Users and businesses have 600 million chats on Meta platforms every day

According to the CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, over 600 million interactions occur between companies and individuals on its platforms every day. During an earnings call, Meta is sharing this metric for the first time. How many of these are marketing or informational messages to users, like a corporation delivering ticket information or an order update, was not made clear by him.

Mark Zuckerberg revealed during Meta’s Q3 2023 earnings call that the company is increasing its focus on revenue-generating business messaging. According to Zuckerberg, the company wants to utilize generative AI-based bots for use cases such as customer service in enterprises.

Nonetheless, Zuckerberg pointed out that over 60% of WhatsApp users in India message a business app account. India is the chat app’s largest market, with over 500 million users. Notably, a large number of independent business owners now utilize WhatsApp Business accounts, which grant them access to services like message broadcasting, product catalogs, and business pages.

With a 53% year-over-year gain in Q32023, Meta made $293 million, mostly because to the WhatsApp Business platform. The company declared in June that there were 200 million active monthly users of WhatsApp Business.

There are several ways for the massive social networking site to get revenue from corporate messages. Businesses are charged by WhatsApp based on the number of discussion sessions and the classification of various message kinds. Click-to-message and click-to-WhatsApp advertising are also available. According to Zuckerberg, the yearly run rate of these advertisements has reached $10 billion and is still rising.

WhatsApp has revealed business products in the past several months, including WhatsApp Flows, which allow for an enhanced in-app purchase experience, and bespoke, tailored messages sent to clients. In order to facilitate the resolution of client inquiries, the business also revealed plans in September for a WhatsApp verification system that would include features like personalized webpages and support for ten devices connected to a single account.

Additionally, Meta hopes to use generative AI to have company accounts reply to inquiries from clients on purchases and support. “It seems like there will be a significant chance for new business AIs, as I previously mentioned. Our goal is to make it simple for any company to create a chatbot that can assist with customer service and sales,” Zuckerberg stated on the conference call.

According to Zuckerberg, some markets—like Thailand or Vietnam—have low labor costs, so companies can afford to have employees manually reply to consumer inquiries. Meta’s Business AI bots can be utilized in different markets, nevertheless.

As generative AI models have proliferated and become more accessible, a number of AI-powered customer service firms have introduced their goods and attracted interest from potential acquirers and investors