This article has been updated on 19 July 2022.

With over 5 billion monthly users across the globe, it goes without saying that businesses must integrate chat apps into their communication strategies. But, the multitude of available chat tools can make it hard to choose the best chat apps to meet your needs. You’ll find many chat apps in the market with distinct features to meet almost every digital need. Some chat apps allow you to share content and watch movies; others let you send your location and even order food.

Let’s take a quick look at six amazing chat apps and how they can help your enterprise meet its objectives.

1. Facebook Messenger

Messenger has approximately 1.3 billion users monthly. This large user base is boosted by its attractive design and simple interface. With this chat app’s proficiency in linking people, it can enable you to connect with customers worldwide.

Furthermore, if you are not available to chat with customers on Messenger in real-time, you can consider using a chatbot, and with good reason — research shows that 47% of shoppers are open to buying from chatbots. In fact, this number is projected to rapidly increase with time.

2. WeChat

This tool provides instant messaging, chat, video calls, and voice chats. Indeed, it’s more than a messaging app and allows users to make calls, read the latest news, make payments, and play games. With over one billion users, businesses can leverage this huge user base. Thus, helping you to connect with customers through forums, create chat groups, share locations, send product release updates, and post business-related photos, videos, and text.

3. KakaoTalk

KakaoTalk is synonymous with South Korean living - over 97.5% of the population uses KakaoTalk, with over 46 million monthly active users. But KakaoTalk’s prowess isn’t just about its massive user numbers.

Kakao, the homegrown tech conglomerate behind KakaoTalk, is deeply entrenched in all aspects of South Korean life. From the day-to-day services like transportation and banking to a wide range of audio and visual entertainment, Kakao caters to a diverse online mosaic of audience demographics with virtually every interest under the sun. This makes the Kakao brand—and by extension the KakaoTalk platform—inseparable from South Koreans’ lifestyle.

4. WhatsApp Business

Did you know that 65 billion messages are sent on WhatsApp every day? Using WhatsApp for your business can potentially link you to a significant portion of its 1.5 billion monthly users. WhatsApp has an app for businesses commonly referred to as WhatsApp Business that allows enterprises to connect with their customers. With WhatsApp Business, you can deliver essential messages to customers and offer customer support.

What’s more, your business can use the WhatsApp status feature to promote your products and services, along with limited time offers, annual sales, and reminders for events. Approximately 500 million people use the status feature daily, and thus, your business can get substantial exposure. You can also create WhatsApp groups to get feedback on your products and notify customers of offers and discounts.

5. Viber

With over 1 billion users worldwide, Viber is a good chat app for your business—allowing you to text, call, and open group chats with your customers. Plus, you can also start a Viber community with your customers and prospects. Among the most attractive features of Viber is that its usage is not confined to a smartphone; you can use it on your desktop and tablet.

6. Zalo

Zalo is a market-leading messaging app with 35 million users. This messaging app has incredible features to make your business communications seamless. You can chat with your customers, send voice messages, and create groups.

Choosing the Right Chat App

Forget about the days when SMS was the standard way to send mobile messages. These days, you can send messages using chat apps like Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Viber, and WhatsApp, to mention a few. Every channel has its unique features, regulations, and keys.

As a business, you must choose the channels that meet your needs and easily reach your target market. The chat apps you choose must meet the following criteria:

  • Carry the data you want to share; text, images, videos, and navigational directions.
  • Reach the intended audience. For example, you should use WeChat in Japan, not Europe.
  • Use the platforms your customers prefer and are relevant to them. Importantly, ensure you evaluate your business needs to determine the channel that meets them.

Let’s face it. There is no one-size-fits-all chat app. For instance, you cannot choose WhatsApp as your sole chat app. This is mainly because there are people who still don’t have a smartphone and internet connectivity. You need more than one chat app to reach a significant portion of your audience. Also, when you expand your business or move to another geographical area, you may need multiple chat apps.

However, managing numerous chat apps can be daunting and overwhelming. You need to switch from one app to another to communicate with all of your customers at all points of their customer journey. 8x8 Connect comes in handy to ease your burden. As such, the contact center platform provides the front end to have 2-way communications with your customers. By allowing you to use one API to connect to multiple chat app channels—using a single API for chat apps reduces the time you spend sending notifications and content to your customers and prospects.

Bottom line

The messaging app marketing world is still in its infancy. As such, it’s relatively challenging to find tried and tested techniques for using chat apps. Therefore, the best way to approach these apps is to experiment. Ultimately, you should identify an ideal Chat App that works for your business. Read our ebook to gain more tips or contact us for a demo at hello-cpaas@8x8.com.