1. What is Apple Business Chat?
Business Chat is an Apple service that allows your organization to chat directly with your customers using the Messages app. Customers can use this service to resolve issues, schedule appointments, place orders, or pay with Apple Pay.
Customers can start a conversation by clicking the message button available on your website, app, email, or other touch points like Siri, Search, and Apple Maps.
(It's important to note at this point that only Apple devices with iOS 11.3 or later and macOS 10.13.4 or later will support Business Chat.)
2. Why should your business care about Apple Business Chat?
Apple Business Chat is a Swiss Army knife for businesses looking to provide great customer service via messaging, regardless of their size.
When it comes to Apple Business Chat, it can help people find your store near their location, book appointments/tickets, help you set up a full-fledged e-commerce store, and even provide 24/7 customer support using bots.
Whether your business is in finance, IT, e-commerce, hospitality, or healthcare, Apple Business Chat can open a simple communication channel between your business and customers and provide a great customer experience. Let's take a look at why you should seize this opportunity today.
✔ Huge user base
With 1.5 billion active devices1 where approximately 80% of devices are running the latest iOS 13, the opportunity for businesses to reach customers on their preferred messaging platform is enormous.
85% customers2 prefer to receive text messages over a call, and 61% customers3 don't even want to migrate to a new messaging platform just to communicate with a business. This means customers are looking for a native messaging app they can use to contact a business. And Apple Business Chat does just that. Because the Messages app is available natively on Apple devices, supporting customers with Business Chat can improve CSAT scores and reduce first response times.
✔ Offers multiple touchpoints to start a conversation
Thanks to Apple's unified ecosystem, business chat can be initiated from Maps, Safari, Search, your website or app, and from any Apple device. This reduces friction in your customer service and makes it extremely easy for your customers to start a conversation with your business from anywhere in the Apple ecosystem.
✔ Unified shopping experience and smooth checkout
While built-in features like visual lists, advanced links, and scheduling templates make the shopping experience convenient for customers, integrations with other Apple apps further enhance its capabilities. For example, Apple Pay allows customers to quickly and securely provide their payment, shipping, and contact information to checkout with a single tap or glance. As a result, cart abandonment rates can be significantly reduced.
✔ Bot integration
To manage top-level queries and even automate the product selection and checkout process, Business Chat supports bots. With bots, you can also automate services like checking order status, canceling orders, scheduling appointments or checking account balances. As a result, these services can be made available to your customers 24/7.
✔ Get an edge over the competition
98% of smartphone users regularly use text messaging, but only 14% of businesses text consumers. And to date, only 43 companies use ABC to communicate with their customers. Because there's a huge gap between customer expectations and customer service, there's a huge opportunity for your business to capitalize on it, and those that have already jumped on the bandwagon are already reaping the benefits.
Check out how a leading US financial services company extended its customer service to Apple Business Chat and, as a result, achieved a 4.9/5 CSAT score, while also saving 10,000 hours by using AI chatbots.
3. How does Business Chat work?
Business Chat is a service that allows your organization to communicate directly with your customers through your Messaging Service Provider (MSP) using the Messages app.
To understand this better, let's analyze the illustration below
1 – A customer uses their Messages app to communicate with a business
2 –This message is routed through Apple's corporate chat service (a service used by Apple Business Chat) to a corporate messaging service provider
3 –The MSP (like SendApp Connect) aggregates all messages and allows your agents to respond directly from their consoles to customer messages
An MSP is required to connect your company to Apple Business Chat. It helps streamline customer conversations into a single view so agents avoid missing chats, avoid picking up tickets another agent is working on, and can easily monitor performance on an individual and team level.
As one of the few Apple-approved MSPs, Freshchat is one of the few players in the market that allows your agents to reply to messages received from the Messages app (via Business Chat), Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, and Line Messenger.
4. How secure is Business Chat?
Apple is known for its privacy policies, and Business Chat is no different. In Business Chat, only one customer can initiate a conversation, and once the conversation thread is deleted, businesses can't contact the customer unless the customer restarts the conversation.
Additionally, when a customer makes contact, businesses cannot automatically see their personal information such as name or phone number unless the person chooses to share it.
How can a customer contact your company?
Customers can start a conversation with your business using the Business Chat button. In addition to your website and app, you can also add the Business Chat button to system features like Maps and Spotlight, so customers can use them to locate your business and start a conversation.
Another way you can help your customers contact you is by adding your company chat URL to your emails and enabling chat suggestions on your company chat account. Let's take a closer look at each of these.
1. App or website
Adding the Business Chat button within a banner or within your app is the best way to help the most of your customers, since most of them will visit your website/app. When adding the Business Chat button to your app/website, be sure to design banners that match the colors and font of your company logo.
Another important element is the banner's CTA (Call to Action). The CTA should clearly outline what customers can expect when they contact your company.
Source – Apple
2. Email
You can help your customers start a conversation from within an email by creating a hyperlink to a banner or text. When a customer clicks the URL, the system will redirect them to the Messages app so they can send your business a text message.
Here's an example of what the URL might look like for a bank customer with a credit card application. The link will only work if you're using iOS 11.3 and later or macOS 10.13.4 and later.
https://bcrw.apple.com/urn:biz:9c231233-d943-482a-b913-7c625ba19988?biz-intent-id=account_question&biz-group-id=credit_card_department&body=Order%20additional%20credit%20card
3. Enable chat suggestions on your corporate chat account
Chat Suggest lets your customers choose how to contact your business via Apple Business Chat in the Messages app. Chat Suggest adds a Messages option to the phone pop-up when someone clicks on your registered business phone numbers. If this feature is disabled, the person will only see your phone number.
Here's a screenshot comparing the two scenarios. On the left, chat suggestion is disabled, and on the right, it's enabled.
Source – Apple
Chat suggests reducing the number of incoming IVR queries and reducing voice support costs by shifting call volumes to messaging. This will help your agents handle multiple queries simultaneously and reduce workload using automation tools provided by an MSP like SendApp.
5. Apple Business Chat Features
✔ Apple Pay –
When a business requests payment from a customer purchasing goods and services via Business Chat, the customer can use Apple Pay to make the payment. A payment request looks like a regular chat bubble, but displays the Apple Pay payment slip when selected by the customer. After the customer authorizes the payment, the payment request chat bubble updates to indicate that the payment has been completed.
To begin using Apple Pay with your customers, the Messaging Service Provider (MSP) must set up the service on their platform and the company must set up and configure their merchant account with ID and certificates.
Pro-Tip
1. Collect the necessary information before checkout –
On the payment form, the customer can choose a card, a shipping or pickup address, and a billing address. However, they can't enter any additional information, so gather information like product options or promotional codes in advance.
2. Send an order confirmation message after checkout – Thank the customer for their purchase and share important information such as your order number and, if applicable, estimated shipping times.
3. Supports order tracking –Allow your customer to check the status of an order by sending a message, such as “When will my order arrive?”
✔ List selectors -A list selector prompts the customer to select one or more items, such as products or locations. Items can include text and images and can also be organized into sections. For example, when presenting product options, the list selector might include a section for choosing a color and a section for choosing a size.
Pro tips:
1. Keep your section and element text clear and concise –
To avoid text truncation, pay attention to different device screen sizes and keep text as short as possible while maintaining clarity.
2. Use high resolution images with the correct scale – If your list selector includes images, please provide them at 180px × 180px (60pt × 60pt @ 3x). All images must be provided at 3x resolution.
3. Try to get a list of manageable size – When you present many options at once, you run the risk of overwhelming the customer. Provide digestible lists that encourage shortcuts with minimal scrolling.
✔ Rich links –A media link is a URL provided via an image or video you display in a chat bubble. When people tap the image or video, the link opens on your website, where you can view information about the item or play the video. Media links help customers verify they've selected the right item before purchasing. Because you display a rich link within the Messages app, people can tap the link to visit your website and easily return to the conversation.
Pro tips:
1. Keep the experience focused on the product –
Avoid overloading people with too many different images or videos.
2. Use descriptive and accessible language to title an advanced link – The title should provide context for the image or video displayed above it. Avoid using your company name or URL to title a media link, as this information won't help customers understand why they might want to click it. Display your website URL below the title so people know where the link will take them.
3. Always include a thumbnail or image of the video – If you don't provide a thumbnail for a rich link, customers won't see a preview of the content and may even interpret the message as unsolicited communication from your company. Likewise, displaying a simple link without an image doesn't provide context or encourage customers to open it.
✔ Time selector -
A time selector prompts the customer to choose an available time range, for example to schedule a meeting or appointment. The time picker view also shows calendar conflicts so customers can make an informed decision.
After choosing a time, customers can review their choice in conversation view to add the event to their calendar. When the event includes information such as an address, directions, or contact details, customers can view this information in Calendar and receive a Maps notification that helps them know when to leave for their appointment.
Pro tips:
1. Provide location details, if applicable –
If you return location details when the customer chooses a time slot, the customer can revisit their choice in the conversation to get directions to the location.
2. With the client's permission, send reminders for upcoming appointments – Ask for permission before subscribing the customer to push notifications and offer them an easy way to opt out.
6. How to register for Business Chat?
You can request Apple Business Chat by visiting register.apple.comHere you need to log in with your Apple ID, and if you don't have one, you can create one in just a few minutes. Once you've finished entering all the required information about your business, you'll need to select an MSP (Messaging Service Provider).
Please note that selecting an MSP when applying for Apple Business Chat is mandatory, as you cannot use Business Chat services without it. When signing up for Business Chat, you must also select the box in the "Business Chat Policies" section to confirm that you are using an Apple-approved messaging service provider.
As a final step, you'll need to submit your application to Apple. While your account is being approved, you can test the integration with your MSP using the test account. Once your Business Chat account is approved, you can integrate it with your MSP.
If you're wondering what an MSP is, how it works, how to apply for a Business Chat account, and how to integrate it with your MSP, don't worry. We've created a step-by-step guide to help you answer all these questions and more. Click the banner below to view the guide.
7. How much does Apple Business Chat cost?
Businesses can only associate one brand or product with an Apple Business account, so if you want to add Business Chat for multiple brands, you'll need to create separate accounts for each brand and have them approved by Apple.
