Disrupted Phone Call by Chat App

Taken from "Chat apps are extinguishing phone calls"

Annual time spent on mobile calls in the UK fell year-over-year (YoY) for the first time, according to report by UK telecommunications regulatory authority Ofcom. Total mobile call volumes dropped by 2.5 billion minutes (1.7%) last year to 149 billion, down from 151 billion in 2016.

The British regulator attributes the downtick in time consumers spend making phone calls to the rising popularity of mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp and Snapchat.

It's likely this slump will continue as the consumer shift to chat apps swells:

• The chat app consumer base is massive and growing. It's estimated that 1.8 billion people worldwide regularly used such apps by the end of 2017, up almost 16% from 2016, according to eMarketer.
• And chat app users are highly active. For instance, 57% of consumers in the UK were active social chat users on mobile in January 2018, which is up 3% annually. Moreover, Android users in the UK spend 25% of their mobile time in chat apps.
• This shift in consumer behavior is impacting the way consumers want to interact with businesses. 54% of consumers already prefer using social messaging channels for customer engagement over legacy channels like phone and email, and 59% of consumers would rather go through additional channels to contact brands just to avoid having to use their voice to communicate.

As chat apps continue to replace legacy channels of communication, they will present a growing opportunity for brands. For businesses looking to increase engagement with customers, improve retention, and boost sales, it's important to shift focus to where customers are already spending a good chunk of their time.

Chat apps provide tools to help businesses target consumers, automate certain communications to enable immediate response times, and simplify the process of entering payment information to complete a purchase. WhatsApp, for example, launched WhatsApp Business API last week, which is a tool that enables larger enterprises to send customers non-promotional notifications like flight delays or appointment confirmations.