rather.chat is proud to be a leading pioneer in the South African smartbot industry, connecting over 22 million South Africans to businesses through smartbot technology, resulting in 250 000 unique sales, with 85 percent of them concluded without any human intervention.
Smartbots – otherwise known as AI-powered chatbots – are the latest wave of technology that is dramatically redefining the e-commerce landscape by bringing products and financial services much closer to the customer than ever before, meeting the customer on their terms and in their time through Whatsapp chat, and by engaging customers in an active, linear conversation without the scripted responses that have characterised the chatbots of yesteryear.
With the general customer class of 2025 now fully exposed to online shopping, digital services, and social media, this ‘electronic overload’ has reconditioned humans to desire instant gratification.
“Businesses can no longer rely on just selling a product or service. More are realising that to outcompete rivals, they must also sell convenience. Standard e-commerce alone will not cut it anymore. With customer demand and patience moving further in opposite directions, online browsing is also becoming a tiresome exercise. Smartbots are instrumental in realigning convenience in this evolving digital age and helping customers get to their desires a lot faster through chat commerce,” says Jonathan Elcock, Co-founder and CEO at rather.chat
Taking this further, Whatsapp has been an influential platform in fully realising the scalability of smartbots and has become the face of chat commerce. The app has moved beyond just a messaging platform and has essentially become a new trusted digital marketplace by housing smartbots for businesses.
“Businesses can no longer rely on just selling a product or service. More are realising that to outcompete rivals, they must also sell convenience. Standard e-commerce alone will not cut it anymore. With customer demand and patience moving further in opposite directions, online browsing is also becoming a tiresome exercise. Smartbots are instrumental in realigning convenience in this evolving digital age and helping customers get to their desires a lot faster through chat commerce,” says Jonathan Elcock, Co-founder and CEO at rather.chat
Taking this further, Whatsapp has been an influential platform in fully realising the scalability of smartbots and has become the face of chat commerce. The app has moved beyond just a messaging platform and has essentially become a new trusted digital marketplace by housing smartbots for businesses.
Elcock adds that “traditional customer sales channels such as SMS, email, and call centres that are perceived as a cheaper alternative to newer technologies, are not providing the sales results needed to keep businesses profitable. In fact, when businesses try to call their customers, they fail to reach 30% to 40% of them. This results in a low return of investment, forcing businesses to invest more heavily on top of funnel activity by allocating more resources to increase customer leads to counterbalance the lost conversions. This effectively becomes a vicious cycle of profit burning, and risks the business becoming redundant.”
On the other hand, smartbots can significantly boost engagement and enhance customer satisfaction, leading to a potential 300% increase in customer leads. rather.chat has been instrumental in helping businesses improve their sales through WhatsApp smartbots.
“If a customer of today is needing a haircut and faced with two options – phone hairdresser A to book an appointment or book an appointment automatically with hairdresser B’s Whatsapp smartbot, they are more likely to go for the second because of the convenience offered. Phone calls are not always answered by businesses, whereas smartbots on WhatsApp provide instant responses,” Elcock describes.
“Smartbots, and especially the products offered by rather.chat are not just about handling complex online sales. There is versatility in the technology extending to customer service, customer feedback, and customer data management. Think of how hairdresser B’s smartbot automatically picks up a trend from the customer data that there were approximately 10 new customers that requested a trim within the same month. From this information, the hairdresser can decide to schedule the WhatsApp smartbot to contact the same customers in about two months’ time, offering them all a tailored discount on another trim. This draws these new customers back to the same business, cementing further customer sales conversions over time,” Elcock continues.
“Smartbot technology has become the principal sales conversion tool of successful businesses. Customers are demanding faster results. It is up to businesses whether they want to give to them by embracing newer technologies or hold onto methods that are fast becoming obsolete and guaranteed to harm profits,” Elcock concluded.
