MessageBird is the Amsterdam-headquartered cloud communications platform. Europe’s Atomico and Accel in the United States back up MessageBird. The platform is unveiling another new product today. This time it aims at the $350 billion customer service market.
Positioned as Slack for extraneous communications and dubbed inbox.ai, the new product – which is to be offered mostly for free – it is enabling customers to communicate with businesses with the help of practically any channel of their choosing. That includes Telegram, Line, RC, Apple Business Chat, WeChat, Instagram, Messenger, Voice, SMS, and WhatsApp. It is bid to meet customers on their own digital, messaging-first turf. In terms of message content, at lunch, there is already support for geolocation, video, images, text, and more.
Regardless of channel, and perhaps crucially, customer conversations and incoming messages are available in a single thread. It is for collaboration and secure ticketing amongst support agents. Also, there is some built-in intelligence. Artificial intelligence is promising to anticipate customer needs and analyze keywords, including providing a list of suggested replies. Agents can also drag and drop components for creating auto-replies. Moreover, there is also support for thinks like automated NPS surveys, or rules for message routing.
The company has primarily targeted developers. Thus, Inbox.ai leverages webhooks for the integration of various third-party tools used by enterprises. It also comes pre-loaded with support for Jira, Salesforce, Slack, Shopify, and more. That includes the ability to have content created within the Inbox. Ai synced with other companies used software for various sales, communication, and other business processes. Even over time, and for some companies, Inbox.ai might become all they need.
MessageBird and Inbox.ai
Robert Vis is the MessageBird founder and CEO. In a video call, he showed how quickly the onboarding process might be for a new business but also for a new customer.
Vis also explained that the impetus for the new offering was his frustration with customer support companies in general. He said it is for the companies in general who could not adapt to the modern world where customers expect to have their issues solved digitally. And where it’s a no longer good tune to queue for hours on hold or wait 24 hours or more for an email reply.
The Inbox.ai is willing to solve the support problem continuity that usually sees customers having to re-explain their issue each time a different department or support agent takes them.
After recalling a recent bad experience with his mobile telephone service provider, Vis says rhetorically that from a MessageBird perspective, they built those APIs and people (already capable of creating those experiences). He says that he wants to live in a world where he can’t text and have his problems are easily solved.
MessageBird is betting on its first user-facing product, rather than merely providing developer hooks and carrying out the infrastructure heavy-lifting.
Vis also said that the MessageBird team developed Inbox.ai in 12 months. Afterward came, extensive research with managers, support agents, and customers. The software passed many tests, and currently, companies like Deliveroo and HelloFresh in Europe, Tix Telecom, and Join Buggy in Latin America and Zilingo in Asia are using them.
