What’s Up WhatsApp? My Top Tips For Enhancing Your Business Profile in 2019
WhatsApp is the largest messaging platform in the world, just beating WeChat and Facebook messenger with 1.5 billion users to date, and according to research, there are over 450 million users of WhatsApp Status, eclipsing Snapchat Stories.
In the UK and Europe, WhatsApp market penetration is highest in the Netherlands, at 85%, followed by Spain (83.1%) and Italy (83%) but as you can see from this fabulous infographic from my friends at We Are Social, WhatsApp is dominant in most countries outside of Asia, the US and Australia.
What is more interesting for business owners and marketers is that since its launch just over one year ago, WhatsApp Business has more than five million businesses using it to support customers, grow their businesses and serve communities. Since launch, WhatsApp Business has focused on helping brands become more accessible to a larger group of people through a natural form of communication — chat.
WhatsApp Business App vs WhatsApp Business API
Before we talk about getting started with WhatsApp for Business it’s important to note that WhatsApp currently allows two distinct ways of doing so. The difference between these two options is the types of companies they are designed for.
The WhatsApp Business App is designed to cater to small businesses. The WhatsApp Business App is the perfect solution to respond to customer service and product messages quickly and efficiently.
WhatsApp Business API is a product designed for larger enterprises. It allows companies to connect their CRM tools to WhatsApp in order to take actions programmatically. This can be anything as simple as providing shipping notifications through WhatsApp to having WhatsApp connected to their customer contact centre in order to provide real-time support.
If you’re looking to build a WhatsApp bot or to connect WhatsApp marketing software you’ll need to use the WhatsApp API and you’ll get enhanced metrics that way too.
Business Profile
The WhatsApp Business profile feature is useful because it creates a branded space on a trusted messaging service which allows customers to search for information about your business. This includes essential information like the URL, email address, description and business address where you can link directly to Google Maps. You’ll need to get a “Verified” badge next to your company name in order to start this process as WhatsApp has to confirm first that this is a verified business account.
Quick Replies, Greeting & Away Messages
To save businesses time, quick replies, greeting and away messages work in a similar way. Quick replies allow saving and re-sending messages to user FAQs for quickly answering them. You can create quick replies to send messages such as a thank you message, ordering instruction, information about payments or discounts and many more.
For starting your customer relations off well the platform allows you to create a greeting message that users will receive when they start a dialogue with your company or after 14 days of inactivity. By sending an instant message, you can welcome and introduce your business to a new potential customer with no delays and waiting time. It's a win-win situation. Away messages are like greeting messages. They send a custom message to people who are trying to connect the company after your working hours. You can write a custom message or send your working hours. You can set up for them to activate at the chosen time.
Labels: A Customer Filter That’s Easy To Apply
Customer segmentation and identification is key to any successful business in 2019. Businesses can organize their contacts and categorize them with labels for easy access. This way, you can easily search through your contacts and keep them grouped and organized.
Measuring Success on WhatsApp Business
Like many of its sister platforms, WhatsApp has basic metrics such as open rates, how many messages you’ve sent and more. This is good if you’re just starting out but if you want more sophisticated measurement analytics its probably best to invest in the enterprise version of the platform so you can get access to CRM data and performance.
How Can You Use WhatsApp Business?
So in what circumstances are businesses using WhatsApp Business successfully beyond responsive customer service?
Well for businesses in hospitality, travel, leisure, F&B, beauty, medical/healthcare that need to send confirmations or itinerary updates you could leverage the API to ensure your customers have that information handy on their mobile phone.
For businesses that rely on bookings or tickets for shows or entry into entertainment parks or onto planes, trains or rented automobiles you could leverage WhatsApp for business to send your customers a ticket when completing a booking with you.
- BookMyShow, which lets you receive a ticket via the messaging app when booking a film
- Bank BRI, which offers conversational banking features via WhatsApp
- Wish, which lets customers track their orders via messaging.
So in short, I feel this platform is ready to take the next leap in connecting businesses with consumers in their most natural habitat. WhatsApp has built up such strong consumer trust and scale cross borders that it could very well become the silver bullet in your platform strategy for 2019 and beyond. As always do let me know how you get on and if you have any questions beyond what is here from a technical perspective please don’t hesitate to contact me directly or share questions in the comment below.
