Conversive is a new conversational messaging platform that enables businesses to cultivate meaningful one-on-one conversations by handling inquiries through intelligent, risk-free, and personalized interactions available 24/7 across multichannel touchpoints. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Conversive co-founder and CEO Nitin Seth to learn more about the company.
Nitin Seth’s Background
Can you expand on your industry background prior to Conversive? Seth said:
“I’m from an engineering background — I graduated from IIT Bombay. The entrepreneurial bug hit me early on in my professional career due to my colleagues and my friend circle and the fact that my alma mater always encouraged it.”
“From that experience working at other companies, I began to build competence and data expertise around communication, CRM, and customer interactions. That’s been my forte throughout my founding journey, plus past experiences developing partnerships with large companies and taking products to market.”
“So, I’m a techie turned entrepreneur, which has helped me build robust products, like what we’re doing at Conversive. We’re currently implementing AI to transform our conversational messaging product into AI-first communication.”
Formation Of Conversive
How did Conversive come into the picture? Seth shared:
“We found that communication platforms for enterprises to communicate with their consumers is currently a very fragmented industry — and we made it our mission to fix this. Plenty of communication channels between brands and consumers are available, but they don’t connect well to each other, which negatively impacts the customer experience.”
“This challenge has grown exponentially since the pandemic because there has been a disruption in digital channels — customers want a digital-first approach but businesses haven’t fully adjusted to this demand yet.”
“Today, any consumer with a smartphone receives a lot of messages, whether it’s SMS, emails, calls, or even LinkedIn messages. Businesses have attempted to meet customers’ “digital-first” needs which has significantly increased the levels of scattered and disconnected communications. As a result, consumer protection regulations like GDPR are also going through the roof to protect consumer privacy and peace of mind. So we believe there’s a need for every business, from enterprise to SMB, to better manage and streamline their communication with regulations in mind.”
“That’s how Conversive was born. We already had a messaging tools company called SMS Magic where we were already working with businesses to deliver SMS messaging. With our 15 years of SMS Magic experience, we worked to solve how the fragmented messaging industry could actually work more intelligently to elevate positive customer experiences. Now, we’re infusing AI and advanced customer messaging technology and automation to service modern clients. So, with Conversive, we can run a business’ entire messaging traffic across different channels from within one platform, and ensure the customer experience at every touchpoint is always positive, trusted, and valued.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Seth’s favorite memory working at Conversive so far? Seth reflected:
“A customer we recently met with was looking for exactly what Conversive does. That’s honestly my favorite moment: knowing there’s a real demand for features that are already in our roadmap. It’s like a wow moment. Companies increasingly want to communicate with customers directly but also keep regulations and privacy protections in mind, and that’s one of our biggest advantages.”
“Those moments of realization have also been a huge testament to what we can offer as opposed to competitors. We think, ‘We may be smaller than other giant CRM companies, but we deliver a niche solution for conversational messaging that people prefer.’”
“In our space, some of these messaging platform companies are struggling with managing mandates and compliance because they may choose to prioritize certain product features that limit their capability to securely manage every regulatory requirement. So, for example, businesses who use messaging platforms have to ensure their usage of anti-spam filters in order to register with WhatsApp before messaging in the US, or DLT in India. This trade-off signals a product-first strategy instead of offering comprehensive messaging services that are more than products, they are services offerings that deliver great messaging and are backed with expertise to ensure messaging delivers important compliance, manages opt-in and opt-out, guides messaging content, and upholds trust.”
“Comprehensive messaging services is where our biggest value lies as a solution and service provider.”
Core Products
With that in mind, what are Conversive’s core products and features? Seth explained:
“Our core offering is a managed service, and we also offer a product: a full suite of conversational messaging features that combine several channels like email, SMS, WhatsApp and even calls. In terms of our user interface (UI), we centralize all communication channels. And, lastly, we offer robust compliance management.”
“We’ve also built these persona-based bots, which will be released on our website soon. These are purpose-built chatbots that serve a particular use case, like a recruiter candidate conversation — making them very situation-focused. They’re trained on company data to fully tailor them to specific needs, absorbing company knowledge from every existing data point they provide.”
“All of these services aim to provide rich conversational messaging through bespoke automated messaging campaigns based on CRM data and service agent-driven conversation.”
AI Usage And Managing This New Technology
What about your AI usage? How do you manage this new technology? Seth emphasized
“AI is a challenge as well as an opportunity because large language models (LLMs) can marginalize a lot of players. So it’s all about building your niche. Ours is diving deep into particular use cases and persona bots and tailored verticals for each company. I think the market problem that we are solving is the current messaging chaos.”
“Brands send too many messages to their consumers, who get tons of unsolicited communication. With AI, we’re helping brands personalize their outreach and communication to unclutter that chaos. Additionally, this plays into the changing consumer, AI, and regulatory requirements unique to different markets. So, it’s all about balancing these challenges with incoming opportunities.”
Evolution Of Conversive’s Technology
How has company technology evolved since its launch and how is it shifting with AI? Seth noted:
“There are many changes happening in our industry for which we’ve had to evolve our technology. Before, you would think about making changes, but the technology and the ecosystem wouldn’t be there yet. Now, we’re seeing that the enabling technologies and ecosystems are evolving very rapidly, and it’s you who has to keep up. For example, at Conversive, we saw WhatsApp available as a channel business API, and we took that chance — it has worked very well for us. Now, we’ve also noticed that Rich Communication Services (RCS) is coming, which is a new messaging dynamic available to businesses and consumers in their inboxes. We’re spotting another opportunity there as part of the changing landscape we must adapt to.”
“That’s how we’ve inevitably evolved, based on a lot of other communication technologies that will come into play soon. Additionally, the whole advent of AI will change the way chatbots are built and how communication methods develop. So, two years from now, everything could look really different. To paint a picture of how I see it, let’s say a doctor’s office approaches us to configure their website to answer chats and track their traffic. In the near future, they’ll be able to upload their knowledge base in whatever format, and chatbots will understand and handle patient inquiries, sending qualified responses and becoming compounders and assistants.”
Significant Milestones
What are some of Conversive’s biggest milestones so far? Seth cited:
“I’d say getting Salesforce Partner of the Year for two consecutive years was a big milestone. The second one is crossing the 200-employee line and reaching around 6,000 customers. Moreover, I personally feel that landing many new mid-market customers, especially in the last two, or three years, has been a remarkable milestone. And now, we’re steadily seeing larger enterprises become customers, which is really exciting.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Seth about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“There are a couple. To start, there’s a customer on the East Coast who is one of the top players in elder care. They send caretakers to manage assisted living homes and are compensated by insurance companies. Our customer started during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic as a small company. Now, they’ve grown to be a massive mid-sized company with close to one thousand caregivers and one thousand back office staff. We’ve been a part of this growth journey by enabling their personalized communication through a CRM where caregivers send reports via messaging to the back office and reducing the overhead of taking reports via phone. This inbound and outbound information dispatch became much easier with our solution.”
“Many of today’s caregivers are millennials and Gen Z, so a messaging service rather than having to daily call is a much better fit for this workforce and industry. That’s why they’re successful and they double down on it. From the get-go, they train their staff for messaging. They also implemented CRM-driven messaging so whenever a senior patient calls, caregivers are immediately messaged about their communication. So they use the best of both worlds — calling and messaging. What we offer this customer is efficiency in managing the caregivers, which can be a big challenge. For example, they were able to create good templates, implement a good process, and send messages on time. They’re just a proactive client that has been able to capitalize on our technology to drive their business forward.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates you from competitors? Seth affirmed:
“We’re currently competing with some big companies like Twilio and Salesforce. But what differentiates us is our approach for mixing a service and product coupled with AI. We’re not just about giving an AI framework like LLMs or offering an AI product in itself. Instead, we apply the tech to business problems, offering end-to-end products and an end-to-end experience. What customers need is consulting, service, and product, and that’s what we do.”
Customer Type
And what kind of customers is Conversive pursuing? Seth replied:
“We double down on professionals and institutions. We’re mostly servicing them in industries like healthcare, finance, contact centers, and education. These are our focus areas.”
Future Goals
What are some of Conversive’s future goals? Seth pointed out:
“In addition to growing at a high rate, we also want to give a comprehensive communication platform for our customers where everything communications-related is delivered through the Conversive platform. So, becoming their full messaging and conversation hub.”
Opinion About Current CRM And Customer Experience Markets
What are your thoughts on the current CRM and customer experience markets? Seth answered:
“I think new tech is becoming a double-edged sword in the industry. While it’s creating the need for new companies to arise, it’s also driving others to close. That’s the reality today.”
“The way a B2C customer or a B2B buyer makes their choices is becoming incredibly complex. For example, we talk a lot about AI, but it also creates a lot of confusion for clients, like when it hallucinates or plagiarizes work. New technologies bring these issues, and customers are trapped in the midst of these innovations, and they don’t quite know how to grasp them yet. So, for companies using this tech, it’s all about bringing a good solution where clients have full visibility of their operations.”
“We have a duty to make these technological changes less foggy for our target audiences. We have to put ourselves in the customer’s shoes and think like their marketing or sales teams. So, although new technologies are great, we must handle them with care to keep attracting customers and delivering value.”
Details About RCS
Can you talk a little bit more about RCS? Seth concluded:
“Right now, this service is powered by Google, where phone carriers implement RCS (the next update will include Samsung or iOS to start receiving rich media messages on your phone inbox). Basically, it will replace SMS and be more conversational. If you’ve used WhatsApp, then you know how different it is from using SMS, and in a way, this is what RCS will look like. Ultimately, carriers will be able to make money, Google will make money on this technology, and CPaaS players will make their commissions by routing traffic. Aside from the revenue growth for the industry, consumers will win because the messaging experience will be better.”
