South African businesses that continue to rely on traditional customer contact methods like SMS, email, and call centres are at serious risk of eroding customer trust, losing market share, and becoming obsolete.
“Businesses today are mirroring Kodak’s greatest mistake: clinging to old methods while the world moves on,” warns Jonathan Elcock, co-founder and CEO at rather.chat. “Technology evolves. Customer expectations evolve. If businesses don’t evolve too, they risk irrelevance.”
Despite the rise of AI-powered smartbots on mainstream platforms like WhatsApp, many companies still resist change under the false belief that traditional methods are cheaper. In reality, businesses fail to reach 30% to 40% of customers via phone calls alone, driving up acquisition costs and burning profits.
In contrast, WhatsApp smartbots powered by AI are transforming customer engagement — providing instant responses, capturing richer behavioural data, and helping businesses pre-qualify leads before handing them over to human agents.
“Today’s innovation is tomorrow’s commoditization,” says Elcock. “Trust is now measured in response time. If you delay, you lose. Customers want instant answers. Smartbots deliver them — traditional channels don’t.”
Unlike email or SMS campaigns that offer basic click-through rates, smartbots reveal why customers disengage, highlighting critical breakpoints in the customer journey. For instance, businesses often see abandoned carts in e-commerce without knowing why — whereas a smartbot can surface that 60% of customers simply had unanswered questions.
Smartbot technology is not just a nice-to-have; it’s a business survival tool. Companies using smartbots see reduced wastage, faster lead qualification, higher conversion rates, and a stronger return on investment.
“The lesson from Kodak is clear: innovation waits for no one. Businesses must choose whether to adapt or get left behind,” concludes Elcock.
