Appier (TSE: 4180) today announced the launch of BotBonnie, an omnichannel conversational marketing platform, boosting Appier’s suite of AI-powered solutions that are designed to help customers intelligently navigate the complex customer journey on messenger services. The launch today marks Appier’s debut in the conversational commerce and marketing space, a move that is in line with their customer-centric approach to full-funnel marketing strategy. BotBonnie is available across the Asia Pacific markets in English, Japanese and Traditional Chinese.
According to Gartner1, customer loyalty is created when businesses help customers solve their problems, but at the same time, customer service interactions are nearly four times more likely to lead to disloyalty than loyalty. Gartner cites the deployment of chatbots as one strategy to increase digital containment where customers can self-serve to solve their issues i.e. freeing up customer service agent’s time to work on solving priority issues for customers. An omnichannel chatbot platform like BotBonnie is adept at identifying marketing scenarios and offers great flexibility for customers to implement their chat solutions in one stop across multiple messaging channels, so businesses can boost sales and build customer loyalty.
By adding BotBonnie to Appier’s suite of AI-powered solutions, Appier customers can benefit from the full strength of an AI-informed platform and analytics to navigate the entire customer journey seamlessly across offline and online environments. Data enrichment from conversational data analysis can contribute to the learning capabilities of AI models and enable more robust predictions of customer behavior and take personalized services to the next level.
In addition, BotBonnie can foster Appier’s product synergy from user prospecting and acquiring, retention, and engagement to the transaction. By leveraging conversational AI chatbot, customers can identify and retarget high LTV customers through CrossX advertising solutions, then direct customers to the social media channels like Facebook Messenger, LINE, and even Google Business Messages to continue automatic customer engagement. By analyzing customers’ interactions, AIQUA can trigger personalized web/app pushes or AiDEAL can deliver suitable coupons to convert new users to customers.
Furthermore, conversational data analysis allows companies to better understand customer trends and adjust the level of personalization at every touchpoint. For instance, customers can benefit from the conversational unstructured data utilized by AIXON, Appier’s data science platform to generate valuable business insights and enhance prediction accuracy.
Conversational commerce is a global phenomenon on the rise as total spending over conversational commerce channels will reach $290 billion by 2025 globally; rising from $41 billion in 2021. This is a 590% increase over the next four years. The entire sales process, from product discovery to checkout, can be handled by chatbots2. Gartner3 predicts that by 2023, 40% of enterprise applications will have embedded conversational AI from below 5% today. BotBonnie’s expertise in FMCG, chain store, finance, education, automobile and e-commerce will further speed up Appier’s customer expansion.
“Customers have fueled the growth of commerce in Asia as the pandemic continues to loom over this region the past year and a half. Retailers and eCommerce brands have contributed to the maturity of conversational commerce, and AI chatbots can lead to more natural interactions for customers to engage with commerce on messengers,” said Chih-Han Yu, CEO, and co-founder of Appier. “Adding BotBonnie to our product lineup of AI solutions lets us extend our capability to messenger engagement and our customers can tackle all aspects of the customer journey in one-stop with Appier. Businesses looking to thrive in the new normal have to embrace the customer-centric approach and hop on the conversational marketing train because it has the power to turn a customer into a returning, loyal customer.”
“There is so much synergy between BotBonnie and Appier, and today’s launch will truly bring the complete omnichannel experience for our customers to achieve hyper-personalized experiences across the entire customer journey from offline to online,” added Roy Lo, CEO and co-founder of BotBonnie. “Joining Appier enables BotBonnie to expand our services to the world. Combining Appier’s strong AI and data analysis capabilities with BotBonnie’s experience in conversational commerce, I believe our products will really bring to life the power of conversational marketing to our customers in the Asia Pacific and help them succeed and thrive in the new normal.”
Following today’s closing of the acquisition of BotBonnie, their employees will now formally be Appier employees and continue their operations under Appier. CEO Roy Lo, will continue his role to lead the BotBonnie team, partnering with the team at Appier to bring greater alignment and synergy to all customers.
1 Improve customer experience to gain loyalty
2 How conversational commerce will make its voice heard
3 Emerging Technologies: Tech Innovators in Conversational AI and Virtual Assistants
