The Philippines has become a hub of messaging activity, with consumers actively using a wide range of channels, including Viber, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, email, and chat apps. In fact, the number of interactions across the Infobip platform in the Philippines grew by 19% year on year, indicating a significant increase in business communication.
Almost all messaging channels in the country saw significant growth in terms of usage and interactions. Mobile messaging app interactions surged 139%, while Viber grew 47%. WhatsApp recorded a remarkable 1,416% growth, signaling its rapidly expanding role in business communications. Even MMS and email moved up 15% and 5%, respectively, while other chat apps saw a 1,014% increase.
While this surge in interactions presents opportunities for businesses, it also poses a significant operational challenge. Managing multiple channels requires coordination across different systems, teams, and data sets, which can be complex and time-consuming.
A typical customer journey today involves multiple touchpoints, including Viber promos, SMS one-time PINs, and email receipts. Each of these touchpoints involves a different system, team, and data set, making it difficult for businesses to provide a seamless customer experience.
Many organizations have expanded their presence to keep up with where consumers are, but few have addressed how those channels will work together. Brands have added Viber here, WhatsApp there, and chatbots on their websites, each with its own data, logic, and no shared view of the customer.
This fragmented engagement model can lead to breakdowns, resulting in a scattered customer experience. Budget carrier Cebu Pacific once relied on manual email and SMS campaigns, struggling to deliver the right message at the right time. The airline serves millions of customers across different stages of their journey, each requiring a different message sent through a process that depended on manual work.
Messages went out, but not always the right message to the right passenger at the right moment. For instance, a passenger checking in for a flight might still be receiving a generic seat sale promo, or a traveler who had already rebooked might get a delay notification for a flight they were no longer on.
Metrobank, a leading bank in the Philippines, faced a similar challenge. It relied heavily on SMS for marketing communications, but the channel's 160-character limit made it difficult to craft a clear and informative message. The result was a customer experience that felt scattered rather than guided.
The key to addressing channel complexity is not to simplify the landscape but to operate coherently within it. At Infobip, this is achieved through AI orchestration, which coordinates artificial intelligence, data, and communication channels to manage customer interactions as a single, continuous experience.
SM Supermalls, the country's largest mall operator, uses Infobip's platform to combine its software-as-a-service platform with Viber for Business, enabling personalized offers and re-engagement messages triggered by customer actions. This approach allows the mall operator to move beyond one-size-fits-all promotions toward campaigns that respond to how individual shoppers actually behave.
Cebu Pacific and Metrobank found their answer through the same partner, Infobip. The airline uses Viber as its primary channel for promotional campaigns and SMS as an automatic failover for customers who don’t receive the Viber message, combining the two so that no customer communication falls through the cracks.
The airline also automates and segments audiences to recommend add-on products ahead of a flight, resulting in a measurable lift in how connected customers feel to the brand, with a 75% increase in Net Promoter Score in 2024 compared to the previous year.
Metrobank, on the other hand, integrated Viber for Business directly into its existing Salesforce Marketing Cloud setup, achieving significant cost savings between 30% and 50% compared to sending the same types of messages via SMS.
The common thread among these cases is the decision to stop treating messaging as a series of disconnected campaigns. Each found a way to let data, automation, and context work together behind a single customer interaction, and the results followed naturally from that shift.
