In today’s hyperconnected world, precision communication is essential. Executives and teams spend hours daily managing a flood of emails, messages, and calls. Yet this overload presents an opportunity: leveraging AI-powered messaging tools and integrated platforms to streamline workflows, strengthen customer relationships, and drive growth. This article explores how organisations can cut through the clutter to master messaging, transforming engagement with employees and customers for lasting success. It also looks at future messaging trends to help businesses stay ahead.
The Communication Time Crunch: Where Do Professionals Spend Their Hours?
Professionals, from managers to frontline staff, spend about 5 hours or more daily on emails, messaging, social media, and meetings. With hybrid work becoming the standard, businesses must select the appropriate channels for internal and external communication and choose platforms that can automate processing.
Table 1: Daily communication time by channel.
Professionals spend an average of three hours daily (between 2.7 and 3.1 hours) communicating through email and messaging applications. Additionally, they dedicate around 2.5 hours (ranging from 2.3 to 2.7 hours) to social media and meetings. Given the significant time invested in these activities, it’s essential to explore ways to simplify, automate, and streamline the communication process.
Professionals spend around three hours daily communicating via emails and messaging apps.
Outside the office environment, messaging remains the top mobile activity for 83% of consumers, outpacing social media (75%) and email (66%), underscoring the ever-growing dominance of messaging.
Messaging is the top mobile activity for consumers, surpassing social media and email.
Email Innovation: The Promising Role of AI in Enhancing Communication Efficiency
Email and SMS messaging services have reached maturity:
- Email was developed in the 1960s, but it gained significant momentum with the advent of the Internet in the 1990s. It now handles over 376 billion messages daily worldwide, remaining indispensable for formal communication and marketing.
- Short Message Service (SMS) was introduced as part of the GSM standard in the 1990s, and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) was introduced later, with the first commercial launches taking place in 2002, enabling the sending of images, audio, and video alongside text. There are around 25 billion daily messages worldwide.
Email’s Steady Growth and AI-Driven Enhancements
Email traffic, though mature, is projected to grow steadily by 3–4% annually, reaching 420–440 billion daily messages by 2029. AI tools, such as Smart Compose, Autocomplete, Automated Replies, Auto-Sorting & Prioritisation, and AI-driven summaries, are making emails more straightforward to write and manage. Meanwhile, improved spam and phishing protections enhance security.
AI tools like Smart Compose, Auto-Sorting, and AI Summaries are making managing emails faster and smarter.
RCS and Business Messaging: The Exciting Future of Richer, Personalised Customer Engagement
Rich Communication Services (RCS), developed by the GSMA, enhances traditional SMS and MMS by offering rich and interactive messaging experiences similar to those found in popular messaging applications. RCS serves as an appealing alternative for communication since users do not need to install additional apps. Companies can leverage RCS Business Messaging (RBM) to send branded and dynamic communications that include carousels, interactive buttons, and real-time updates.
Table 2: What are RCS and RBM.
RCS (Rich Communication Services) was first launched by Google in 2018, but it initially faced limited adoption. However, the situation changed in 2024 when Apple added support for RCS on iPhones, leading to a significant increase in its popularity. By mid-2025, it is expected that approximately 50 billion RCS business messages will be sent worldwide, representing a 50% increase from the previous year. The anticipated growth assumes that operators will support Apple’s integration of RCS into their networks. According to Juniper Research, the RCS Business Messaging (RBM) market is projected to experience rapid growth, with message volume expected to rise by 370% over the next five years (from 2025 to 2030).
The RBM market is predicted to grow by 370% in message volume over the next five years (2025–2030).
Leading Messaging Apps: Platforms Powering Global Communication
There are approximately 3.5 billion unique messaging app users worldwide, a figure that highlights both enormous reach and considerable overlap, as many individuals use multiple platforms. This fragmentation makes accurate market share calculations difficult, so all estimated user numbers should be interpreted with caution.
- Meta’s platforms: The market leader, WhatsApp, offers simple, privacy-focused communication worldwide, while Facebook Messenger integrates deeply into social ecosystems, providing enriched business capabilities.
- WeChat: Tencent’s super app seamlessly integrates chat, payments, social, e-commerce, and services, primarily anchoring daily life in China.
- Telegram: widely regarded as a leading secure messaging app known for confident, specialised messaging and community-building features.
- Line dominates Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand, combining messaging with commerce and digital content, firmly establishing itself as a mature regional super app.
Table 3: Global User Numbers of Leading Messaging Apps (2025)
Dual domination. WeChat dominates China’s messaging market with over 90% penetration among smartphone users, though its reach among all internet users is around 73–74%. Outside China, WhatsApp leads globally, with approximately 69% penetration among internet users, and remains banned within China.
Security First: Building Trust in AI-Driven Messaging
As brands move from SMS to more advanced, AI-driven messaging formats like RCS and RBM, ensuring security becomes crucial. The richer messages are more complex and interactive, which could provide criminals with more opportunities for exploitation. Success in this new landscape depends on implementing robust protections against fraud, spam, and misuse to maintain user trust and sustain these communication channels.
Tech Titans Driving Messaging Innovation in 2025
In 2025, major tech companies are shaping messaging through key initiatives:
- Meta advances AI features and business messaging on WhatsApp and Messenger, including new integrations like WhatsApp buttons on Google Business profiles and enhanced calling options for larger brands.
- Tencent dominates China’s market with WeChat, a super app that combines messaging, payments, social, and e-commerce, as well as QQ, which has over 500 million users.
- Google leads RCS adoption on Android, improving security, rich media, and AI-powered tools in its Messages app.
- Apple is expected to introduce interoperable, end-to-end encrypted RCS support with iOS 19, enhancing cross-platform messaging.
- Microsoft focuses on AI-driven, multichannel communication within Teams tailored for enterprises.
Together, these efforts create a unified, intelligent, and secure messaging ecosystem for businesses and consumers worldwide.
The Future of Customer Engagement: Seamless, Instant, Personalised
Today’s customers expect fast, simple, and personalised interactions. Imagine asking a question on WhatsApp, for example, about a stunning pearl necklace, and instantly receiving an AI-driven reply with video demos, allowing you to complete your purchase directly in the chat. You then receive an RBM with order details and rescheduling options, along with an email summary that includes receipts, warranty certificates, and offers, all synced to your profile. This seamless experience makes shopping not just trustworthy and straightforward, but truly enjoyable.
Customer-first businesses are integrating messaging, payments, and commerce into cohesive experiences. As leaders in e-commerce and finance raise the bar, seamless, personalised communication becomes the standard. Other industries are expected to follow suit quickly.
Messaging Strategies Today: Balancing Reach, Flexibility, and Privacy
Today’s messaging ecosystem centres on three strategies addressing diverse needs:
- Super Apps, such as WeChat in China, unite chat, payments, social, and commerce into seamless ecosystems, thriving in mobile-first and emerging markets. Line, Grab, Gojek, and Paytm also lead the way in multi-service platforms.
- Unified Communication Platforms (UCP) are built on CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) cloud-based platforms, such as Twilio and Vonage. They integrate SMS, WhatsApp, email, and RCS, allowing businesses to personalise and scale multichannel customer engagement without being locked into a single app. They act like an orchestra conductor, coordinating channels into a seamless experience.
- Privacy-focused apps, such as Telegram and Signal, prioritise encrypted, tailored communication, appealing to security-conscious users and niche communities.
While super apps offer simplicity inside their ecosystems, UCPs are vital globally to maintain personalised, multichannel conversations across platforms. Together, these strategies strike a balance between consumer demand for ease and business needs for reach, flexibility, and growth.
2025 Messaging Trends: AI, Rich Media, and Unified Communications
Key trends reshaping messaging in 2025 include:
- Artificial Intelligence Integration: AI chatbots and agents draft messages, moderate tone, translate in real time, and anticipate needs, offering 24/7 support and automating tasks to boost personalisation and efficiency.
- Rise of Conversational Commerce: Especially strong in Asia, this enables customers to browse, order, and make purchases entirely within messaging apps, making it essential for businesses to adopt this approach.
- Expansion of Unified Communication Platforms (CPaaS): CPaaS unifies SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, and email into scalable platforms for personalised, contextual communication at scale.
- Heightened Focus on Privacy and Compliance: With regulations like GDPR and PDPA, organisations prioritise secure, transparent messaging to maintain trust and compliance.
Key Messaging Trends Business Leaders Should Not Overlook
- Increasing adoption of Rich Communication Services (RCS) for enhanced SMS experiences.
- Expansion of AI-powered chatbots on platforms like WhatsApp Business and Line Official.
- Utilisation of Communication Platform (UCP) solutions for seamless multichannel engagement.
- AI-driven hyper-personalisation enhances response rates and conversions.
- Adherence to global privacy and data regulations is essential.
Understanding and staying ahead of these trends is essential for businesses to maintain competitiveness.
SME Playbook: Preparing for the Messaging Evolution in 2025
Every SME should take the following steps:
- Map All Customer Communication Channels: Identify and document all channels used for customer communication, including email, SMS/RCS, messaging applications, and social media platforms.
- Ensure Data Privacy: Comply with data privacy regulations, such as the GDPR and PDPA, as well as other relevant local laws and regulations.
- Develop a Unified Messaging Strategy: Create a comprehensive messaging strategy with clear goals. Consider utilising CPaaS (Communications Platform as a Service) or CRM integrations to streamline your approach.
Prioritising Messaging Modernisation: Industry-Specific Roadmaps
Some industries are already leading the way in messaging innovation. Act swiftly to stay competitive. Companies in parentheses are examples already adopting these advances.
- Immediate Priority: E-commerce and retail (Amazon, Shopify), food delivery and mobility (Grab, Gojek), fintech (Revolut, Paytm, Enfuce), travel (Expedia, Booking.com), gaming (Supercell), telecoms (Vodafone, Nokia), and smart city (Cisco, Kone) require unified, AI-driven, compliant multichannel messaging to meet customer engagement and security needs.
- Near-Term (1–2 years): Healthcare and telemedicine (Teladoc Health, Ping An Good Doctor), education (Coursera, Byju’s), logistics and manufacturing (DHL, Maersk) should develop messaging roadmaps and deploy AI chat and unified platforms.
- Moderate Priority (2+ years): Speciality retail, B2B firms with low messaging needs, and SMEs in limited markets can transition gradually. Businesses in competitive markets must incorporate digital communication and messaging into their strategies, whereas those in niche or less competitive sectors may be able to delay adoption.
Strategic, timely action enables SMEs to transform messaging complexity into customer value and growth.
Girl With a Pearl Necklace
Looking Ahead: Embracing the Future of Messaging and Communication
Messaging and email have become intertwined, transforming operations and customer experiences. AI, RCS, super apps, and unified platforms enable richer and personalised interactions that boost loyalty and efficiency. Leaders must embrace these evolving tools to deliver seamless, meaningful experiences in a hyperconnected world.
Cut through the noise: precision communication is your grandest business advantage.
Written by Antti Rahikainen, featuring visuals generated with AI.
Source List
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