WhatsApp is becoming retail's favorite sales associate, report finds

New research from cloud communications platform Infobip and consultancy Retail Economics finds that the "broadcast" model of customer engagement is being replaced by a conversational, AI-driven relationship layer — with WhatsApp emerging as the channel to beat.

The messaging platform commands open rates of 85 to 95 percent, the report finds, dwarfing the 32.7 percent open rate for email in e-commerce. Unlike traditional push channels, where volume drives reach, WhatsApp engagement is driven by relevance. The format allows brands to guide customers from consideration to purchase within a single thread that maintains context over time.

The findings arrive as consumer channel preferences fragment along generational lines. "A 'one-size-fits-all' approach to communication no longer works," said Richard Lim, CEO of Retail Economics, in a statement. While Baby Boomers are twice as likely to prefer email, Gen Z has scattered across channels, with 24 percent now favoring WhatsApp and SMS for deliveries and returns. WhatsApp, Lim noted, is the rare outlier showing consistent engagement across every age group, becoming "a unique bridge across a diversifying digital landscape."

The economics of answering customers at scale may no longer hold. "We're no longer building call centres; we're building decision trees with an escape hatch," said Kim Johal, retail specialist at Infobip, pointing to AI handling routine queries such as order tracking. The result, Johal said, is a 24/7 sales-associate experience that can prove its return on investment in as little as 60 days.

Industry polling cited in the report suggests 88 percent of retailers have begun exploring conversational AI, yet none report being fully integrated across the entire customer journey. With email open rates falling and consumer attention fragmenting, the researchers argue, the cost of standing still has now surpassed the cost of transformation. The winners, the report concludes, will be the retailers that stop treating messaging as a broadcast button and start treating it as a relationship.