growth for their businesses. Further, with rising expectations of customer service departments to generate sales revenue, mobile messaging provides a seamless and secure venue for transactions that allows representatives to support customers along their entire path to purchase, while also encouraging the opportunity for increased sales,” said De Villiers.

4.  Consumers want to use mobile messaging to make payments

“Commerce within mobile messaging is becoming the preferred way for consumers to shop, accounting for 71% of retail traffic and generating 61% of online shopping orders.

In 2023, brands will need to double down on mobile, and mobile messaging channels are the place to focus. Consumers want to use mobile messaging with a retail company if it is as convenient as chatting with a friend,” said De Villiers.

5.  Mobile messaging apps are the new super app

“Consumers live on their mobile phones, especially in mobile messaging apps. As consumer behavior continues to trend toward engaging with brands within messaging apps, the need for a business to invest in a custom mobile app will become less viable. Mobile messaging apps will become the Super App in 2023 and beyond, going beyond linear message threads to deliver the full range of commerce experiences, allowing consumers to receive special offers, make immediate purchases, coordinate item drop-off and pick-up, and contact customer service, delivering satisfying, personalized experiences across the entire customer lifecycle,” said Shambroom.

Added benefits of the Platform include reduced costs for businesses to conduct chat conversations and engagement in real-time or any time communications.

Always On Digital Contact Center

Clickatell’s Chat Desk, a digital contact center solution and part of Clickatell’s Chat Commerce Platform, gives travelers access to flight details, booking options, cancellations, upgrades and more at their fingertips via SMS, WhatsApp and Apple Messages.

Chat Desk integrates tightly with Clickatell’s Chat Flow, a drag-and-drop conversation workflow builder, enabling businesses to visually create, edit and manage communication and business process workflows across multiple channels with little to no code. Consumers can connect with travel brands through the Chat Flow automated chat, before being escalated to a live agent through Chat Desk if necessary.

Chat Desk consists of three parts: Agent Desk, Supervisor Desk and Real-Time Dashboard:

• Agent Desk enables customer service agents to manage multiple customer conversations across SMS, WhatsApp and Apple Messages in a unified inbox. Agents may transfer inquiries to different departments and other agents; easily retrieve chats, history and notes with search and filter functionality; provide 2-way multimedia support (PDF, Microsoft docs, images, videos, voice notes, location sharing); create pre-populated responses for agents to send to customers driving consistent customer experience and agent efficiency​; and gain insight to customer sentiment through their remarks in the chat.
• Supervisor Desk gives supervisors the ability to route tickets to the right department or specialist agent​s; manage agents’ workloads and performances​; effectively manage customer escalations and agent productivity​; and deliver the best customer experience with supervisor oversight.
• Real-Time Dashboard provides supervisors a view of agent performance, customer sentiment​ and CSAT and NPS scores through customer surveys; the ability to​ categorize and tag customer inquiries driving opportunities for automation; and the ability to send auto response messages outside of business hours and when agents are busy, as well as customer greetings and goodbyes.

Innovative Payment Option

The Clickatell Chat 2 Pay new seamless integration into Chat Desk gives travel brands the ability to securely offer and accept payments in business messages. Travelers receive a payment link and effortlessly complete the payment through a checkout page on their mobile phones. The functionality is so easy brands simply switch it on and manage this new capability.

“Traveling has become such a different experience in the post-pandemic world, and nothing is more frustrating than an inconvenient customer service experience,” said Pieter de Villiers, CEO and Co-Founder at Clickatell. 

“By reaching your customer where they already are in messaging channels, rather than making them download or maintain a mobile app, travelers can instantly connect with your company and get support through their chat app of choice. Especially in the travel industry, a personalized and frictionless customer service and engagement strategy is important – if not more important – than the sale itself.

“Considering 87% of consumers prefer to use mobile messaging to communicate with travel companies especially on the day of their travel, according to our Chat Commerce Trends Report on Travel, travel brands providing personal and timely communications in SMS and popular chat apps will help their customers get the most out of their trips and drive satisfaction,” added de Villiers.

The launch of the USSD channel for Clickatell’s eNaira Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is part of the country’s drive to make basic banking accessible to all Nigerians, ultimately driving financial inclusion.

The eNaira was launched in October 2021 when the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari, said Africa’s first central bank-backed digital currency would help boost remittances, foster cross-border trade, and help his government make welfare payments more easily. 

With financial inclusion at the heart of the eNaira goals, President Buhari also said that he believed the CBDC would increase GDP in the country by $29 billion over the next 10 years.

“Introducing the USSD short code allows non-banked Nigerians, many of whom do not have smartphones, to access cashless banking services and is a big win for the stated goals of delivering meaningful financial inclusion. Clickatell’s role in making this a reality has been one of the most important achievements of our engagements in Nigeria,” comments Uzo Nwani, Clickatell Commercial Director, West Africa.

The new USSD channel allows Nigerians using the *997# short code to create their eNaira wallet. Once this is done, they can easily check balances and transfer funds, as well as safely buy airtime or data for themselves or friends and family. Safeguarding their wallets is also easy on the channel and users can check and update their information, change and reset their pin, or even block the wallet if necessary.

“The USSD channel is a vital part of our journey towards realising our financial inclusion vision. We see the eNaira as a leap forward in the evolution of money. Thus, CBN is working with partners who are committed to taking advantage of this new technology for continuous innovation towards delivering exciting new features,” comments the CBN Deputy Governor Economic Policy, Dr. Kingsley Obiora.

Unstructured Supplementary Service Data or USSD, is a communications protocol that is supported by 99% of GSM handsets. It remains particularly relevant in developing communities where it is used to provide services at a much lower cost and can be used without requiring access to the user’s SIM card.

Despite the rapid growth of smartphones, the majority of Nigerians are currently using feature phones, making an excellent case for the USSD offering. The CBN is counting on the new channel making rapid inroads towards getting most of the 30% of unbanked Nigerians into the formal banking system.     

As part of its efforts, the CBN is working hard to boost awareness and education around the new digital currency and has offered an incentive of 200eNGN airtime for the first 100,000 users to onboard using the eNaira USSD feature.

Looking ahead, Nwani says the Clickatell solution ideally positions the system for new and collaborative additions to help boost the eNaira services.

“Our Chat Flow product provides a robust platform to support rapid innovation. Digital currencies provide measurable customer benefits including lower costs and a simple user experience and adding new innovative features over time will definitely attract more customers. There is no doubt that the CBN has set the benchmark when it comes to financial inclusion in Africa, and we look forward to being part of that journey,” Nwani says.