BIGBOX MEDIA COMPANY – Expert Voice

Retail and e-commerce brands are discovering that price and product alone no longer win customers. Increasingly, it’s how a brand communicates and how much that communication can be trusted that decides who stays loyal. Mohammad Imran Shaikh, CEO of customer engagement platform TrustSignal, shared his perspective on where trust, technology, and conversational commerce are heading next.

Communication as the new differentiator

For years, Shaikh says, brands competed on product quality, pricing, and convenience — advantages that are “increasingly temporary.” What lasts is how brands make customers feel throughout the entire journey, since “every interaction—whether it’s an order confirmation, delivery update, payment notification, promotional message, or support conversation—contributes to customer trust.”

His framework rests on three pillars: Trust, Transparency, and Technology. Technology enables scale, he notes, but customers still need assurance that messages are “authentic, secure, and genuinely helpful.” The brands that win long-term loyalty, he says, “are not necessarily those that communicate the most, but those that communicate with the greatest credibility and consistency.”

Indonesia’s engagement challenge

Asked about Indonesia specifically, Shaikh points to four pressures: rising customer expectations for instant, personalized service; fragmentation across social platforms, messaging apps, marketplaces, and stores; growing wariness around fraud and impersonation; and the challenge of scaling automation without losing authenticity. “The retailers that succeed in Indonesia will be those that can combine intelligent automation with transparent and trusted communication,” he says.

Beyond the WhatsApp notification

Many brands still treat WhatsApp purely as a notification channel, Shaikh says, when the real opportunity is turning it into a relationship-building platform — one where customers can discover products, ask questions, and complete purchases without switching apps. The key, he stresses, isn’t message volume: “Successful conversational commerce is not about sending more messages. It is about understanding customer intent and responding with relevance.” As he puts it, “customers do not wake up wanting to interact with a chatbot. They want their problems solved quickly and conveniently.”

Matching channels to the customer journey

On TrustSignal’s own omnichannel mix — WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, Voice, and Email — Shaikh reframes how enterprises should think about channel strategy: “Customers do not think in channels. They think in experiences.” He maps channels to journey stages: rich, interactive channels for acquisition; conversational ones to reduce friction at conversion; personalized messaging for retention; and a blend of automation and human support for service. The goal, he says, is “creating a consistent trust experience across every touchpoint.”

Measuring what matters

Shaikh argues that open and click-through rates “do not capture the full business impact of customer engagement.” He points instead to outcome-linked metrics — conversion, lifetime value, repeat purchases, retention, and acquisition cost — alongside a concept he calls a “Trust Index,” tracking verified engagement, fraud reduction, and complaint volumes. His logic: “Revenue follows trust.”

Localization means relevance, not translation

Expanding into Southeast Asia, Shaikh says, requires more than translating language. “What resonates with consumers in Jakarta may not necessarily resonate with customers in Bangkok, Manila, or Singapore,” he notes, pointing to tone, timing, offers, and support experience as equally important. “Trust is local,” he says. “The winners will be those that think globally while communicating locally.”

Keeping humans in the loop

The most common mistake, Shaikh says, is “focusing on technology before understanding customer needs” — treating conversational commerce as a marketing initiative rather than a customer experience strategy. He also warns that over-automation can undermine trust: customers “still value empathy and human support when situations become complex or emotionally sensitive.” His summary: “Technology should enhance trust—not substitute for it.”

What defines the next five years

As AI becomes standard and product cycles shorten, Shaikh expects competitive advantage to shift decisively toward relationships. “The companies that win will not simply have better products or more advanced technology. They will have stronger customer trust,” he says. His closing thought: “Trust is no longer a soft attribute or a branding exercise… Trust is the new currency.”

About Mohammad Imran Shaikh Mohammad Imran Shaikh is the CEO of TrustSignal, a customer engagement platform working with retail and e-commerce brands across Southeast Asia and beyond on omnichannel communication spanning WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, Voice, and Email.

About TrustSignal TrustSignal is a customer engagement platform that helps retail and e-commerce brands communicate with customers across WhatsApp, SMS, RCS, Voice, and Email, with a focus on verified, secure, and transparent messaging.

This interview is part of BIGBOX Media’s ongoing Leader Interview series, spotlighting executive perspectives shaping retail and e-commerce across India, Southeast Asia, and Middle Africa.