Clickatell retools its chatbots for the era of ‘AI commerce’

November 10, 2023 Siyabonga Mtangana

Clickatell CEO Pieter de Villiers

South Africa’s Clickatell, a pioneer in “chat commerce”, has launched artificial intelligence tools to create “personalised conversations”.

Clickatell AI uses natural-language processing to grasp the purpose of customer inquiries, along with generative AI to provide meaningful and valuable interactions.

Integrated within the chat commerce platform, individuals can engage in live chats with Clickatell AI, while businesses can equip their agents with AI-generated responses through a user-friendly agent desk interface.

Company CEO and co-founder Pieter de Villiers said one of the most important features of AI in its chat conversations is it makes a customer’s entire data records available.

“We have moved on now to what is more ‘contextual commerce’,” he said. “Say, for instance, you want to ask FlySafair for a record of your last 10 trips for expense purposes. There is no need to compute them manually and painstakingly – all you have to do is write a sentence and the answer will come up.”

Clickatell’s solution is text based, rather than using audio engines like Apple’s Siri. “Our version is text input because it serves our target market – busy customers – and text also gives structured data orders of magnitude greater accuracy.

“We have been through three stages of e-commerce: internet, then app commerce and now we’re going into the third wave: AI commerce,” De Villiers said.

Real time

He said the natural-language model used by Clickatell allows customers to ask questions relevant to their circumstances. The conversational AI solution can be applied to businesses across sectors, including retail, travel, airlines, hospitality, telecommunications, financial services, automotive and education, using AI to automate conversations on mobile messaging channels.

The Clickatell AI learns in real time, naturally improving the quality of the customer engagement while reducing the time and effort required for manual bot programming.

Read: Clickatell secures R1.4-billion in new funding round

It also promises cost savings: the AI “eliminates” expensive developer hours traditionally required for manual bot programming. It should also drive up conversions and revenue – serving more customers at scale with personalised, automated responses. Better insights and analytics are also possible, it said, allowing businesses to anticipate customer needs and predict issues, offering personalised support and improving customer satisfaction scores.

For consumers, the technology promises more accurate, rapid and personalised responses. It also “improves the shopping experience”, offering “personalised product recommendations and streamlined processes”.