We are seeing a significant shift away from traditional voice calls where volumes have largely plateaued or declined, while omnichannel communication is experiencing a remarkable compound annual growth rate of 54% over three years. It is now evidently clear that customers today are demanding personalised engagements on their channel of choice – and not the phone or email – and organisations are having to equip themselves with the right tools and integration capabilities to address these changing behaviours.
In South Africa, for example, WhatsApp’s widespread adoption has made it a preferred channel for customer engagement, with the potential to significantly reduce traditional call volumes to contact centres. Local coach operator Intercape saw a 200% year on year growth in the use of WhatsApp and web chat, while the use of phone calls declined. Chat engagements also reduced the burden on call centre employees, resulting in improved turnaround speed for resolution while a searchable historic record of communications helped the company to provide a more personalised service.
WhatsApp for Business provides a unique opportunity for organisations to engage users who might be less inclined to interact through a traditional phone call, and has numerous use cases including authentication, marketing, customer service and utility purposes. For their part, brands have access to features such as bots to streamline workflows and answer FAQs, product catalogues and interactive buttons.
While it offers compelling advantages, businesses looking to make use of WhatsApp for Business need to ensure integration with their other communication channels in order to avoid fragmentation of customer conversations. Investing in these multi- or omni-channel capabilities means that a business can deliver personalised messages at scale, regardless of which is the popular channel of the moment.
Integration as the foundation for enhanced CX
The foundation of improving customer experiences is having a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system and its integration with business communications tools, as this significantly enhances personalisation by linking all calls and digital engagements to a specific contact within the CRM system.
Telviva offers various integration methods to suit different organisational needs:
- Integration of Telviva One into existing workspaces for teams where the CRM is the default tool, improving efficiency for calls without needing a separate application.
- For contact centres with high interaction volumes across diverse channels, Telviva Omni serves as the “single pane of glass,” with integration allowing for the presenting of relevant CRM data to agents for personalisation and automatically updating customer records.
- For organisations with bespoke or legacy CRM systems, Telviva’s Software Development Kit (SDK) allows developers to embed components of Telviva’s ecosystem directly into their systems, including calling, call control, contact centre features, and access to advanced functionalities like call recording and transcription.
Furthermore, integration brings additional benefits, such as regulatory compliant cloud-based call recording and Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) services for transcription, which eliminate the need for manual note-taking and can even summarise action items to be added directly into the CRM. Being a South African company with local development teams, Telviva can also customise its communication solutions to meet specific business requirements, further enhancing customer experiences through managed contact centre services.
Many organisations are now also investing in Customer Data Platforms (CDP) to serve as a single source of truth for customer information. Companies like Infobip, a Tier 1 Business Solution Provider for Meta, are evolving their offerings to include a Customer Data Platform (People), allowing for highly personalised customer profiles, targeted engagements (Moments), and generative information to meet customer needs (Answers). This helps businesses move beyond “spray and pray” marketing to deliver tailored messages.
Users are taking control
The ability to deliver carefully-targeted and personalised engagements becomes all the more crucial during a time of heightened privacy concerns and increased demands from users for greater control over the communications that they receive. And, the major platform providers are acceding to these demands.
Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company, has implemented policies to curb misuse and promote high-quality interactions on the platform. For example, the upcoming WhatsApp Business Calling feature is designed with controls to prevent spam. Businesses will need to send an approved message template requesting permission to call, and the customer must accept it within 24 hours. Outbound calls are also significantly more expensive for businesses than inbound calls, encouraging targeted and intentional voice engagements within the platform, rather than a “free-for-all”.
It’s not just Meta; other platforms are also empowering users. For example, new features in Apple’s iOS26 allow users to screen, silence, or filter calls from numbers not in their contact list. Furthermore, proposed regulation changes are shifting the default from “opt-out” to “opt-in” for customer communications, placing the responsibility on the business to obtain consent before engaging. These developments highlight a clear trend: users are taking more control over the communications they receive.
Humans + AI
For businesses, this means being systems-ready – to allow for easy integration – while balancing automation with human interaction to maintain customer engagement. It also includes recognising that while technology is rapidly advancing and profoundly shaping business communications, people remain the most crucial element.
While automation is highly effective for simple, repetitive tasks such as providing an invoice or a policy copy, human agents remain indispensable for more complex, nuanced matters that require empathy and problem-solving skills. On the other hand, AI-powered tools can significantly empower human agents, making them “superpowered”. By offering instant access to previously untapped information – such as summarising complex policy details or terms and conditions – AI augments and enhances the capabilities of human agents rather than replacing them entirely.
As such, when looking at contact centres, technology accounts for less than 10% of success, with the remaining 90% attributable to agent behaviour, emotion, and motivation. The psychology of a call centre agent is critical, and leaders must invest in upskilling their employees. It’s about a continuous refinement of how humans and technologies combine, not one replacing the other.
The future of business communications is an evolution, not a revolution, centred on enabling better quality conversations between brands and their customers, while maintaining a “digital when you want it, human when you need it,” approach.
Whether you require an inbound/outbound call centre solution for voice or an omnichannel solution integrating multiple digital channels, Telviva’s Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) solution provides comprehensive platforms to streamline your contact centre operations. Contact us today.
By Rob Lith, Chief Commercial Officer at Telviva.