ver wondered WhatsApp used for chatting, sharing images, having face times with our near and dear would help to engage customers for business growth? STRANGE! isn't it?
So starting from August 2018, Facebook launched WhatsApp Business API for enterprises to interact with their customers seamlessly and stay connected with brands 24x7 over the most popular & secured messaging app. What it meant for any business was that, unlike mobile applications where businesses had to convince user to download an app & ultimately the reach of which was generally limited to Tier I & Tier II tech savvy population, WhatsApp for Business opened doors to not just millions but rather billions of customer across the world.
There are currently more than 2 billion WhatsApp users around the globe and rising (WhatsApp, 2020). With 1.5 billion in 2018 and 1 billion in 2016, this number of WhatsApp users has been increasing at half a billion every two years. It’s even slowly inching towards that of the king of social media, Facebook.
As of 2019, Facebook had 2.45 billion monthly active users. If those numbers weren't sufficient, WhatsApp Business API, within a year of its launch, crossed 5 million business users. The aim of launching this was to help small, medium & large enterprises connect with their customers by providing a facility where they can interact with customers.
Initially launched on Android devices, WhatsApp has also since introduced the WhatsApp Business app for iOS devices. Looking at all the above statistics any business owner might wonder, how effectively we can use WhatsApp business.
Like we have already mentioned above, one of the biggest advantages of using the WhatsApp is staying connected. Because studies show that highly engaged customers end up buying more and act as a brand ambassador helping businesses grow organically. Mentioned below are some of the ways in which businesses can automate their processes using WhatsApp (all these points will be covered separately in another blog post)
- Sending notification through WhatsApp
- Using WhatsApp as a customer support channel
- WhatsApp as a retargeting platform
- Sharing image, video/audio & document on WhatsApp
- Adding WhatsApp Chatbot to automate queries
The above 5 points are the most important or we can say 5 ways of increasing Customer Engagement through WhatsApp business API. Hundreds & hundreds of businesses are flocking to WhatsApp to establish a personalized & direct communication with customers. In fact, we tried to look at some of the popular companies across the world who are using WhatsApp:
- Booking.com
- MakeMyTrip
- B2W
- iFood
- Singapore Airline
- Melia Hotels
- KLM
- Bank BRI Absa
- Coppel
- Sale Stock.
- Uber
- Netflix
After all this information mentioned above, one question arises why to choose WhatsApp Business API? Following are the top 10 ten reasons:
- Build your Customer Engagement
- 24x7 automated Customer Support
- Cost effective Communication
- Creative Communication
- Multi agent Model
- Helps you save time
- Insights that help take decision
- Communicate with high security
- Faster way of sending Information
- WhatsApp as a Retargeting platform
Now let's have a detailed explanation on this:
1. Build your Customer Engagement
In today's world, every business, no matter small or big, understand the importance of customer engagement more than ever. And it is for a reason. Customers buying behaviour depend on a lot factor and given that the world is a marketplace, it is very important to understand that a engaged customer results in delivering a higher lifetime value compared to a non-engaged users.
With the help of WhatsApp Business API, brands can reach out to customers without any boundaries, provide frequent interaction. Conventional channel of Email & SMSs resulting in low open rate, WhatsApp on the other hand ensures a high deliverability with a very high read rate. In fact, WhatsApp for Business is already a part of customer engagement strategy for many enterprises across the globe.
2. 24x7 automated Customer Support
Who doesn't like round the clock support. Traditionally, businesses have been using Emails, Calls, SMSs to support customer. But if carefully observe, we spend on an average 30-45mins or even more on WhatsApp. And it perfectly fits our comfort zone. In fact, messaging comes more intuitively to us compared to Email or Calls.
With WhatsApp Business API being reliant, simple (no matter how young or old you're) and ability to integrate with existing enterprise tools, it is needless to say that WhatsApp has already become one of the primary support channel in the future. Konverse.ai allows you to add a bot to your WhatsApp for Business that integrates seamlessly with enterprise applications like Salesforce, SAP so that business can provide 24x7 automated customer support.
3. Cost effective Communication
Traditional communication channels like Email & SMSs are definitely cheaper and most widely used of primary means of communication. But over time things have changed. Your email & SMS inbox are flooded with promotional messages from business with whom you'd have never interacted in the past.
One possible reason for this could be attributed to the fact that the messaging content are not controlled over these channels like WhatsApp. And I'm sure just like us, you don't just want to send information but the cost effectiveness for every communication comes when people are not just reading but also taking actions.
That's why we feel over the longer run with a very high open rates, WhatsApp for Business API can prove to be the most effective and simple customer communication channel. And guess what, WhatsApp Business API now support Call-to-Action Buttons & Quick Replies with multimedia messaging capabilities. Now that's smart isn't it.
4. Creative Communication
One inherent challenge in using SMS as a channel of communication is the fact that they lack rich user message like WhatsApp or Email. Gone are the days where people read long paragraphs or long advertisements. Now to engage with your customers you need to be as attractive as possible. It can either be through a 30sec video or a brochure or an image. Statistics have shown that the click-through rate (CTR) can grow by a whopping 250% with the use of creative communication content.
By creative communication we mean sending messages that contain call-to-action, attachments like video, images, documents are allowed; WhatsApp for Business has gone a step further by allowing a quick reply (quick replies are templates suggestion for user allowing to convey the intent without having to write the sentence) with payload so that a conversation can be directly triggered.
5. Multi agent Model
We all probably know there are different chat application that can be easily deployed on your website, Facebook messenger and other social channels. They have one thing in common amongst all, allowing multiple agents to communicate over the same channel.
At Konverse.ai we call it a team inbox connected with WhatsApp for Business. Just like Slack, you can create multiple channels with 'n' number of team members in it and route conversations based on chat assignment rules. You can transfer the same conversation to a person or a team depending on your need as well. And the best part is you can add escalation matrix rule. So pretty much everything that you can do on our chat can be done using WhatsApp Business API as well.
6. Helps you to save time
This point is very critical because of two reasons. Using WhatsApp for Business allows people to reach your business without having to use laptop or download mobile application. The very fact that you don't need a laptop also ensure that the brand can now reach the world without having to worry about how to acquire customers. Because all that it takes is just one forward message on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp helps you to save your time as you can send information about your business to a large number of people through a single platform. And after receiving that information, user can start interacting as if they are talking to their friend. So simple but so powerful.
7. Insights that help take decision
One critical aspect for any enterprise is to measure the effectiveness of their communication channel. WhatsApp business API allow you to understand user behaviour like whether the messages has been delivered or read, time at which it was read and more. T
his is very helpful to understand whether communicating with a person over WhatsApp is effective or not. Konverse.ai goes a step further by providing realtime analytics, effectiveness of campaign, highlighting user journey on WhatsApp which allows businesses to derive insights that helps in taking the right decision.
8. Communicate with high security
In this ongoing world where there is a day to day news of internet fraud, everyone would expect security and privacy of their information. WhatsApp has a feature known as two- factor - authentication (2CFA) where you are assured that the person whom you are messaging with, indeed, who they say they are.
It also has a feature known as End -To- End - Encryption Which is strict attention to the privacy of the subscriber. To add more to it, WhatsApp for Business verifies each and every account before onboarding. In short, your data is in safe hands.
9. Faster way of sending Information
With the help of WhatsApp, you can send your information to the customer fast. WhatsApp for business helps you to send information within a fraction of second. It just happens in a click. Not only this you can send information to a larger number of customers in a fraction of time.
If we look at other ways of sending information, like sending through Emails, SMS, etc, it takes a lot of time to make ensure that your information or notification to the customers is reaching and sometimes your information gets spam and it is not sent to the customer, but in case of WhatsApp things are different you can send information to a large number of people personally in there widget in a less amount of time.
10. WhatsApp as a Retargeting platform
A lesser know thing but WhatsApp for Business is a fantastic tool for retargeting and automation. You can let customers know about the product, share brochures that can be be easily shared further, send alerts and so on & so forth.
With Konverse.ai you can build retargeted message flow using a simple or complex rules that will auto trigger user communication on WhatsApp. With the help of same, you can also increase your reach to a global audience just like email marketing but with a high response rate.
Looking at all the points mentioned above, it can be concluded that WhatsApp Business API is one of the most effective communication channel. If you haven't already been using WhatsApp so far as your new marketing channel or customer support, then its not too late to start today. You can go ahead and schedule a meeting with us to find our how best you can use WhatsApp for Business to grow your customer engagement.
Background Image Credit: https://www.gamequarium.com/
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