By Ann-Marie Alcántara

Apple Inc. is moving deeper into customer service for businesses.

Its Apple Business Chat, which became widely available last month after a period in beta testing, lets customers message participating companies on an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or Mac computer with a button that can appear across the Apple ecosystem, such as in Maps, and on the companies' websites and apps.

Apple Business Chat is part of a growing effort to help businesses not just reduce the friction in customer service but use it to improve their relationships with customers, collect feedback and even make new sales.

That has become more possible, and important, as consumers increasingly use digital tools to interact with companies, a trend that has accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business.

"The opportunities that businesses have for in-person customer relationship-building are going to be vastly diminished over the next couple of years," Prof. Sundararajan said.

Improving technology will eventually make digital messaging channels such as Apple Business Chat or Facebook Inc.'s Messenger more important to customer service than phone calls, Prof. Sundararajan added.

The costs of customer service can add up. Companies with an average revenue of $3 billion can expect to have an estimated $75 million budget for customer service and support, said Brad Fager, director of customer service and support at Gartner Inc., a research firm.

Major players that provide customer service and support-related technologies include Zendesk Inc., Salesforce.com Inc. and HubSpot Inc.

Apple announced its entry into the field in 2017 at the Worldwide Developers Conference, the company's annual developer event.

"Please keep in mind that your customers today understand the call button," an Apple presenter told developers at the time. "They know the type of support that they will receive from you when they use the telephone. Now, when they see your new message button, they should know that they'll receive the equivalent or better support with Business Chat."

Apple does not charge businesses to use Apple Business Chat. It aims to benefit from the way the tool encourages people and businesses to use Apple programs like Maps and Apple Pay.

Technology companies' drive to create ecosystems that consumers never have to leave is one of the strategies now under scrutiny from regulators and politicians, including at a congressional hearing into their business practices last week. Testifying remotely alongside the leaders of Facebook, Amazon.com Inc. and Google, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said the company treats every app developer the same and that its App Store had created opportunities for others. "If Apple is a gatekeeper, what we have done is open the gate wider," Mr. Cook said.

Longer conversations

Freshly Inc., a prepared meal subscription company, uses Apple Business Chat partly for the tool's Picker feature, which presents a list of options for consumers to choose from. With the Picker, Freshly can route customers to the correct customer service agent without asking customers to type a lot of details, said Colin Crowley, vice president of customer experience at Freshly.

The company averages six to seven messages per conversation on Apple Business Chat, compared with roughly four messages in standard text interactions with customers.

People are open to longer conversations on Apple Business Chat because they don't have to respond right away, the way they do in an online chat or live phone call, Mr. Crowley said. From Freshly's perspective, service agents can also handle more consumers at once.

"Because you have that built-in efficiency, I would say having longer conversations isn't necessarily a bad thing in the messaging channel," Mr. Crowley said.

Wedding gown retailer David's Bridal Inc. uses Apple Business Chat and a custom-built geo-routing capability from LivePerson Inc., a messaging software company, to connect customers to an employee who works at the store closest to them. It also lets the store employee know who the customers are when they come in and what they are looking for.

Linking the digital and bricks-and-mortar experience can lead to a potential increase in brand loyalty, said Holly Carroll, vice president for customer service and contact center operations at David's Bridal.

The retailer is working to expand the tool's use by adding more stores to the Chat Suggest tool, among other things.

David's Bridal began using Apple Business Chat about a year ago and it currently makes up 25% to 30% of the company's overall messaging volume. The retailer aims to increase that figure to 40% by the end of the summer.

Write to Ann-Marie Alcántara at ann-marie.alcantara@wsj.com