“As more consumers turn to messaging apps such as WhatsApp and widespread adoption of voice-activated platforms like Alexa takes place, businesses need to be able to engage them in a manner that pre-empts their needs,” said Mr Sweeney. The two companies have teamed up to introduce a new conversational messaging hotel-booking bot known as Dorothy, that lets customers find, book, pay and start planning their stay. Mr Sweeney said 45 trillion messages are now being sent via messaging platforms with more than 60 billion messages sent per day over Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp alone. This he said showed the move to messaging was afoot with “big consequences” for retailer and service providers. Two billion messages are sent between customers and companies and being able to turn messages into conversations will pay dividends,” said Mr Sweeney.

Source: The Irish Times February 15, 2018 07:25 UTC