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- C1MY 2026 brought marketers, merchants and partners together around one idea: discovery is scattered across search, social and AI, but the decision happens in a conversation. This recap covers the sessions, the trust and servicing gaps in Malaysia, Ken Yeung's keynote, and what Wati announced.
Every channel is now a front door to a chat, and C1MY 2026 was about what to do once the customer walks through it.
Marketers, merchants and partners gathered in Malaysia on 7 October 2026 to hear from Meta, TikTok, Google, Shopify, Meekco, Eber and Wati. Bianca Ho, our Co-Founder and COO, opened the day. Ken Yeung, our Co-Founder and CEO, followed with Wati's vision for 2027, The era of Agentic Customer Engagement. He also wrote up his own take in Chat is where intent converts.
Attendees, speakers and partners at C1MY 2026.
Bianca Ho, Co-Founder and COO, opens the day.
The speakers came from different platforms and industries, but the same idea kept resurfacing: discovery is scattered across search, social and AI, while the decision is increasingly made in a conversation. That is the thinking behind omnichannel marketing, and it was the backdrop to every session.
Here are the four themes that defined the day, followed by what we launched on the day.
- Customers already expect a chat, and Malaysia's data is specific about where it is falling short.
- Every discovery channel, from TikTok to Google Search to AI shopping, now ends in a conversation.
- Friction lives in the handoffs between chat, cart, checkout and the systems behind them.
- The first order is the start of the relationship, not the finish line.
1. Customers already expect a chat, but trust and servicing lag
Meta: Why customers now expect a chat (Albert Tiong)
Albert Tiong, Regional Business Development and Program Manager at Meta, opened the keynotes with Kantar's 2026 research on business messaging, commissioned by Meta. The headline: across markets, customers now prefer messaging as the way to reach a business, and they want to message straight after clicking one of its social ads.
His message for Malaysia was clear:
"Kantar's 2026 research shows Malaysian consumers treat messaging as the default way to reach a business." Albert Tiong, Meta
Malaysia is already a messaging-first market. Malaysians message businesses every day, they find it a quick and easy way to reach a company, and they are more likely to buy from a company they can message.
The barrier is trust, not habit
The most useful point of the session was what holds Malaysians back.
"What holds Malaysians back is trust, not habit... the channel is accepted, the trust layer is not." Albert Tiong, Meta
Habit is the only barrier where Malaysia sits below the global figure. The rest cluster around trust: worry about scams and fraud, worry about spam, and businesses not responding.
The gap is after the sale
"Malaysia leads globally on pre-purchase enquiry and trails on post-purchase servicing." Albert Tiong, Meta
Malaysians message to ask, order and book. They are ahead of the global average on asking about a product or service and on making reservations. But they trail on servicing: receiving order updates, getting customer support and arranging returns. Closing that gap is the heart of a WhatsApp after-sales strategy, and it is where AI customer service pays back fastest.
Albert's read-across for Malaysia and Singapore was to lead with trust, close the servicing gap, start in ecommerce, and sell AI on speed rather than autonomy. Trust in the information an AI agent gives is still limited, so human escalation still matters.
Healthcare, travel and education were flagged as under-served categories.
2. Every discovery channel now ends in a conversation
Three sessions covered three very different starting points: a short-video feed, a search box and an AI assistant. All three landed in the same place.
TikTok: Discovery to DM (Gladys Chua)
Gladys Chua opened with the consumer: people are tired of ads, and they trust brands more when marketing feels human rather than polished. Her argument: attention gets you into the game, but connection helps you win it.
TikTok's answer is Messaging Ads, which let a customer start a chat from the ad and continue in TikTok Direct Messages, an instant messaging app such as WhatsApp, or by phone. Two tools stood out. Automated Chat runs a scripted flow with clickable options and lead collection. Lead Agent answers from the advertiser's knowledge base, asks qualifying questions and hands qualified leads to sales.
For advertisers sending users to WhatsApp, the catch is a blind spot: TikTok cannot see what happens after the click. Gladys explained how a message management tool like Wati closes it by passing events such as "conversation started" and "order placed" back through the Messaging Events API (here is how TikTok conversion tracking works). We also announced that TikTok Direct Messages and Messaging Ads are now native in Wati (see the launches below).
Google: Turning high-intent search into WhatsApp conversations (Ayu Sadha)
Google's session on Click to Message.
Ayu Sadha, Head of Accelerated Growth and SMB Sales at Google, described Click to Message ads: a button on a Search or Performance Max ad that opens WhatsApp with a pre-filled starter message. The first message sent registers as a new "Conversation started" conversion, which feeds Smart Bidding. If you are setting up click-to-chat ads for the first time, our guide to optimising Click-to-WhatsApp ads and managing budget is a good starting point.
The attribution detail is worth knowing. Google encodes the Google Click ID in invisible Unicode characters inside the starter message, and a Business Solution Provider like Wati decodes it, so a lead in the CRM can be tied back to the keyword and campaign that produced it. It also lets advertisers import deeper milestones, such as a qualified lead or a booked test drive, and bid towards those instead of any message at all. You can see how this works with Wati's Click-to-WhatsApp ads solution, and the same measurement logic for Meta ads is covered in how to track CTWA conversions with the Conversions API.
Shopify: Less friction, more orders (Soojin Jeong)
Shopify's session on agentic commerce.
Soojin Jeong, Commercial Partnerships Lead for Southeast Asia and Korea at Shopify, framed agentic commerce as a crawl-walk-run-fly journey and placed the industry early on it. AI shopping is still a small part of online sales, but it is growing fast. Her point for merchants was that the groundwork is unglamorous: structured product data, accurate inventory and a product page that builds confidence on arrival. Our complete WhatsApp for Shopify guide covers that groundwork from the messaging side.
3. Friction lives in the handoffs
A shopper asks "Is it in stock?" on WhatsApp. To buy, they may then jump to a browser, a cart, a login and a payment page. Each step is another chance to drop off. Two sessions looked at that problem from opposite ends: the customer-facing flow, and the operating model underneath it.
Shopify x Wati: shorten the path to purchase
The Shopify keynote closed with four practical flows merchants can run today on the Shopify and Wati integration:
- Recover abandoned carts with a WhatsApp reminder that links back to the purchase. (Here is how to recover abandoned carts on Shopify with WhatsApp.)
- Keep customers informed with order and shipping updates, and answer "Where's my order?" sooner. (Start from these WhatsApp automation templates for Shopify.)
- Turn support into selling by resolving product questions in chat and sharing the next step to buy.
- Finish with Shopify checkout, where saved details mean less re-entry at eligible checkouts.
The checkout link hands the buyer to Shopify; payment does not happen inside WhatsApp. Merchants also got a starting checklist: clean up product titles, variants and inventory, review Agentic Storefronts settings in the Shopify admin, launch cart recovery and order updates before conversational selling, and measure paid orders from sales conversations rather than clicks.
Meekco: Connected retail, connected growth (Kah Hing and Scott Chue)
Meekco and MsRead on connected retail.
Kah Hing, CEO and Co-founder of Meekco, and Scott Chue of MsRead asked a question most growing merchants will recognize: as the business grows, has it become easier to operate? More channels tend to mean more dashboards, more manual work and more exceptions. The website says a product is available, operations says maybe, and finance sees a third version of the truth.
They separated the visible symptoms (checkout drop-off, wrong stock information, manual customer handling) from the root causes: no shared source of truth, disconnected order and inventory flow, fragmented customer data, and business rules trapped in manual work. The fix is to map the operating model underneath the website, with Shopify as the commerce core and ERP, WMS, payments, loyalty and marketing connected around it.
The link back to chat is direct. A conversation is only as helpful as the stock, order and customer data behind it. For the channel side of the same problem, see omnichannel marketing for e-commerce.
4. The first order is the start, not the finish line
Eber x Wati: Beyond the first order (Elly Chen and Alex Leong)
Eber and Wati on loyalty in chat.
Alex Leong, our Head of Customer Success (Global), and Elly Chen, Brand Marketing Manager at Eber, showed what loyalty looks like when it happens in the app customers already open every day. The Eber and Wati integration runs the whole journey in WhatsApp:
- A customer joins the Eber loyalty club.
- Eber triggers the sign-up reward and Wati delivers it instantly in chat.
- Eber tracks points, tiers and offers automatically.
- Wati sends the redemption code in chat, ready at checkout, and Eber records every visit.
The point of the session was that rewards delivered in chat keep the brand in front of the customer between orders. That is the other half of the servicing gap Meta's session pointed to earlier in the day, and it connects to broader customer retention strategies for Shopify merchants.
Panel: From enquiry to appointment (healthcare, education and real estate)
The panel on healthcare, education and real estate.
Moderated by Hilda To, our Head of Customer Success for SEA, the panel brought together operators from industries where the sale is an appointment, not a basket: Fayyaz Ali of He Medical Clinic and May Yuen, Senior Manager, Group Marketing & Branding at IOI Properties. These are verticals Meta flagged as under-served on messaging, including healthcare and education. For a deeper read on the healthcare side, see omnichannel marketing in healthcare.
Every enquiry needs an owner. Clear routing means no lead goes cold, whether it arrives at 2pm or 2am. Less is more with automation. He Medical Clinic cut back to fewer, high-impact flows, and IOI Properties reduced chat drop-offs by 16% by asking only the questions that matter. Follow up with purpose. Two or three meaningful follow-ups, then leave the door open. Help, don’t pressure.
What we announced on the day
- TikTok Business Messaging and Messaging Ads, now native in Wati. Manage TikTok Direct Messages in the same shared inbox as your other channels, automate replies and qualify leads the moment a customer starts a chat from an ad, and continue the conversation on WhatsApp. Conversion outcomes sync back to TikTok to improve campaign optimisation.
- Google Click to Message with Wati. Conversation-started events are attributed through the Google Click ID, and qualified-lead or purchase milestones can be imported back into Google Ads for deeper bidding. See how Click-to-WhatsApp ads work with Wati.
- Astra, Wati's AI agent. Attendees met Astra on WhatsApp through the QR code on their badge, for speakers, the agenda and booth information, and again at the tea-break photo booth.
- Ken Yeung's keynote, The era of Agentic Customer Engagement. Ken's argument was that customer engagement is moving from software your staff operate to agents that do the work while you manage them. He described the team Wati is building in three places: Wati AI as the assistant inside Wati, Astra as the front-line sales agent on WhatsApp chat and calls, and Wati MCP for running WhatsApp from ChatGPT or Claude (see AI chatbots for WhatsApp with MCP). His three takeaways: customer conversations are a growth engine, not a cost centre; agents take the volume while people take the judgment; and start your agent strategy now by handing one daily job to an agent first.
Wati also recently launched the omnichannel inbox, so one team can answer Instagram, Messenger, TikTok, your website and WhatsApp from one place.
Meeting Astra on WhatsApp through the QR code on the event badge.
Watian keychains at the tea break.
Ken Yeung, Co-Founder and CEO, delivers the Wati keynote.
Final thoughts
The day did not point to one new channel. It pointed to one new expectation: wherever a customer finds you, they want to be able to ask a question and get a real answer, quickly and from someone they can trust.
For Malaysia, the data says the habit is already there. What is missing is the trust layer and the servicing layer behind the first message, and the systems that let you see which conversations turned into revenue.
If you could not make it, the best place to start is Meta's session on what Malaysians expect from a chat, then the measurement loops in the Google and TikTok sessions. For the CEO's take on what it all adds up to, read Chat is where intent converts.
The Wati team at C1MY 2026.
Want to see how a conversation-first setup would work for your business? Book a demo with Wati and tell us which channel your customers start from.
Related posts
- Chat Is Where Intent Converts
Search, social and AI are multiplying the places customers discover you. The conversation is where they decide. Ken Yeung on what C1MY 2026 taught us.