As the most popular messaging app worldwide, WhatsApp is massive and still growing. Having more than 1.5 billion users across the continents in 180 nations make it a huge platform for businesses. No wonder, companies are scrambling to expand their outreach through WhatsApp Business. However, targeted messaging is limited to this platform due to its encrypted messaging system.
Also, users have to pay a WhatsApp price to send a message unless the customers initiate the message. Despite these challenges, WhatsApp is a marketing force to reckon with.
What makes WhatsApp Great for Business?
The sheer power of market penetration makes WhatsApp an effective channel for digital communications. In countries like India and Brazil, it has over 400 million and 120 million respectively. Even in the USA, it has more than 23 million users irrespective of its smaller presence.
So, it is a powerful customer service channel that enables fast and effective engagement with the customers. From paid notifications to messaging leads, WhatsApp offers a wealth of features and strategies that can increase conversions.
With WhatsApp Business, you’ll get the features like:
- A public-visible business profile containing information about your business, its email address, description, URL, and much more
- Basic analytics reports through WhatsApp Business statistics
- Color-coded labels for active chats
- Pre-set messages for offline sending
- Default greetings for callers
- Short commands to send prompt replies
Tips to Improve Customer Services and Marketing Strategies
WhatsApp has emerged as the leading customer service channel for many businesses. Facebook found in a survey that messaging is the second most popular way of communicating with brands. Apart from being an effective channel for customers, it’s also a strong customer service tool for the brands. Here are the ways to offer excellent services to your customers using WhatsApp Business:
- Quick Replies Are Important
When it comes to managing customer-level interactions, you need to respond quickly to your customers. It is the Holy Grail for an exceptional WhatsApp customer experience. People expect faster responses within an hour after they ask a question. On WhatsApp, fast responding can be highly beneficial to your business.
If you reply within 24 hours of the latest message sent by a customer, the business replies are free. But, you may have to pay a WhatsApp price to reply after 24 hours of receiving the message. So, it makes more sense to be prompt in your responses.
- Use WhatsApp Chatbots
If you use WhatsApp Business API, you can also add chatbots for automatically answering the frequently asked questions. This can save much time and ensure that all messages are answered within 24 hours. However, you can’t rely on the bots to handle every query.
Sometimes, questions may be less common and demand personalized responses. Here, you can have a human customer service representative to handle the queries.
- Distribute Your Customer Service Number
When you set up a business profile on WhatsApp Business API, there’s no point in keeping your customer service number to yourself. You should distribute this number on the marketing materials like your social media account, email signature, website, and business cards. Also, designate a team of dedicated employees to handle the inquiries on WhatsApp for faster communications.
- Leverage Different Messaging Formats
WhatsApp aims to facilitate easy communications for businesses and customers. It brings a lot of interesting features, including different messaging formats, to manage your customer services. You can send videos, location maps, photos, PDFs, GIFs, and voice recordings to put across the messages in the most effective manner.
A variety of formats also implies your business isn’t limited to handling customer queries with text only. Instead, you can send PDF guides or video tutorials to help with complicated issues. Also, you can send videos or screenshots as proof for the communications.
- Make the Most of Your WhatsApp Status
If you are still not using WhatsApp Status for business communications, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. You can use this platform to build brand awareness through entertaining human stories about your brand or related events.
You can take it as an extension of your social media marketing strategies based on Instagram and Facebook Stories. Also, use your WhatsApp Status to post promotional videos, images, temporary discounts, or flash sales.
- Engage Through the Groups
WhatsApp Groups are your best bet to form a community based on your brand. You can add up to 256 people to a group for interactions. Consider it as a channel where any participant can ask questions about your business, products, or campaigns.
Make the most of this channel for content marketing using a distribution model where users signup to get your latest videos, articles, and ebooks.
With the help of WhatsApp Business API for enterprises, you can do a lot to open up communication with your customers. Also, expect many new options on this platform to improve marketing and customer services in the next few years.
