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Conversational messaging is paving the way for businesses to improve user engagement and experience, as well as, generate growth by allowing consumers to easily interact with their favourite brands and achieve their buying goals.

Consider these statistics -

175 million consumers use WhatsApp Business message platform every day on average (Source: WhatsApp)

50% of businesses are planning to spend on chatbots over mobile apps (Source: Gartner)

We do have Google Business Messages, a mobile conversational channel that combines entry points on Google Maps, Search, and brand websites to create rich, asynchronous messaging experiences that delight customers and drive business results. We expect that, consumers will be able to find Business Messages on Android, including within the apps and during calls.

The rise of digital natives has increased the demand for conversational messaging in all aspects of business, from discovery to support. Millennials & Gen Z prefer natural language conversations on chat as compared to one-way conversations from a brand. We spoke to our in-house technical expert Sruthy from Engineering & QA team at Tanla on the conversational messaging platform. She shared insights on technical aspects of working on conversational platforms. She has been working on the Konverse platform which is a conversation platform that has multiple features to create flows and bots. Which is integrated with different channels like WhatsApp, Google RCS and web-bot. She works closely with field, product, QA, and the system engineering teams to ensure quality of delivery.

Sruthy takes us through the developer’s perspective on conversational messaging:

Conversational Platform: A medium or a platform that simulates human natural conversation using chatbots, voice assistants, or conversational applications. This platform processes the inputs and helps the system to understand to provide response to humans.

Chatbot: A chatbot application uses series built-in programs to converse with human users. It can use conversational AI or automation based on the user's application and requirement. In simple words, chatbots are broad category of conversational technology which are categorised as rule-based chatbot, AI chatbot, etc.

Rule-based chatbot with Conversational AI

Rule-based chatbots are commonly referred to as decision tree bots which use a series of predefined rules on the basis of problem type and provide corresponding response. It anticipates customers questions and responds accordingly; it can be simple or it can have very complex rules in processing the answer. A major advantage of this platform is that it will answer any question out of the defined rules as it is integrated with Natural Language Processing (NLP). It works purely on the basis of different scenarios which have been fed into the process. 

Conversation using Rich Messaging platform

Rich messaging platform provides sophisticated way of smart and high-quality customer experiences via mobile devices. It has better features then traditional texting platform such as media messages which includes image, documents, video, audio, location and calls-to-action (CTAs) like dial number and open URL.

Konverse Platform 

Platform which provides users to create rule-based chatbot with knowledge base integration to handle undefined rules based on user preference.

An interactive flow designer to handle FAQ, with an option to build predefined menu options for self-care, provides support for third party application integration, has built-in information capture for service execution, supports business process automation, is integrated with Live agent chat feature and supports multi-lingual and rich media attachment support.

Conversational Journey at Tanla

My journey with Tanla over the past 5 years has been in the field of product development. Tanla has provided me lot of opportunities to research, learn, and implement ideas. I was able to leverage my skills, knowledge in this organization with supportive management. I am happy to be working with a pool of talents from product, engineering and QA teams.

As a newbie to the messaging platform, I faced initial challenges in understanding the requirements. However, the organization has provided me with the required support to overcome challenges and hurdles. As time progressed, I gained knowledge on how the messaging platform works.

My organization has been recognizing my work and supporting me in all aspects. We gradually started building our team and developed a complete product with a combination of both GUI and back-end. I am currently working with my Director of Engineering to solve complex scaling challenges, and we are happy to see a better version of the product today and grateful for this opportunity towards my contribution in conversational offerings for Tanla.

We have exciting opportunities for those who are interested to be a part of Tanla and wish to explore their skills on these platforms.

If you prefer to be part of this journey and looking to learn latest tech platforms, join us: https://www.tanla.com/careers.html