When was the last time a decision maker answered your first e-mail?
Indeed, the times have changed. To attract the attention of Partner executives in Asia, sales and marketing teams need original and novel lines of communication. So you want to ensure that your teams are fully trained in using the latest tools and technology, and they can adapt to change.
One game-changer is the move from telephone and email as the principal modes of communication to messaging app’s, which rendered partner communications almost instantaneous.
It’s important to mention as well as vital for you to appreciate that different cultures have adopted messaging app’s to vastly varying degrees. Japan, for example, has hardly adopted messaging app’s into business. India, China, Korea and Australasia have a higher uptake of messaging app’s into business, so, for example, one person in every three in India already uses mobile payment and for 90%, messaging app’s are in general use.
The highest adoption rate of messaging app’s into business is in Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore.
The platforms adopted by the various Asian countries vary too. WhatsApp is present in every region, for example but which app each country prefers is different: in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines & Singapore, it’s WhatsApp, whereas in Vietnam, it’s Zalo, Line in Japan, Taiwan and Thailand, WeChat/QQ in China and Kakao in Korea.
Behind the figures of highly varying degrees of adoption is the underlying fact that messaging has been adopted as the chosen mode of business communication in Asia.
For example, where social has been adopted the most, the social apps leading it are primarily for messaging – and, in fact, the only exceptions in the top 8 are countries where local monopolies exist (Korea and China with their KakaoTalk and WeChat respectively). Also remarkable is the dominance of Facebook within these apps, with the exception of China, where Facebook is blocked. Of the most used platforms or messaging apps, each of these countries uses at least two Facebook apps. WeChat (China) and Line (Japan, Thailand and to a lesser extent Indonesia and South Korea) are the next most popular, which are services almost exclusive to the far east.
The driver behind this is no doubt the fact that business people in Asia are not office-bound. They travel and they take their communications devices with them. They need to be portable, so the PC gave way to the laptop which has in its turn gave way to the mobile phone. They conduct business meetings on the phone, supplementing them with data via their messaging apps. Your business partners will expect you to, too. Write an article like this by all means in the office (phew for that!) but share it and talk about it on your mobile!
