WhatsApp isn’t just for chats, it’s becoming the new customer journey

For years, marketers have tried to meet consumers where they are. Right now, that “where” is less inbox, less home page, less feed, and a lot more chat bubble.

Across Southeast Asia, messaging apps such as WhatsApp have quietly become the default layer of daily life. Not just for the “Hey, are you free later?” but for everything from shopping to delivery tracking to customer service. The result is a fundamental rethink of what the customer experience actually means.

Unlike more mature desktop-led markets, much of Southeast Asia moved straight into mobile-first behaviour, with WhatsApp already embedded in how people co-ordinate with family, settle bills, and make decisions. It was not a channel brands designed into the marketing funnel, but one they are now catching up to.

And the expectation is already clear. A Meta and Kantar study found that 73% of online adults want to message businesses the same way they message friends and family. As that line between personal and commercial conversations blurs, traditional channels alone can no longer carry the full weight of the customer experience.

When speed becomes the experience

Email remains one of marketers' most important channels, but customer expectations have evolved.

The challenge often appears during moments of high intent. Whether a consumer has abandoned a cart, is considering a purchase or is waiting for an order to arrive, speed matters.

As Germaine Tay, head of marketing, Asia at Klaviyo, puts it: “Email is not the problem. Treating email as the only tool for every moment is."

“The breakdown happens in high-intent moments – abandoned carts, pre-purchase questions and post-order reassurance. These reward speed and conversational ease.”

In many cases, consumers simply want answers quickly. A delayed response can mean the difference between a completed purchase and a lost sale.

In Southeast Asia’s mobile-first economy, where more than 70% of eCommerce transactions happen on mobile, customers are constantly bouncing between apps, tabs and chats before they finally commit. Increasingly, it is messaging that resolves that hesitation or allows it to quietly disappear.

The strongest use cases do not treat WhatsApp as another promotional channel. Instead, it becomes a layer for timely, contextual interaction at moments where immediacy matters most, whether that is a reminder that an item is still sitting in a cart or a proactive delivery update before customers even ask for it.

“A good WhatsApp experience does not feel like a campaign,” Tay emphasised. “What makes this work is that WhatsApp cannot operate in a silo. When the marketing message, the support reply and the order update all come from the same thread – informed by the same customer data – the experience feels continuous.”

Why conversation drives conversion

The obvious appeal of conversational channels is engagement. The less obvious one is performance.

Klaviyo’s Southeast Asia WhatsApp quick-start guide shows WhatsApp consistently outperforming both email and SMS across key metrics. Email open rates tend to sit between 35% and 45%, while WhatsApp can reach up to 98%. Click-through rates follow a similar pattern.

But the story is not just about higher numbers. It is about reducing the distance between interest and action.

In that sense, messaging helps eliminate one of the biggest barriers to conversion: uncertainty. By placing product information, calls to action and response options within a single conversation thread, WhatsApp can significantly shorten the path from consideration to purchase.

Some early results back that up. Nutrition brand Jimmy Joy used WhatsApp as an exclusive early-access layer for its Black Friday Cyber Monday campaign. It reached less than 5% of its marketing list, but drove nearly 30% of Klaviyo-attributed revenue.

Loop Earplugs, meanwhile, saw a 22% opt-in rate among existing customers and generated twice the revenue per recipient compared to SMS.

Closer to home, furniture brand Omnidesk reported a 63-times return on investment within its first five months using WhatsApp through Klaviyo.

"WhatsApp through Klaviyo has been the highest-ROI channel we've activated in years. For SEA brands, it's not a nice-to-have anymore, it's where the customer actually is, and Klaviyo made it operational in days instead of quarters,” said Benjamin Huang, managing director and co-founder, Omnidesk.

Still, there is a fine line between helpful and intrusive. People who opt into WhatsApp are not simply opting into another marketing channel. They are allowing brands into a far more personal space, and that privilege can quickly erode when messaging becomes excessive, irrelevant or disruptive.

The challenge is no longer channel choice

The real problem now is not which channel to use. It is what happens when none of them talk to each other.

Customers do not care whether it was email, WhatsApp or a help desk ticket. They just expect the brand to remember them.

“When your email platform does not know what your WhatsApp tool sent yesterday, and your support help desk has no visibility into either, the customer pays the price,” Tay said.

That usually shows up as duplicated messages, irrelevant offers or the classic “sorry, can you repeat that?” moment in customer support.

Increasingly, the smarter play is not channel optimisation. It is a connection between channels.

“The brands winning right now understood this before it became consensus,” Tay said. “The ones struggling are still treating WhatsApp as a broadcast channel with a green logo.”

Because in the end, no one is thinking in channels. They are just in a conversation with a brand and noticing when it stops making sense.

Ready to unlock the power of WhatsApp with Klaviyo? Download this free e-book to discover proven strategies, real-world use cases, and a 30-day launch plan.

This article was written in collaboration with Klaviyo.