At today’s Line Conference Tokyo 2014, the messaging giant followed through on last year’s promise to use mobile chat as a bridge for the online and offline worlds. In addition to announcing Line Pay, Line Taxi, and food delivery service Line Wow, the company revealed it will launch special corporate accounts that let businesses large and small communicate with customers.
Using what the company calls Line@, companies of all sizes can operate messaging accounts. Businesses can distribute multiple IDs to multiple team members.
This differs from Line’s conventional messaging feature, which only lets users bind one ID with one email address or phone number. It also differs from Line’s existing official accounts, which basically act as one-way, public broadcast channels for brands that can afford the hefty price tag.
Line COO Takeshi Idezawa gave two examples of how businesses and customers might use Line@ to interact with one another. A sales rep from a real estate company might communicate with an ordinary Line user through a Line@ account, and point the prospective buyer to a property that fits his price range. On the smaller scale, members of a rock band could use Line@ accounts to interact with fans, promote upcoming shows, and sell merchandise – using, of course, Line Pay.
Line opened pre-registration for the service back in May, and currently has more than 100,000 active accounts. The company aims to officially open the service to everyone by the end of the year, in Japan.
In addition to Line@, the company also unveiled Line Business Connect, a customer relationship management (CRM) service that lets businesses target and customize the messages they send out to their followers.
“We’re going to open up a message sending and receiving API that acts as a window or a gate to reaching people. They will have an existing customer base and can hold on to that, but will use line to communicate with those users. It’s CRM as an inbound and outbound tool,” said Idezawa. The API will be powered by Salesforce, which revealed it had inked a partnership with Line back in June.
See: 5 ways China’s WeChat is more innovative than you think
According to Idezawa, Line Business Connect has been in use among a domestic stock trading firm that hoped to piggy back off of Line’s traction among young people. It also partnered with Tokyo Broadcast System to implement a live survey during a TV show.
The addition Line@ and Line Business Connect mirrors the evolution of WeChat in China. That app, owned by China’s social giant Tencent, has long offered customizable APIs for two types of public accounts – “subscription accounts” and “service accounts.” Line, by comparison, kept its business-to-consumer accounts on the conservative side. It implemented subscription plans for businesses that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and only allowed one-way, broadcast-style messaging. It’s possible the initially put those limitations in place to reduce spam, or maybe it simply took its time considering its options for a sophisticated CRM service. In any case, the app’s open arms towards small businesses indicates that it’s seeing dollar signs well beyond the Candy Crush-esque games that currently make up the bulk of its revenues.
With Line’s new business accounts, users in Japan can soon chat with the dry cleaning lady
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