Elevating CX Using Apple Messages for Business

As digital communication evolves, customers increasingly want trusted and feature-rich interactions. Whether they’re in Maps or Safari, iOS users expect experiences infused with flexibility, context and security. Apple Messages for Business enables companies to connect with their customers through the Messages app, using a messaging service provider platform as the bridge.

This article serves as a guide to using Apple Messages for Business for your customer experience needs, covering strategy, interactive features and best practices.

Map Customer Journeys Across Apple Entry Points

Apple Messages for Business conversations start when a consumer clicks a specially formatted URL, seamlessly opening the Messages app on their iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Begin by mapping the points where customers are most likely to start a conversation with your brand, such as:

• Your website
• Social channels
• Links in text messages
• QR codes in physical locations (stores, signage, product packaging)

The Apple ecosystem also unlocks unique, high-value entry points that blend naturally into everyday user behavior:

• A customer taps your Apple Maps business listing
• Someone requests help during a Safari session
• Built-in deflection through Message Suggest proactively offers messaging as an option when customers call your support line

To make these interactions even more impactful, customize your Apple Messages for Business URLs with intent and group-id values. These parameters let you direct customers to the right queue or agent group instantly, while also pre-setting the context of the conversation — whether it’s support, billing or sales. The result: faster, more relevant responses for customers — and streamlined efficiency for your teams.

Deliver Interactive Experiences

To deliver more than text and buttons, you can use bot flows in Apple Messages for Business to help deliver more engaging experiences. These flows enable brands to present personalized options, such as rich links, tapback reactions and typing indicators, directly within the conversation thread.

Apple Messages for Business also supports advanced interactive features that enable personalized booking suites or interactive menus within the conversation thread. Once the user finishes interacting, traditional messaging continues seamlessly. Explore the full list of interactive experiences on the Apple developer site.

Examples of interactive elements include:

• Forms: Build rich, multi-page experiences where customers can provide detailed information.
• Time picker: Let customers schedule appointments or meetings by selecting from available time slots. The time picker can display conflicts in the customer’s local calendar, helping them choose the best option. After confirming, they can tap the message bubble to view location details, get directions or add the event to their calendar.
• List picker: Offer a menu of items with names, descriptions and images. Customers can select one or more options to include in their reply.

Let’s explore two advanced interactive message types available to brands looking to maximize their Apple Messages experience.

Best Practices for Apple Messages for Business

Beyond the technical setup, success with Apple Messages for Business comes from how you design the experience. Here are some proven ways to elevate your strategy and get the most out of this channel.

Start with Use Case Definitions

Before enabling Apple Messages for Business, identify the specific customer journeys and business objectives the channel will support. Example use cases include:

• Streamlined data collection with quick replies, list pickers and forms
• Post-purchase updates or appointment scheduling
• Secure inquiries with identity verification
• Payments with Apple Pay over bot conversations

Clearly defining use cases ensures your deployment is purposeful and aligns with customer expectations.

Train Agents on Managing Conversations

To deliver a consistent and high-quality customer experience over Apple Messages for Business, it’s critical to ensure that agents are well-prepared to manage these interactions. Unlike traditional live chat sessions, Apple Messages for Business interactions are asynchronous and persistent. That means conversations can span hours or even days. This requires agents to develop comfort with managing longer, context-rich threads that may include multiple interactions over time.

To help agents perform better with these conversations, you should ensure that agents can view complete historical context all in one continuous timeline through your messaging service provider. That should include giving agents the ability to view past messages, bot interactions and user-submitted data. Not doing so runs the risk of agents having to ask customers to repeat information they have previously given, which is a recipe for customer frustration.

Agents should also be familiar with specific capabilities available to bots when interacting through Apple Messages for Business, particularly features such as time pickers and Apple Pay integration. While agents themselves don’t have access to all features, such as not being able to directly initiate or process Apple Pay transactions, it’s important that they understand the customer journey leading up to the handoff.

For example, a customer might have already completed a purchase or selected a time slot using a picker via the bot before being transferred to a live agent. Understanding these actions allows agents to provide more informed, relevant support and helps reduce the need to ask the customer to repeat steps they’ve already taken.

Expand and Scale

Launching Apple Messages for Business is just the start. To deliver truly differentiated customer experiences, it’s time to think bigger.

• Combine Apple Messages for Business with WhatsApp, SMS and web messaging to create a cohesive cross-channel strategy that meets customers wherever they are.
• Maximize every interaction using AI-driven assistance. Provide personalized, context-rich responses at scale, while reducing handling time and improving consistency across Apple Messages for Business and other channels.

The Value of Native Integration

The Genesys Cloud™ platform offers native support for Apple Messages for Business to enable secure and fluid customer conversations across the iOS ecosystem while leveraging powerful tools like Apple Pay into one integrated platform.

Native Apple Messages for Business support transforms how you engage with Apple users. With this integration, Genesys Cloud becomes your hub for managing customer-initiated conversations across the Apple ecosystem. Customers can easily start a conversation with your brand through Maps, Safari, Siri and more, while you maintain complete conversational context across iPhones, iPads and Macs.

With Genesys, agents will also handle Apple Messages for Business conversations through the Genesys Cloud agent workspace, which offers a familiar and intuitive interface designed to streamline workflows. This is the same workspace used across virtually all CX channels as well, from voice communication, to email, SMS and more.

Genesys Cloud also automatically threads each conversation over Apple Messages for Business, ensuring that agents can view complete historical context all in one continuous timeline. That includes past messages, bot interactions and user-submitted data.

All elements of the conversation, including rich media, are captured in the agent and supervisor transcripts with date and time stamps. This provides agents with full context to agents during the interaction and clear record for supervisors afterwards.

The result is a consistent, premium experience across every customer touchpoint.

To see how your organization can improve experiences with Apple Messages for Business integration with Genesys Cloud, request a demo today.