Clickatell, the Chat Commerce and business messaging player, has announced new updates to its Chat Commerce Platform for travel brands to provide exceptional customer service in messaging channels during travelers' entire journeys. Added benefits of the Platform include reduced costs for businesses to conduct chat conversations and engagement in real-time or any time communications.

Clickatell's Chat Desk, a digital contact center solution and part of Clickatell's Chat Commerce Platform, gives travelers access to flight details, booking options, cancellations, upgrades and more at their fingertips via SMS, WhatsApp and Apple Messages.

Chat Desk integrates tightly with Clickatell's Chat Flow, a drag-and-drop conversation workflow builder, enabling businesses to visually create, edit and manage communication and business process workflows across multiple channels with little to no code. Consumers can connect with travel brands through the Chat Flow automated chat, before being escalated to a live agent through Chat Desk if necessary.

Chat Desk consists of three parts: Agent Desk, Supervisor Desk and Real-Time Dashboard:

Agent Desk enables customer service agents to manage multiple customer conversations across SMS, WhatsApp and Apple Messages in a unified inbox. Agents may transfer inquiries to different departments and other agents; easily retrieve chats, history and notes with search and filter functionality; provide 2-way multimedia support (PDF, Microsoft docs, images, videos, voice notes, location sharing); create pre-populated responses for agents to send to customers driving consistent customer experience and agent efficiency; and gain insight to customer sentiment through their remarks in the chat.

Supervisor Desk gives supervisors the ability to route tickets to the right department or specialist agents; manage agents' workloads and performances; effectively manage customer escalations and agent productivity; and deliver the best customer experience with supervisor oversight.

Real-Time Dashboard provides supervisors a view of agent performance, customer sentiment and CSAT and NPS scores through customer surveys; the ability to categorize and tag customer inquiries driving opportunities for automation; and the ability to send auto response messages outside of business hours and when agents are busy, as well as customer greetings and goodbyes.

Clickatell's Chat 2 Pay new seamless integration into Chat Desk gives travel brands the ability to securely offer and accept payments in business messages. Travelers receive a payment link and effortlessly complete the payment through a checkout page on their mobile phones. The functionality is so easy brands simply switch it on and manage this new capability.

'Traveling has become such a different experience in the post-pandemic world, and nothing is more frustrating than an inconvenient customer service experience,' said Pieter de Villiers, CEO and Co-Founder at Clickatell. 'By reaching your customer where they already are in messaging channels, rather than making them download or maintain a mobile app, travelers can instantly connect with your company and get support through their chat app of choice. Especially in the travel industry, a personalized and frictionless customer service and engagement strategy is important - if not more important - than the sale itself.

'Considering 87% of consumers prefer to use mobile messaging to communicate with travel companies especially on the day of their travel, according to our Chat Commerce Trends Report on Travel travel brands providing personal and timely communications in SMS and popular chat apps will help their customers get the most out of their trips and drive satisfaction,' added de Villiers.

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