Messaging as a real opportunity for companies

Messenger can be an effective and profitable tool in customer communication. Messenger expert Matthias Mehner explains in the t3n podcast what it takes and why small and medium-sized companies in particular can benefit.

The expert’s advice can be summed up: “Just do it, but just do it.” The expert is Matthias Mehner and his advice goes to companies that are thinking about using Messenger for customer communication.

Mehner is the managing director and CMO at Messengerpeople. The Munich-based company is considered a pioneer for the professional use of messaging platforms in German-speaking countries and had big news to announce itself last week. Messengerpeople has been part of Sinch AB, an international group with more than 2,300 employees, since September. The Swedes have taken 48 million euros into their hands for this. At t3n, Mehner explains what opportunities there are in the change and what the strategy behind it looks like.

The story of Messengerpeople, formerly Whatsbroadcast, is also a story of transformation. The startup, founded in 2015, started a few years ago with a solution for Whatsapp newsletters. Almost all relevant media in German-speaking countries used the service – until Whatsapp simply banned the newsletters at the end of 2019 and thus pulled the plug on the solution.

Messengerpeople had to change the core of its business model, offer customers new opportunities. According to Matthias Mehner, the decisive factor here was the wish of many customers to be able to use WhatsApp and other messengers as an actual communication channel to the target groups.

Since then, messengers have developed into a kind of Swiss army knife in customer dialogue. In the meantime, for example, the use of messengers in HR has been added to classic customer service.

Another function is central, however. “The big core revolves around buying,” says Matthias Mehner. “From my point of view, that is also the most exciting topic. Bringing advice and sales into the digital age is what Whatsapp is for, and messengers are the right channel for that. ”Mehner also sees the great future of messaging in this area as a whole. From his point of view, small and medium-sized companies in particular have very good opportunities here.

Basically, from the messenger expert’s point of view, there is in principle only one real basic requirement for the start: “The company must really want to talk to its customers.”

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