Conversational Messaging Podcast by Gupshup

In today’s episode of the Conversational Messaging Podcast, Gupshup’s Product Head of Conversational AI, Niyati Agarwal joins Srini to discuss how smart social media bots can bring your brand closer to consumers. Tune in to find out about how this strategy builds customer loyalty, increases sales, and even becomes a marketing tool for your brand! 

Engaging to Consumers Online

Social media is so widely used these days that it has become an outlet for thousands of annoyed (sometimes satisfied) customers. When consumers are unhappy with a product, they tend to voice out their concerns online, the same way they leave positive reviews online when they feel otherwise. Hence, now is the perfect time for brands to incorporate social media bots and automation in their online engagement with consumers. 

“You allow that platform on a private channel to voice out the same kind of concerns that he or she might have done on a public channel.” - Niyati Agarwal

Getting Your Customers’ Loyalty

Social media bots and automation allow consumers to be heard instantly—not thirty minutes or an hour after their feedback, but instantly. This should greatly impact how consumers feel; a very mad customer can at least be turned into a neutral one. The goal is instead of having actual people to monitor this pile of public consumer feedback, which is almost impossible, customers can privately reach out to smart social media bots and be presented with a deal, offer, or resolution that would leave them satisfied and with a renewed loyalty for the brand. 

“You're not able to just handle the negative situations, you're able to handle the positive sentiments of such people. And you're creating a strategy that includes the overall engagement of your users.”  - Niyati Agarwal

Smart Social Media Bots

What brands need to keep in mind is that the success of social media bots depends on how deep the context bots can perceive. If the bot is programmed right and is smart enough to determine what a consumer needs, a consumer who is simply engaging online to leave feedback can be led to making another purchase. Social media bots can definitely establish a deeper connection between brands and consumers that is beneficial for both sides in the long run. 

“I think this is a solution that can really bring brands and followers closer, which is what conversational messaging does.” - Srinivas Vijayaraghavan

To know more about Improving Your Online Reputation Management with Social Media Bots, listen to this episode.

Bio:

Niyati Agarwal

Gupshup’s Product Management Head for AI

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io

In today’s episode of the Gupshup Conversational Messaging Podcast, Beerud and Srini welcome guest Pratekk Agarwaal, an experienced financial advisor of FinTech companies.  They discuss how the integration of messaging to FinTech services is an absolute win not only for the brands, but more importantly, for the consumers. 

Customers’ Habits Evolved

Customers are long done with downloading dozens of apps that serve different purposes. Their needs and habits have changed to being able to do all online activities at once, including finance, regardless if it’s through WhatsApp, or anything they use for messaging. Therefore, FinTech services, being one of the most powerful industries in the digitised era, needs to move forward along with its consumers. 

“Since 10 years ago, there have been multiple things which have changed and everything which had to have a physical presence is now converted, or it's now changed into a digital way.” - Pratekk Agarwaal

Who Stands Out

As FinTech has grown massively, many brands appeared left and right, with varied things to offer to customers. Some would offer great user interface or great user experience, while some would entice customers with great interest rates. For Pratekk, when the competition is tight, that’s where customer experience comes into play, as the brand that offers the most seamless and satisfying experience gains the highest customer loyalty. 

“We are now wanting to build and start asking for where it's more personalized and it's focused on customer experience, and it's transactional level banking.”  - Pratekk Agarwaal

What Satisfies Customers

It’s an absolute win for FinTech to offer their services through a messaging app instead of going through the complex, not to mention expensive, the process of building a separate app. From the customers’ perspective, on the other hand, these apps are painful, time-consuming, and outdated. Pratekk believes that the integration of conversational messaging in FinTech services is what would bring customers exactly what they need, which would have countless returns for the brands. Less complex processes means more customers will buy insurance, open a savings account, get a personal loan, etc. 

“I think the moment we start introducing these features, and people start using them, you will see an immediate adoption and immediate movement from app to appless FinTech.”  - Pratekk Agarwaal

Bio:

Pratekk Agarwaal is a passionate intrapreneur and Fintech expert with over 18 years of multi-industry expertise in setting up successful businesses from scratch to scale with focus on the financial services domain. He held key positions with leading Fintech and NBFCs like Bajaj Finserv/Bajaj Finance, Fullerton, Selfin, IndoStar Capital, ftcash, and BharatPe. 

Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 100K+ customers and developers and handles over 6 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io

In today’s episode of the Gupshup Conversational Messaging Podcast, Beerud and Srini discuss how the Instagram messenger API can be the game-changer for everyone involved—for the brands, consumers, influencers, etc. Tune in to learn about how to make use of Instagram for your brands marketing, commerce, and support. 

The Instagram We Love

Instagram is a powerful social media platform that has hundreds of millions of users. It enables its messenger API to present countless opportunities not only for brands but also for consumers. Automated chats through Instagram direct message (DM) gave way for businesses to increase their interaction with consumers and for influencers with their followers. The converging of social media (public) and conversational messaging (private), according to Beerud, made a lot of impact on how brands operate.

“There are things you want to say publicly, and there are things that have to be done privately. If you can do both in a seamless manner, I think that can have some dramatic impact.” - Beerud Sheth

Making the Experience Personal

Beerud thinks that this automation, if done right, could be a rich experience for consumers, brands, and influencers. For example, through trained AI or smart bot, consumers can DM their favorite influencers/celebrities and get an "authentic" response. Influencers, which are on the other end of the spectrum, can monetize from increased engagement, partnership with brands, or by simply using the feature however they like. 

"You can ask what you're interested in, and they will answer. It really changes the whole thing, it gives a very personal, intimate experience.” - Beerud Sheth

Everything in One Go

The Instagram messenger API is an all-encompassing capability that can help with brands’ marketing, selling, and support.  The platform can now be used to cater to all concerns, starting from the announcement, deals, launches to the selling itself, up until resolving customer issues such as cancellations, returns, etc. 

However, Beerud notes that aside from Instagram, there are other channels (WhatsApp, etc,) that brands can use aside from Instagram, so make sure to check those for consumers to have as many options as possible when connecting to brands. 

“It just dramatically transforms a brand, a business or an influencer's ability to engage their fans, followers, and customers.” - Beerud Sheth

Bio:

Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 100K+ customers and developers and handles over 6 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.

Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io

In today’s episode of the Gupshup Conversational Messaging Podcast, Beerud and Srini discuss how incorporating conversational messaging in the payment collection process can work in favor, not only of the consumers but also the business. Listen as they talk about why this matters, how it works, and how to get started.

Less Painful Payments 

The payment process nowadays, despite the online option being made available for so long, is still inconvenient for consumers. More often than not, consumers’ lack of easy and customer-friendly payment options leads to late payments that may result in not only bad consumer experience (i.e. incurring late fees, experiencing service interruption, etc.) but also lower collection rates, longer collection cycles, and lower cash flow for businesses. Beerud thinks we can end this pain both from the businesses and consumers’ perspective by making the payment process conversational and interactive, but still efficient. 

“Payments are critical, but the process today is incredibly inefficient.” - Beerud Sheth

The One-Click Process

Beerud talks about how we can revolutionize the payment process by simplifying the traditional ten-click process to a one-click process. This means that instead of the consumers having to do a series of steps and processes just to complete a payment (which may need extra time), they just have to click a link and authorize (may be a fingerprint, pin, or however the consumers set their security settings) their payments. Consumers can now stop worrying about late fees or anything else, as they can do their payments anytime, anywhere.

“The goal is to make every message meaningful, interactive, actionable, and conversational to accomplish the purpose.” - Beerud Sheth

The High Returns

Beerud believes that it’s now time for businesses to start transforming their payment process. It’s not complicated at all—Gupshup can do all the work. This is an investment that requires zero effort from the businesses and consumers but with an incredibly high return. 

“We've done some extensive training, we have very rich datasets to train our AI to figure out reliably. Because you can't have errors in something as important as this.” - Beerud Sheth

To know more about Conversational Messaging for Payments and for more information about Beerud Sheth and Srinivas B Vijayaraghavan, listen to this episode.

Bio:

Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 100K+ customers and developers and handles over 6 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.

Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io

In today’s episode of the Conversational Messaging Podcast, Product Head of Conversational AI, Niyati Agarwal joins Beerud and Srini to discuss how Conversational AI technology changes the course of brand interaction with consumers. Tune in to know how Conversational AI impacts your brand reputation, reduces your manpower’s effort, and optimises your business costs. 

The “Magic” of Conversational AI Technology

Conversational AI technology is ideal whether you want to have an unstructured (free style) or structured (straightforward) communication with consumers. Through natural language understanding (NLP), AI understands the intent of consumers’ query and provides the right responses. With advanced techniques, AI can solve even the most complex queries no matter how complicated consumers phrase them, which can ultimately have a positive impact on the brands’ reputation. 

“You take 10 people, and they'll have 10 different ways of asking the same question. That's where you need artificial intelligence. You need this field called natural language processing to understand the user query.” - Beerud Sheth

The Evolution of Conversational AI Technology

Niyati points out that AI uses “reactive” and “proactive” techniques. Aside from the expected resolution, AI also offers other recommendations based on the consumers’ history. These techniques prompt the incorporation of AI to other business processes like marketing, human resources, ITSM, and such. Conversational AI technology is a good space to explore, as its concepts and channels continue to evolve in a way that greatly reduces the efforts of not only the consumers but also the brands. 

“We are trying to not replace humans. We are trying to have a more human-like conversation that has the power of automation and intelligence a machine could have.” - Niyati Agarwal

The Ease of Conversational AI Technology

The demand for Conversational AI technology rapidly increases, so small brands should not be hesitant to explore and tap companies who specialise on this type of technology. Companies like Gupshup put everything together by providing pre-defined industry templates and other tools you’ll need in automating your consumer interactions. Beerud sees a great development in Conversational AI technology’s human style mimicry, and he expects many brands to have their own “Alexa” in the next few years. 

“We are automating them, and we are providing tools, so that this becomes a mundane task for you. It becomes something which you do not need to go to your IT team to implement.”  - Niyati Agarwal

To know more about The Power of Conversational AI Technology, listen to this episode. 

Bio:

Niyati Agarwal 

Product Management Head for AI

Resources:

Gupshup.io

Gupshup Conversational AI

In today’s episode of the Conversational Messaging Podcast, Gupshup’s Beerud and Srini discuss the inevitable demand for customer support with the rise of social media. They explore how shifting from traditional call centers to automated customer support is the smartest and most cost-efficient way to make consumers happy. 

The Common Mistake of Most Businesses

 Although customer support is one of the most critical aspects of a business, it often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Most businesses compromise customer service because they think that it’s an expensive investment. Beerud believes that with conversational technology, quality customer support becomes cost-efficient as it can handle peak demand but requires little manpower. 

 “Using conversation technology is the best way to break that false choice. You can have great and high-quality customer support, and do it at an affordable cost.” - Beerud Sheth

Always Prioritize What Makes Consumers Happy

Now is the time for businesses to adapt to conversational technologies to interact with consumers. It’s easier for consumers to interact with brands using the very channels they use to interact with their families and friends. Shifting from traditional call centers to automated customer support can positively impact customer experience, leading to improved customer loyalty. 

“Ultimately, the only reality is the customer reality. The way that customers experience your company, your business, your interactions, is what matters. If they have a difficult time doing business with a company, if it’s challenging, they'll go find somebody else that they can do business with.” - Beerud Sheth

Always Go for the Smartest Solution

Conversational technology is easy to incorporate in customer support because of the simple type of questions. Through AI, Beerud proposes to create a chatbot that understands structured queries, unstructured queries, or a combination of both. For everyone’s satisfaction, human agents can handle the most complicated ones, those the bot can’t resolve, making the solutions inclusive to all types of queries. 

“It depends on the specific business, the brand, their consumers, the nature of the product, the complexity of the conversation, and so on. There's a lot of different ways to slice and dice this problem. There's no question that taking this approach is indeed the right way to automate customer support.” - Beerud Sheth

To know more about Conversational Technology in Customer Support, listen to this episode.

Bio:

Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 100K+ customers and developers and handles over 6 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.

Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io

In today’s episode,  Beerud and Srini discuss how marketing evolved with the infusion of technology. Together, they talk about the evolution of marketing from offline to digital, and now, conversational. Find out why conversational marketing is the best for your brand.

Conversational Marketing Appeals To Intimacy

What makes conversational marketing better than offline and digital marketing is its ability to appeal to consumers’ intimacy and relationship with the brand. Conversational marketing can make the consumers’ experience highly personalized as they are talking to someone who knows them by their names, styles, preferences, and dislikes. The best thing about it is it doesn’t cost that much to invest in, as it can be tied to the brand’s existing marketing campaigns. 

“In conversational marketing, you know the person, so that changes a lot of things. It can be a highly personalized and very textual interaction.” - Beerud Sheth

Conversational Marketing Personalizes Consumers’ Experience

For most brands, having personal “shopping assistants” is only available for VIPs and premium-type of consumers who shop. However, with conversational marketing, it becomes possible for everyone to get their own shopping assistant/concierge/partner/helper that would be helpful in making valuable decisions for each purchase, only with the use of their smartphones. Beerud compares this level of experience with notable brands like Nordstrom and Zappos, which are both known for their top-tier customer service. 

“There's the offline analogies of that. With conversational marketing, you can replicate that same dynamic. That's an extremely powerful thing.” - Beerud Sheth

Conversational Marketing’s Powerful Entry Point

Beerud says that the first step towards shifting to conversational messaging is to have a platform (i.e. WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, etc.) where your brand and your consumers can have a conversation. Once that has been set up, the next step is to find natural entry points like SMS campaigns, billboards, QR codes, or any existing campaign of the brand. Beerud shares that finding a powerful entry point provides richer experiences for the consumers and more opportunities for the brand to upsell and cross-sell. 

“SMS is a very powerful entry point into their search. Social media, print, TV ads, advertising as well. Linking into these and building these rich experiences offer innumerable possibilities.” - Beerud Sheth

To know more about Conversational Marketing and why 

Bio:

Beerud Sheth

Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 100K+ customers and developers and handles over 6 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.

Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.

Srinivas B Vijayaraghavan

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io

In today’s episode of the Gupshup Conversational Messaging Podcast, join Gupshup’s Beerud and Srini as they discuss how the pandemic and the rise of digital smartphones affected the consumers’ dining experience. Listen as they talk about how conversational messaging allows restaurants to receive a “natural” and personalized dining experience, at the comfort of their own homes.

How The Dining Experience Evolved

The global forces that affected the dining and food ordering industry for the past year are the pandemic and the rise of digital smartphones. Because people have been discouraged to dine-in for the collective good, a lot of consumers relied on online platforms to put in their orders in restaurants. However, despite the presumed comfort of this approach, it doesn’t seem to give consumers a “natural” experience that is comparable to in-house dining. 

“We're all getting used to your smartphone as a remote control for the world that can magically bring whatever you need. Consumer habits are changing; they expect to have natural experiences.”  - Beerud Sheth

How Consumers Value Personal Experience

Beerud thinks there’s an unmet opportunity for restaurants — the opportunity to provide a personalized digital experience. Some examples Beerud mentioned are: creating a loyalty program, offering coupons, giving special benefits to regulars, personalizing the ordering process through links or QR codes, and such. 

“Once you can offer these conversational experiences, it makes it much easier. When I say conversational, it can support both structured and unstructured interactions.”  - Beerud Sheth

How To Break The Normal

Many businesses, especially the small ones, think that going digital and transitioning to conversational messaging is hard—but it’s not. Companies like Gupshup make it possible by offering models with built-in integrations, which can be used immediately and have flexible and convenient pricing. The best part is that conversational messaging for restaurants is easy to blend into any marketing campaign, so it covers every aspect of the restaurant interaction. 

“These tools have become so easy that literally anybody can do it.”  - Beerud Sheth

To know more about Conversational Messaging For Restaurants, and for more information about Beerud Sheth and Srinivas B Vijayaraghavan, listen to this episode.

Bio:

Beerud Sheth

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 100K+ customers and developers and handles over 6 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.

Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities. His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.

Srinivas B Vijayaraghavan

VP Marketing

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io

In today’s episode, Beerud and Srini discuss how the pandemic changed the way consumers shop. Join them as they talk about conversational commerce, the future of e-commerce. Learn what conversational commerce is, why it’s a game-changer, and what you need to know to get started. 

Conversational Commerce in a Nutshell

The pandemic made everything digitized, pushing consumers to rely on dozens of applications for different types of activities and transactions. This sparked the need to discuss conversational commerce. But what is conversational commerce?  It allows customers to interact with businesses as if they are interacting with friends, creating a seamless experience. 

According to Beerud, this can be made possible through a single messaging mechanism that lets the consumers do everything, from ordering, payment, to delivery, and for all sorts of transactions and products. 

“The quality of experience is limited, and that’s the challenge in the way app-based commerce works. I think the solution to both of these is conversational commerce based on messaging.” - Beerud Sheth

Why Opt For Conversational Commerce 

Even before the pandemic, giants in mobile-based e-commerce and famous brands use their websites and own applications to interact and transact with consumers. However, small businesses can’t do the same right away, and even if they can, customers’ experiences from these platforms are not necessarily ideal. 

Ultimately, conversational commerce helps reduce the consumers’ effort from jumping from one website/application to another and improves the quality consumers’ experience. 

What You Need To Know

Beerud emphasizes that conversational messaging can engage consumers in a holistic interaction that replicates an experience with a live and smart salesperson. For starters, businesses can start to make their one-way SMS to two-way, where they can be redirected to somewhere for more options, get recommendations, additional support, or feedback. Also, as security is a priority, newer technologies like IP messaging can be incorporated to ensure consumers’ data privacy. 

“There could be multiple entry points, could be offline or online in different areas. All of them lead to this one consistent, high-quality conversation experience.”  - Beerud Sheth, CEO of Gupshup

To know more about Conversational Commerce, and for more information about Beerud  and Srini, listen to this episode.

Bio:

Beerud Sheth

Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer

Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 30K+ developers and handles over 4.5 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.

Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities.

His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver Medal.

Srinivas B Vijayaraghavan

VP Marketing

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation. Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io

In today’s episode of the Gupshup Conversational Messaging Podcast, Beerud and  Srini talk about how the banking industry keeps up with the digitized world. Together, they discuss the challenge of transforming offline and online banking to “conversational” banking, which makes banking seamless for all generations. They also discuss the three stages of this transformation: the marketing, transactional, and support stage. 

Making The Experience Seamless

Banks found ways to reduce consumers’ pain points by launching banking websites and applications. However, consumers still take a lot of time and effort to do simple transactions like payment, balance inquiry, money transfer, and such.  Beerud thinks that it’s more convenient if consumers are able to do everything in one go. How? By incorporating these easy transactions in messaging-like platforms 

“Search ads, social media ads, or other digital ads are the different entry points, whether it's offline or online advertising. From that, they come into this conversational experience where the users can customize their journey, as they discover and find the right product. That’s the marketing part.” - Beerud Sheth, CEO of Gupshup

Making The Experience Contextual 

Simple transactions are a perfect opportunity to upsell or cross-sell to consumers. Its success lies in making sure that the offers and recommendations for the consumers are timely and relevant, making it an added value to their experience. This contextual placement of transactions is a win not only for the consumers but more importantly, for the banks as this prompts more transactions from the consumers.  

Making The Experience Satisfactory

Beerud talks about how conversational banking positively affects customer satisfaction as it promotes unlimited availability and accessibility. Instead of making the consumers unhappy because of long hold times on the phone, conversational banking allows them to resolve conflicts at their own time and pace. Most importantly, with continuous development, this kind of banking with the highest regard to data security and user privacy can be the safest and most secure.

“If you spend a lot to provide the right experience, then your margins are lower. On the other hand, if you spend less, then you drive a lot of customer dissatisfaction. Conversation experiences in the customer support area allow you to have 24/7 availability.”  - Beerud Sheth, CEO of Gupshup

To know more about Conversational Banking,  listen to this episode.

Bio:

Beerud is the co-founder and CEO of Gupshup, the world's leading platform for cloud messaging and conversational experiences. It is used by over 30K+ developers and handles over 4.5 billion messages per month. He previously founded and led Elance (now Upwork, a publicly listed company), the pioneer of online freelancing and the gig economy.

Prior to founding Elance, he worked in the financial services industry – modeling, structuring, and trading fixed income securities and derivatives at Merrill Lynch and Citicorp Securities.

His graduate research, at the MIT Media Lab, involved developing autonomous learning agents for personalized news filtering. Beerud earned an M.S. in Computer Science from MIT & a B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, where he was awarded the Institute Silver
Medal.

Srinivas has over 2 decades of experience in running marketing for high-growth technology companies and managing corporate marketing, product marketing and demand generation.

Prior to Gupshup, he held marketing leadership positions with Qubole, Pluralsight, Mobileum and Tejas Networks.

Resources:

Gupshup.io