Page 8 - AeM_June_2017

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Messenger services – opportunity or

digital security risk?

With more than a billion users worldwide, Whatsapp is luggage service or other concerns; and even banks are
one of the great success stories of our digital era In Asia, now asking their customers questions via Whatsapp:
the mainly privately used messenger service is particular
popular in Malaysia, but also Indonesia and India, ac- A QR code on the website animates for scanning, then
cording to statistica. Frankly speaking, there is hardly the contact information go into the address book of the
anyone who doesn’t have Whatsapp on the smartphone mobile phone and the Whatsapp Q & A session can
to chat for free or sending videos or pictures to friends. begin.
But in the future, companies will also be more likely to
rely on the channel that belongs to Facebook since 2014 Data protection concerns and the lack of end-to-end
who bought it for staggering US$19 billion. encryption are often taking a back seat then, especially
when considering that dialogues can be stored in
Internet telephony can transfer names, customer data or Whatsapp and a seamless continuation of the conver-
the reason for a call, and at the same time do the verifi- sation is possible even after days and weeks. There is
cation with the customer data bank, if companies con- a lot of rumor and suspicion, though, that it is possible
nect their computer systems to those of Whatsapp, when to bypass encryption on popular messaging apps - in-
appropriate interfaces (APIs) are established, which will cluding WhatsApp – as WikiLeaks documents released
happen soon. However, using such a service for custom- in March this year.
er service sounds both exciting and volatile. After all, the
widespread and extremely popular Whatsapp would ex- Anyway, an optimal usability and provision of evalua-
tend the SMS, which was once a random product of mo- tion and control functions are always necessary, as well
bile telephony providers, to social media components as a consistent instant messaging and chat strategy
and group functions across all age classes. since customers like to change channels depending on
the situation.
In any case, Whatsapp already found its way into the call So far, Whatsapp seems to be a lone wolf in using
centers of the corporate landscape: For example, Zalan- messenger in customer service, but competitors are of
do staffs its "Zalon Chat" with over 100 fashion consult- course already on the starting blocks, such as Threema
ants daily from 9 am and 6 pm; hotels already use or Smoope. The latter has developed e.g. a "secure"
Whatsapp to communicate directly with individual guests messenger specifically for mobile customer service, but
and answer their questions about their stay, bookings, like Threema, Smoope has still a long way ahead to
8 June 2017 - Mobile Marketing & Apps