Companies providing call-center and business messaging services anticipate a significant shift in pricing models. The traditional pay-per-message or pay-per-seat structures are expected to evolve towards outcome-based and bundled pricing, driven by the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence in voice and text communications, which reduces manpower costs.

Ivan Ostojic, chief business officer at Infobip, highlights the risk of disruption to the pay-per-seat model as AI significantly reduces costs. Infobip envisions a telco-type model involving predicted consumption per user, enabling the creation of bundles encompassing SaaS, AI, and various communication channels. These bundles would secure customers from price fluctuations.

Communication-platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) companies like Infobip are exploring use cases where the implementation cost is justified by the benefits gained. Industry executives foresee multi-channel conversations across SMS, voice, WhatsApp, RCS, and in-app notifications being priced in bundles as AI agents automate workflows.

Deepak Goyal, chief business officer at Tanla Platforms, notes that pricing models vary based on the complexity of the use case, the extent of AI integration, and the backend systems involved. Although AI use cases are initially more expensive than structured, rule-based conversational offerings, customers are willing to pay a premium due to the greater value created.

For example, Tanla ran a campaign where users uploaded images of broken appliances via WhatsApp in exchange for an exclusive coupon. Despite the high cost of multimodal AI image recognition, this campaign achieved redemption rates as high as 30 times.

Gautam Badalia, CEO of Route Mobile, points out that GenAI-based use cases are still in their early stages and lack a right pricing fit, with significant costs involved in GenAI interactions. As AI agents unlock new uses in customer service, pricing models will evolve to be more outcome-based, although pay-per-message remains the most prominent model with AI agents currently.

Route Mobile enabled an insurance company to utilize an AI agent on WhatsApp to understand user profiles and needs, suggesting the most relevant policy. This solution aims to overcome human errors in policy suggestions and avoid potential mis-selling.