Title: From messages to experiences: 20 years of customer engagement across Asia

URL: https://www.infobip.com/blog/20-years-of-customer-engagement-across-asia

Asia has been one of the world's fastest-evolving digital regions. Over the past 20 years, businesses have transformed the way they engage with customers, moving from simple SMS notifications to rich, omnichannel, AI-powered experiences. Rising smartphone adoption, improved connectivity, and advances in communication technology have fundamentally reshaped customer expectations and accelerated digital transformation across industries.

As we celebrate our 20th year anniversary, the story of that transformation is best told through both a regional and market perspective.

We spoke with Harsha Solanki, VP General Manager Asia, to discuss the major shifts that have shaped customer communication across Asia over the past two decades. Drawing on the region's long-term evolution, she shares how customer expectations, technology, and business priorities have changed and what those changes mean for the future.

Complementing that broader perspective, we also learned from Ruslana Reznikova, VP General Manager APAC & Eurasia, on how those trends have unfolded across the diverse markets she leads. From the rise of super apps and omnichannel engagement to the rapid adoption of AI, she highlights how businesses across APAC and Eurasia are translating innovation into measurable business impact.

Together, Harsha and Ruslana reflect on the milestones, market shifts, and innovations that have shaped customer engagement over the last 20 years and the opportunities that lie ahead.

## The early days of customer communication in Asia

The story begins with a simpler era of communication, when SMS was the dominant business messaging channel. Businesses relied on plain text messages to announce promotions, share offers and provide delivery or account updates. While SMS offered an instant and reliable way to reach customers, communication was largely one-way.

Reflecting on those early years, Harsha explains that messaging functioned primarily as a broadcast tool rather than a relationship-building channel. Customers could receive information, but they couldn't easily respond, ask questions, or continue the conversation.

As message volumes increased in Asia, many countries introduced regulations around consent, message capping, and carrier filtering.

Harsha shared an example from the Indian market: "In 2011, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) introduced restrictions limiting pre-paid SIM cards to 200 SMS messages per day and post-paid SIM cards to 6,000 SMS messages per month."

Harsha views these regulations as positive steps.

One of the biggest challenges at the time was fragmented customer data. Without connected systems or real-time insights, personalization remained out of reach.

Yet even then, the foundations for today's digital transformation were already emerging through growing mobile adoption and improved access to data.

## From broadcast to conversations

The shift from one-way communication to conversational engagement happened gradually as customer expectations evolved.

Harsha recalls that customers increasingly wanted to do more than simply receive messages.

Across Asia, conversational messaging has transformed customer engagement by making interactions more immediate and convenient for both businesses and consumers. Channels such as WhatsApp, Viber, and RCS have played a key role in that shift.

WhatsApp has seen especially strong growth across the region, becoming a core channel for brands looking to deliver richer, more interactive customer experiences. According to our Messaging Trends Report 2026, WhatsApp dominates markets such as India, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. In India, Rich Communication Services (RCS) has gained significant adoption over the past few years, emerging as an important channel for richer, more interactive business communication.

The estimated RCS user base in India now stands at 550 million, out of a total smartphone base of 750–800 million users. As more people become familiar with RCS, businesses are getting confident to move beyond traditional SMS to richer messages that include brand logos, images, and action buttons. The channel is also gaining adoption in APAC markets such as Indonesia and Singapore.

## A catalyst for digital transformation

While digital communication was already gaining momentum, the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated years of transformation in just a few months.

Healthcare providers introduced virtual consultations; banks digitized onboarding, and retailers rapidly expanded conversational commerce and customer support. According to a major Bain & Company / Google study, 60 million new digital consumers came online in Southeast Asia during the pandemic, and 90% continued using digital services afterwards.

For Harsha, the pandemic represented more than a temporary shift.

As customer engagement continued to evolve, businesses also began looking beyond connected conversations toward intelligent ones. The combination of conversational channels, customer data, and AI is enabling brands to move from simply responding to customers to anticipating their needs, automating journeys, and delivering more contextual experiences. Platforms like Infobip AgentOS represent the next step in that evolution, bringing AI agents, automation, and orchestration together to help businesses create conversational and intelligent customer interactions at scale.

## Regional innovation across APAC and Eurasia

As customer engagement matured across Asia, those broader trends began to take shape differently across APAC and Eurasia. While every market followed its own path, they shared one common characteristic: rapidly rising customer expectations.

This transformation is where Ruslana's perspective begins.

Working across APAC and Eurasia, she has witnessed how businesses have adapted to changing customer behavior, local communication preferences, and emerging technologies.

### Mobile-first markets and the rise of super apps

One of the defining characteristics of APAC and Eurasia is the diversity of communication preferences across markets.

Across APAC, platform adoption varies significantly by market: WhatsApp dominates in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Singapore, and Hong Kong; Viber remains popular in the Philippines; WeChat is deeply embedded in everyday life in China; LINE plays a central role in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan; and KakaoTalk remains the preferred platform for millions of users in South Korea. Over time, many of these apps have evolved far beyond messaging into true super apps, combining communication, payments, shopping, and other daily digital experiences within a single ecosystem.

Similar mobile-first messaging trends are also emerging across Eurasia, where chat apps are becoming increasingly central to customer engagement.

This mobile-first behavior continues to shape communication trends across both regions, driving strong adoption of messaging platforms as primary channels for everyday digital engagement.

Ruslana explains: "Around 48% of businesses in APAC already use super apps, reflecting the region's mobile-first economies and strong digital payments ecosystem."

This evolution has fundamentally changed customer expectations, enabling messaging, payments, commerce, and support to happen within a single experience.

“The evidence is seen on our platform, with strong engagement across channels. Our Messaging Trends report highlights a 106% growth in interactions in 2025, nearly double that of the prior year,” adds Ruslana.  

Ruslana comments on what this channel diversity means for how Infobip operates across the region.

## Omnichannel becomes the new standard

As customers moved fluidly between apps, devices, and channels, businesses needed to rethink how they delivered consistent experiences.

Ruslana explains that organizations shifted from managing multiple communication channels to orchestrating connected customer journeys.

Today, businesses across APAC increasingly use channels such as WhatsApp, LINE, and RCS for conversational commerce, customer support, and proactive engagement. While RCS continues to gain gradual adoption in markets such as Indonesia and Singapore, similar omnichannel strategies are also gaining momentum across Eurasia as businesses expand their use of conversational messaging to deliver more connected customer experiences.

## From communication to intelligence

For Ruslana, AI represents the next evolution of customer engagement.

Rather than simply enabling conversations, businesses are now creating intelligent, context-aware experiences powered by customer data and AI.

The integration of customer data with AI models enables brands to create hyper-personalized interactions.

Ruslana emphasized Infobip's role in this transformation.

## The next 20 years

Looking ahead, Harsha and Ruslana believe the next 20 years will be defined by AI-powered, intelligent customer engagement, driven by expanding digital economies, mobile-first consumers, and stronger regional connectivity across Asia.

Platforms such as WhatsApp, WeChat, LINE, Telegram, and KakaoTalk will continue to shape how companies engage with customers, making real-time and conversational communication the standard. Businesses will increasingly rely on integrated platforms combining messaging, voice, video, and AI to deliver seamless customer experiences at scale.

At the same time, investments in cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and AI will strengthen digital communication across industries including banking, retail, healthcare, logistics, and public services. Asia is well positioned to lead the next generation of connected business communication.

AI will play a central role in this transformation by enabling faster responses, smarter customer engagement, multilingual communication, and more efficient business operations. At the same time, a human-in-the-loop approach will remain essential, ensuring that AI-driven communication is guided by human oversight, empathy, and decision-making where trust, complexity, and relationship management matter most.

As Infobip celebrates 20 years of innovation, one thing remains unchanged: our commitment to helping businesses create more meaningful customer conversations. The technologies may continue to evolve, but our focus stays the same: to help our customers build trusted, intelligent, and connected experiences for the next generation of communication.

Ready to build connected, AI-powered customer conversations?

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