Rakuten Viber is offering businesses a three-month free trial of conversational messages.

It is available to new and existing business accounts around the world sending conversational messages for the first time.

Conversational messages on Viber are counted by sessions, a 24-hour time window that allows brands and users to exchange up to 60 messages in a conversation.

Studies have found that 73 per cent of consumers prefer to message a brand rather than call, and 74 per cent prefer messaging businesses if a human is responding.

While communication between brands and consumers is constantly evolving, business messaging is growing too.

There was significant growth in conversational business messages on Viber across all markets, with some countries seeing a surge of up to 300 per cent. — VNS