Sinch Conversation API: One Simple API To Reach Customers Over Multiple Channels

In today’s mobile-first world, customers expect more accessible, personalized real-time communication with the brands they love and trust. One size fits all communications strategies are archaic; customers want to feel like a brand is speaking directly with them, not at them and the rest of their thousands-long contacts list. To gain a competitive edge and satisfy customers’ demands, businesses of all shapes and sizes are refocusing efforts to communicate effectively with each customer – no matter the channel or channels – in an engaging, always-on, and personalized way. Still, it can be incredibly complex to develop, integrate and orchestrate two-way interactions over so many different channels. Conversational APIs can help streamline this process.

Sinch’s Conversation API Solution Overview

To create a true omnichannel solution for brands of all sizes, Sinch, a global leader in cloud communications and mobile customer engagement, developed a single API for incorporation into any existing messaging system. As the building block of mobile customer experience, Sinch’s Conversation API is easily integrated into any technology platform and customer journey infrastructure – either via the API itself or via connectors to the world’s leading customer experience platforms in marketing, customer service, or customer care.

With Sinch’s Conversation API, businesses can create rich and engaging conversations with their customers, providing 100 percent reach with a single API gateway on the most widely used consumer channels — including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, SMS, MMS, RCS, and others. To retain context along the customer journey, the solution seamlessly transfers user history from one channel to another. If a customer wants to move from Instagram to WhatsApp on their phone, they can easily do so without having to restart their inquiry. This convenient consolidation of messaging channels is also globally friendly; the API adheres to channel-specific regulations and country-specific compliance laws around consumer privacy and engagement criteria.

The real value in the Sinch Conversation API comes from the ability to develop personalized and intelligent conversations with consumers by engaging with them where they find it most convenient. And in such a rapidly changing environment, the Sinch Conversation API is next-gen channel ready: companies will automatically have access to even more through the API as they grow their customer bases around the globe.

Vikram Khandpur, Senior Vice President, Conversational AI & Communications Products at Sinch

Most recently, Sinch added KakaoTalk to its Conversation API, expanding Sinch’s global presence in the Asia-Pacific region and further empowering enterprise businesses to engage in seamless omnichannel interactions with consumers anywhere in the world.

KakaoTalk is a super-app that is becoming increasingly pervasive in digital life in South Korea – 97% of the population uses it. However, Sinch has seen that many western brands do not use it well. They will often run basic social media and adverts on KakaoTalk, but if a customer asks the brand a question, there’s little interactive dialogue on the app itself. Yet with South Korea fast becoming a hot market for global retail and travel brands, Sinch can now offer easy access to KakaoTalk for international brands through our Conversation API. So, with all documents and support in English, any business can communicate 2-way with customers in the region.

Jon Campbell, Director of Rich Messaging, Sinch

Before KakaoTalk was added to Sinch’s Conversation API, businesses would need to work with local agencies to build an integration and connect with South Korean customers. Now, Sinch Conversation API customers can maintain a single API for all communication channels in one place and with all developer documentation needed to make this happen in English. With this latest addition, Sinch is continuing its goal to be able to reach everyone on the planet on their favorite messaging channel at any time.

How Sinch’s Conversation API is Saving Brands Time and Money

Customers often reach out to brands through multiple channels, which can lead to siloed conversations and experiences. In developing Conversation API, Sinch’s developer team became acutely aware of the varying message formats across the API’s portfolio of supported messaging channels. One of the core benefits of the Sinch Conversation API is the flexible manner in which these formats have been normalized, allowing the integrator full flexibility to utilize an omnichannel format that is transcoded to various destinations.

Integrating Conversation API is a one-time effort, saving brands time and the development cost of working with each channel separately. Businesses can apply the API to their existing digital programs and start seeing results instantaneously, alleviating the pain of time-consuming implementation and complicated coordination among various channels.

Sinch’s Conversation API supports brands’ internal teams as well, integrating with various third-party tools so contact centers can easily connect to supported messaging channels. Additionally, it provides live agents with all the information they need in one place to answer all customer questions and provide excellent user support.

This level of personalization requires customer data retention. Many channels traditionally require returning customers to re-enter their personal information, which can be frustrating and time-consuming for those seeking help at a moment’s notice. Sinch’s Conversation API securely stores personal information like the user’s conversation history and context, enabling customers, service agents, or chatbots to go straight to solving problems or inquiries. This data (stored with the user’s permission) also allows brands to send more relevant, personalized offers or messages to the customer, strengthening customer loyalty.

Plus, enabling a seamless handoff prevents the customer from needing to restate a question or problem while simultaneously deepening the user experience. Some results include:

• A 30-50% higher conversion for marketing vs. email or SMS
• A 20-50% reduced cost for customer care through increased agent efficiency

This multifaceted Conversation API works for two-way notifications, full marketing campaigns, and sale transactions. With Sinch’s Conversation API, brands are empowered to meet customers exactly where they are at any stage of the buying journey, from pre-sale to delivery, leading to improved business outcomes such as increased customer acquisition rates, enhanced customer experience, and lower churn rates. Sinch’s Conversational API is meant to close a technological lag between customer expectations and a brand’s ability to engage with customers seamlessly without losing valuable time when integrating the technology, receiving amazing results from customers.

For example, integrating Sinch’s Conversation API enabled Sureshot, cloud-based customer engagement solutions to enhance its portfolio by extending its global reach with advanced omnichannel messaging capabilities. Additionally, Sureshot improved sales perspectives and built a meaningful partner relationship.

The integration with Sinch has been very hands-on. The Conversation API gives us a lot of flexibility for future opportunities and will allow us to incorporate omnichannel messaging capabilities into our solutions much faster than before. The range of messaging channels available out of the box with Sinch’s Conversation API made all the difference. We’re now able to meet our clients’ messaging needs instantly, without having to worry about global deliverability.

David York, Founder & CEO at Sureshot

After implementing Conversation API into their own solutions, Sureshot partnered with Sinch to create a new MMS messaging app for Oracle Responsys, in response to a growing customer demand on Oracle’s end.

Sureshot has always focused on innovating the digital experience for the user, and this latest enhancement of MMS messaging fully supports that mission. We’re thrilled to be partnering with Sinch to expand the power of Conversation API as we introduce MMS messaging to millions of users.

David York, Founder & CEO at Sureshot

Extending Customer Engagement into Conversation Channels – CX Success

Before choosing Sinch, Nissan Europe faced unresponsiveness and difficulty maintaining long-term customer relationships and brand loyalty; its partnership with Sinch and Adobe Campaign increased its conversation rate to 80%, nearly quintupled its engagement, and reached 200,000 customers in the first six months alone.

Spurred by the success of Sinch’s Conversation API, Blueshift partnered with Sinch in 2022 to offer its consumers rich, powerful, two-way conversational experiences in a host of channels in Blueshift’s App Hub and Journey Builder. This integration aims to meet brands’ current and emerging conversational marketing needs, delivering hyper-personalized engagement on consumers’ preferred channels. By employing Sinch’s Conversation API, Blueshift can empower brands to drive engagement and commerce through helpful nudges such as back-in-stock updates, price drop alerts, product recommendations, and more on conversational channels. Marketers can easily orchestrate a unified experience across conversational channels and traditional marketing channels like email, paid media, and mobile notifications.

A deep understanding of the customer is crucial for orchestrating intelligent conversations. That is why we are excited to partner with Blueshift. Their solution makes it easy for marketers to trigger conversations at the right moment in the customer’s journey, and recommend the best products and content to each customer. We are proud to be their partner in delivering seamless omni-channel engagement with consumers globally, via our Conversational Messaging solutions that could include Conversational Commerce, Conversational Marketing and Conversational Advertising.”

Vikram Khandpur, Sinch SVP, Partnerships and Integrations

Now, customers and brands can actively engage, which results in a better user experience. This one-time, intuitive integration allows businesses of any size to transform their customer engagement without needing to recruit external resources. All of these technological capabilities represent why Sinch has developed partnerships with some of the biggest messaging service providers in the market.

Learn More About Sinch’s Conversation API