The Evolution of Customer Communication in India: How Omnichannel Strategies Are Reshaping Engagement in Retail, Healthcare, and Fintech

✍️ Opinions

Sanvi Barjatya

11 Jun 2025 — 6 min read

The Evolution of Customer Communication in India, M. Imteyaz Ansari, Founder at Azmarq Technovation Pvt. Ltd

This article has been contributed by M. Imteyaz Ansari, Founder at Azmarq Technovation Pvt. Ltd.

Indian customer communication is rapidly changing due to the increased mobile use and evolving expectations. With over 500 million smartphone users and increased usage of digital channels, Indian customers now expect to receive instant, contextual, and frictionless experiences at every stage of their engagement with brands. This evolving thinking is driving companies away from monolithic, one-dimensional legacy customer service strategies towards wise, real-time omnichannel approaches. Using the WhatsApp Business API, Rich Communication Services (RCS), SMS, and AI-powered automation, companies are designing frictionless and connected customer experiences across touchpoints.

Omnichannel communication is no longer the exclusive domain of digitally native companies. It has become an imperative strategy across sectors spanning retail, healthcare, and fintech, each with a unique communications challenge that requires unique solutions. What unites them is the embracing of convenience and personalization through familiar interfaces that consumers already feel at ease with in everyday life.

Revolutionizing Retail: From Messaging App Browsing to Purchase

In shopping, the customer experience is increasingly influenced by digital discovery and instant gratification. Cart abandonment, disjointed shopping journeys, and disconnected service have been e-commerce and D2C brand challenges for millennia. However, omnichannel messaging platforms are bridging these gaps by allowing customers to interact, inquire, and even pay in a single thread of conversation.

One of India's top fashion brands, with high drop-offs and low conversion, approached WhatsApp Commerce for help in building an easier shopping experience. By incorporating a product catalog within WhatsApp, customers could scroll through collections, engage with support personnel, and make purchases using built-in UPI payment options from the same screen. Reminders for abandoned carts were automated via an AI-driven chatbot, and more challenging questions were answered by a live agent team via a shared inbox. A further level of user engagement was conducted by RCS campaigns, which pushed new collections through rich media and direct CTAs. The effect was noticeable: WhatsApp sales went up by 23%, cart abandonment dropped by 35%, and query resolution was four times quicker compared to using conventional support channels.

The change mirrors a general trend across Indian retail space, where the consumer wants not only product choice but also convenience of access and immediate service. Messaging commerce streamlines the purchase journey, uniting product discovery, guidance, and purchase into one continuous flow.

Healthcare Engagement: Making Access Timely and Efficient

The Indian healthcare sector is evolving to be more patient-centered, and digital communication is driving the change. The patients are seeking instant appointment scheduling, auto-reminders, and easy access to reports and payments without going through the cumbersome traditional ways. For healthcare practitioners, timely communication can be a great way of improving both operational efficiency and patient satisfaction.

One of India's top diagnostic chain networks, with a presence across several Indian cities, rolled out an omnichannel communication platform to manage inefficiencies in test bookings, billing, and patient follow-up. A chatbot built over WhatsApp was launched that enables the user to book a test appointment, get a confirmation, receive reminders, and pay through UPI, all within a single chat conversation. For more extensive support needs, queries were sent up to city-level agents through a centralized team mailbox. SMS served as a complementary channel for contacting patients who were inactive on WhatsApp, enabling ubiquitous reach.

The payoff was dramatic: appointment no-shows decreased by 60%, and 58% of total payments came in through WhatsApp UPI links. Turnaround for customer support also improved by 42% due to the smooth integration between live human agents and automated workflows. This example shows that healthcare organizations can support large volumes while not compromising on personalized service at scale through digital-first engagement.

Fintech: Automating Collections Without Losing the Human Touch

It is in fintech, and specifically in microfinance and lending online, that customers have to be constantly engaged. Unsolicited payment reminders, tedious KYC procedures, and unresponsive customer treatment can delay repayment cycles and create a loss of confidence. It is here that omnichannel approaches, particularly messaging-based ones, are turning out to be game-changers.

A small-ticket loan-based financial services company used a conversational communication strategy for EMI collections and documentation. Customers were automatically reminded via WhatsApp of the payment due, with every reminder message containing an intrinsic "Pay Now" UPI link, hence making payment easy. Onboarding, ranging from KYC submission to NACH form collection, was processed digitally using WhatsApp bots. An agent inbox facilitates agent intervention in case of complex queries or escalations. RCS enabled promotional and transactional notifications with a fallback option in the event of delivery failure on WhatsApp.

These efforts led to 45% of overall payments being made directly on WhatsApp, and the call center operational load decreased by 50%. Collection rates were not just improved, but also, there were more real-time, accessible, and transparent communication-based relationships. This is one such instance of how fintech players are able to humanize digital interaction and reach the scale of operations and compliance.

Key Enablers Behind the Omnichannel Revolution

Omnichannel initiatives like these are successful only if several technologies combine to build reach and responsiveness. WhatsApp Commerce puts product catalogs, customer experiences, and payment flows into one conversational interface. Built-in UPI payment integration makes it possible to make secure, real-time payments in accordance with India's increasingly digital payments culture.

AI chatbot creators, in the form of low-code deployment with local language capability, allow companies to build automated workflows that touch the hearts of local people. Shared inboxes facilitated as multi-agent systems allow questions to be solved instantly through contextual handovers. Intelligent fallbacks, which automatically switch over to RCS or SMS, ensure continuity of communication. Lastly, analytics and performance dashboards offer rich insights into user behavior, campaign effectiveness, and operational metrics, making continuous optimization possible.

These technologies all enable scalable, cost-effective, and human-focused communication strategies that are required to reach the demands of India's high-speed and heterogeneous marketplace.

Why Omnichannel Communication Is Needed in India Today

Today's customers do not want to switch over to a brand's channel of communication; they want brands to come in where they are already present. Getting a check-up for medical well-being, buying something, or taking care of a loan account, customers want quick, natural, and timely messaging. Omnichannel services fulfill this requirement by combining automation with human interaction on all mass-market messaging channels.

The effect goes beyond convenience. Companies using these frameworks are experiencing higher customer satisfaction, reduced resolution times, higher conversion rates, and substantial cost savings. More significantly, they are creating long-term loyalty by providing consistent, high-quality interaction across each point of contact.

Conversations That Drive Results

The future of customer conversation in India is smart and conversational. With increasing digital literacy and a mobile-first approach among customers, the demand for real-time, personalized conversations will rise even higher. Those companies that shift their models from reactive to proactive, result-driven engagement models will be the most advantaged.

Whether retail recovery of lost sales, streamlining operational delays in healthcare, or speeding up collections in fintech, the move toward omnichannel communications is not just an innovation but a business necessity. The power to convert ordinary conversations into significant results will shape the customer experience of the next generation. As India keeps going at a fast pace in a state of digitization, those businesses that adopt omnichannel platforms now are the ones that will be ruling tomorrow, not only sending messages but also with calculable consequences.