5 ways to deliver customer communications that meet APAC consumer expectations

Engaged, informed, safe and happy – achieve all four, and your brand almost can’t lose. The question is: how? The answer lies in effective digital communications. But in 2025, and in the APAC region, what does that actually mean?

To find out, we surveyed 2,800 individual consumers worldwide (including 600 from APAC) and 1,600 business leaders from four key industries for The state of customer communications 2025.

Here are the five insights shaping the future of APAC customer communications.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere – and it’s rapidly entering customer interactions. But APAC consumers are wary. Globally, over half of consumers would trust AI-generated answers for routine updates. In the APAC region, the level of trust is a mixed bag.

In India, where technology is well and truly integrated in everyday life, 80% of consumers said they’d willingly use AI-powered support trained on a company’s documentation. However, in Singapore, only 45% expressed the same willingness. Australian consumers are the most cautious, with almost half saying they don’t trust AI, particularly when receiving financial and healthcare advice.

About 90% of APAC businesses are using or plan to use AI for customer interactions. However, many remain cautious about how to use it responsibly. They say privacy (46%), accuracy (39%) and customer trust (34%) are their top concerns when implementing AI. Our AI-powered conversation APIs allow businesses to automate FAQs and transactional updates, while maintaining human escalation options. This is crucial in highly regulated sectors like finance and healthcare.

The days of only emailing your customers are over. APAC consumers want choice and flexibility in how they engage with brands.

While nearly half of APAC respondents still said email is their preferred way to receive customer updates, more than a quarter want businesses to double up, using email and SMS. In India, the demand for diversity is even higher, with almost one in five consumers preferring a combination of email, text and voice messages.

Not only do people want businesses to meet them where they are, but they also want a consistent experience across every channel. Over half of respondents in Singapore said it’s “frustrating” to repeat themselves across different channels.

Despite growing consumer demand for seamless experiences, over 40% of businesses still manage communication channels in silos. With Sinch’s omnichannel platform Engage, you can unify customer interactions across SMS, WhatsApp, RCS, and ore – creating a consistent, connected experience that meets people where they are.

Hey <first name>, how are you?

Consumers want more than their name in the subject line. They expect messages that reflect their preferences, history and behaviour.

Here are the numbers:

Relevance isn’t just about what you say. With an omnichannel platform and world-class Email APIs, you can act on customer preferences and behaviours as they happen. Triggered messages, live segmentation, and contextual recommendations help you move from one-size-fits-all blasts into timely, tailored experiences that feel personal, not presumptive.

The rise of scams and phishing has made consumers deeply cautious. In Australia, nearly half of respondents reported receiving a suspicious-looking message from a business in the past year – which turned out to be legitimate.

So, the question is no longer whether a message is trusted but whether the channel feels safe.

Generally, email is where APAC consumers feel the safest, but there’s a lot of variation between countries:

• Singaporeans trust in-app notifications more than they do email.

• Australians are the opposite.

• Over three-quarters of Indian consumers say they’re more likely to trust messages that display a verified brand logo or checkmark.

With rising concern over scams, it’s not enough for a message to be legitimate – it has to look legitimate too. Visual trust signals like branded sender IDs, verified logos, and authenticated domains give consumers confidence at a glance.

But building trust isn’t just about the sender. Verifying who’s on the receiving end also matters. Features like SMS Verification and Number Masking help businesses protect accounts and reduce fraud, especially in regulated industries.

The best experiences build trust on both sides of the conversation.

The state of customer communications 2025 survey makes it clear that businesses cannot afford to be caught off guard, particularly in the APAC region. It’s one of the fastest-moving technology landscapes in the world, and APAC consumers won’t put up with messages that are too frequent, irrelevant or lack real-time information.

• Using AI can help brands deliver information at the speed customers expect. Just make sure it’s obvious when someone isn’t talking to a human.

• To build trust, give consumers control of the channels they use – whether it’s for an automated delivery update or managing sensitive patient information.

• Use data to send individual customers content and promotions relevant to their preferences. This will stop your messaging from feeling like spam.

• Engage with customers on channels they trust and take extra steps to verify who they’re talking to.

While competitors are still floundering, you have a window of opportunity. Sinch makes it easy to get started, whether you need to personalise messages at scale, integrate multiple channels, add AI and automation, or apply that human touch at the right time. The best news: you can keep working with the systems you’ve got or use our APIs to embed messaging, voice, verification and AI-powered interactions directly into your applications.

Give your APAC customers the type of communication they want – with Sinch.

Author: Jade Gebbie Jade is Sinch’s APAC Campaigns and Content Marketing Partner, developing content that connects Sinch’s global story to the diverse markets of Asia Pacific.