OpenMarket's New Consumer Survey Reveals Massive Missed Customer Engagement Opportunity for Enterprises Not Leveraging SMS Chatbots

Financial Services, Travel and Hospitality and Retail are the Most Cited Markets in Need of an SMS-Powered Chatbot Strategy

SEATTLE, Jan. 17, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- OpenMarket, a leader in enterprise mobile engagement, today revealed the results of its new global chatbots report. The company polled 1,500 mobile users in the US and UK on their current experiences with, and preferences for, engaging with businesses via chatbots and SMS text messaging. The results reveal that across the board, there's a vast opportunity for businesses to harness SMS-powered chatbots to enhance customer satisfaction and ultimately evoke better overall customer loyalty. The findings discovered that financial services is the top industry in which consumers would like to see better customer experiences and engagement opportunities via SMS (49 percent), followed by retail (27 percent) and travel and hospitality (24 percent).

As more enterprises look to leverage SMS-powered chatbots as a way to promote two-way communications with customers in 2017, OpenMarket's chatbot survey gathered insights on consumer communication preferences for interacting with preferred businesses. The survey also identified what consumers find most valuable in their ability to correspond with them, and why. The results revealed that across the globe, mobile consumers find it would be "very useful" to be able to respond conversationally via SMS with preferred businesses in all three surveyed industry verticals: financial institutions (63 percent), travel and hospitality companies (54 percent), and retailers (67 percent). When asked why consumers found it useful to text for business services over other communication channels, nearly half (45 percent) of respondents pointed to "not getting put on hold," "doing it on my own time," and "taking my time to respond" as the top three factors for choosing text messaging.

"Chatbots are getting a lot of attention on the promise of transforming customer interactions, yet to date, there's been little insight from consumers themselves supporting whether or not they would find value in chatbots as a way to communicate with brands," said Jay Emmet, general manager for OpenMarket. "The survey findings prove that chatbots are more than a short-lived fad. They are an untapped mobile engagement solution that consumers and business could benefit from both from a convnience and financial perspective – a strategy that businesses should be incorporating into their 2017 customer experience initiatives."

Additional key findings from OpenMarket's chatbot survey include:

• Despite that nearly half (49 percent) of consumers want to engage more conversationally with businesses through SMS, 50 percent of them are not even currently receiving SMS notifications from their financial institutions.
• Travel and hospitality businesses are missing the mark the most on customer engagement opportunities, with 75 percent of consumers not currently receiving SMS notifications from companies such as hotels, airlines and train operators. Retailers are also not meeting consumer preferences, with 62 percent of consumers not currently receiving SMS notifications from their preferred retailers.
• The age of those polled ranged from 18 to over 60 years old—signifying the preferences for conversational SMS capabilities across not only specific industries, but also generations.

To download the chatbot infographic, visit http://www.openmarket.com/resources/infographics/sms-chatbots-infographic/.

About OpenMarket 
OpenMarket, a division of Amdocs, helps enterprises use mobile to transform their business. OpenMarket provides mobile engagement solutions for organizations to optimize their operations and enhance relationships with their customers and employees. Major enterprises choose OpenMarket for our domain expertise, service flexibility, demonstrated performance and reliability, global scale, and corporate maturity. We provide smart, interactive connectivity to more than 200 countries, enabling businesses to engage with nearly every mobile user around the world. Our clients trust us to power their mobile business. For more information, visit www.openmarket.com.

About Amdocs
Amdocs is the market leader in customer experience software solutions and services for the world's largest communications, entertainment and media service providers. For more than 30 years, Amdocs solutions, which include BSS, OSS, network control, optimization and network functions virtualization, coupled with professional and managed services, have accelerated business value for its customers by simplifying business complexity, reducing costs and delivering a world-class customer experience.

The Amdocs portfolio enables service providers to capture the world of digital immediacy by operating across digital dimensions to engage customers with personalized, omni-channel experiences; creating a diversified business to capture new revenue streams; becoming data empowered to make business and operational decisions based on insight-based and predictive analytics; and achieving service agility to accelerate the fast rollout of new technologies and hybrid network services.

Amdocs and its 25,000 employees serve customers in over 90 countries. Listed on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, Amdocs had revenue of $3.7 billion in fiscal 2016.

Amdocs: Embrace Challenge, Experience Success.

For more information, visit Amdocs at www.amdocs.com.

Amdocs' Forward-Looking Statement
This press release includes information that constitutes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about Amdocs' growth and business results in future quarters. Although we believe the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, we can give no assurance that our expectations will be obtained or that any deviations will not be material. Such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ from those anticipated. These risks include, but are not limited to, the effects of general economic conditions, Amdocs' ability to grow in the business markets that it serves, Amdocs' ability to successfully integrate acquired businesses, adverse effects of market competition, rapid technological shifts that may render the Company's products and services obsolete, potential loss of a major customer, our ability to develop long-term relationships with our customers, and risks associated with operating businesses in the international market. Amdocs may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future; however, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These and other risks are discussed at greater length in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including in our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2016 filed on December 12, 2016.

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