AI-POWERED CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT, CONTEXTUAL MARKETING & MORE

Exclusive interview with Hetarth Patel, Vice President – Growth Markets (MEA, Americas, APAC), WebEngage

What role is AI playing in customer engagement in the region?

AI brings precision to moments that were previously handled with guesstimates. It identifies which customers are exploring something new, which ones are hesitating, and which ones may never return unless they’re nudged at the right time. That improves the experience without making users feel monitored or overwhelmed.

Across verticals, AI helps determine how frequently someone should be contacted, what format resonates with them, and when they’re most open to taking the next step. When communication follows the customer’s rhythm instead of the brand’s, loyalty strengthens naturally.

We are hearing more and more about contextual marketing. How would you define it in today’s Middle Eastern digital economy?

Contextual marketing in the Middle East is about recognising intent as it forms, not after the fact. Consumers in this region move quickly – comparison, consideration, and decision often happen in a single session. So brands need to respond to micro-signals in real time. When a platform can interpret these cues, the experience becomes smoother: relevant suggestions appear naturally, checkout journeys shorten, and customers feel understood without being overwhelmed. For businesses, this reduces wasted impressions and strengthens the quality of engagement. You convert the right people. The result is tighter spending, better retention, and a more predictable path to revenue.

How are customer engagement platforms evolving in the face of AI copilots and automations?

They’re becoming systems that support both momentum and oversight. Marketers in this region want recommendations, not replacements. The AI copilot element helps interpret data faster and flagging sudden behaviour spikes, suggesting audiences worth testing, or predicting where attention is drifting.

At the same time, automation has matured. Journeys can react to dozens of signals without manual input, and campaigns update themselves based on performance. This dual structure works well in markets like Saudi Arabia, where digital maturity is rising sharply. Teams get strategic clarity from the copilot, while automation handles the heavy lifting in the background.

Which technologies are proving most effective in helping GCC brands improve customer experience, ROI, and business outcomes?

The most effective setups are the ones where data moves freely. A Customer Data Platform(CDP) becomes powerful when it ingests live activity, loyalty signals, support tickets, and payment behaviour without friction. CRMs enrich that view with relationship history. Data lakes contribute long-term patterns that sharpen predictions.

What GCC brands are solving today is fragmentation. Teams get a single view of the user and can respond with confidence by connecting these systems cleanly. It also gives them the ability to test smaller ideas quickly instead of betting on broad, expensive campaigns. Better alignment across these tools results in higher ROI because every action is anchored in accurate context.

Across Saudi Arabia and the UAE, what improvements have you seen when brands move to AI-powered customer engagement and automation?

The most noticeable improvement is consistency. Brands no longer depend on campaign calendars to stay relevant, the system keeps the conversation going based on what users actually do. AI also cuts out the “one-size-fits-all” messages that used to frustrate customers across email, push, and in-app channels.

In sectors like airlines, grocery delivery, and financial services, we’ve seen repeat engagement rise simply because journeys adjust themselves. For example, a traveller exploring upgrade options receives timely details about availability rather than a generic newsletter. These small shifts accumulate and create clearer funnels, and a more efficient use of marketing time.

Could you share an example?

A recent example is NICE in Saudi Arabia, a brand with a large offline footprint that wanted deeper digital loyalty. Once their web and app activity were stitched together, the team could finally see how customers moved between browsing, carting, and store visits. That led to rethinking their journeys around intent instead of promotions.

As soon as they shifted to behaviour-led engagement – reactivating dormant shoppers, personalising recommendations, and automating recovery journeys – repeat visits rose sharply and engagement grew 148%. The improvement came from recognising micro-signals and responding early.

What is WebEngage’s long-term vision for the Middle East as brands shift from acquisition-heavy models to retention-driven growth?

Our long-term vision is to make retention operationally simple and strategically central. GCC businesses view retention as the engine that stabilises revenue. We’re building toward a future where engagement, loyalty, data governance, and service workflows sit within one connected layer.

This will allow brands to identify intent across channels, respond instantly, and measure outcomes with much greater accuracy. The goal is to help enterprises move from “sending messages” to designing relationships that last a lifetime.

How have you adapted in the face of these advancements?

Our competitive edge comes from how we operate, not what we claim. Scale, market rankings, and platform breadth matter, but they’re outcomes and not differentiators. What truly moves the needle for our customers in the Middle East is the way we build with flexible data architecture, a composable CDP that adapts to their systems rather than forcing a migration, and activation tools that work reliably at enterprise scale.

We’ve grown by treating engagement as an engineering problem rather than a marketing challenge. That mindset is what helps us scale. The idea is to make sure our fundamentals are strong enough to create the next set of milestones.

With regulations like PDPL and sector-specific frameworks in place, how essential is consent management for brands operating in the Middle East?

Consent management has become a structural requirement, especially as more industries digitise service delivery. It’s no longer about obtaining a checkbox, it’s about ensuring that user preferences flow across every system the brand uses – marketing, support, loyalty, and analytics.

In regulated categories, inconsistent consent handling can invalidate entire engagement programs. We address this by integrating with specialised consent tools so preferences update instantly across channels. Customers notice when brands respect these boundaries, and that strengthens long-term relationships.

What differentiates WebEngage in this region, and where do you see opportunities?

What sets us apart is our ability to adapt deeply to each organisation’s structure, whether it’s a fast-scaling marketplace or a highly regulated enterprise. The platform integrates into complex ecosystems without forcing data to move in unnatural ways.

Where we continue to evolve is governance, onboarding speed, and advanced modelling. The need for more precise controls and predictive capabilities increases as sectors like telecom, aviation, and financial services expand their digital footprints . We’re building tools that help teams act faster while meeting regulatory expectations with confidence.

What advancements can we expect from WebEngage in the next 12 months?

We’re now building on top of the foundations that already work well for our customers. The next phase is about reducing the effort needed to go from insight to action. After launching Insights CoPilot, we’re extending the ecosystem with Segmentation and Campaign CoPilot, and Governance CoPilot will follow. Each one is designed to shorten the path from understanding behaviour to acting on it with confidence.

In parallel, we’re deepening our machine-learning models so the system can recognise subtle behavioural shifts and adjust journeys with more nuance. The aim is to let the platform handle the operational complexity quietly in the background, while marketers focus on strategy, creativity, and the larger customer experience.