WhatsApp, with a presence in over 180 countries, continuously comes up with new features to make the lives of its users simple and set higher standards of quality communication around the industry. With the introduction of end-to-end encryption, live location sharing, group phone and video calling, visible last seen and read messages, indication of forwarded messages and more, WhatsApp has earned the trust of several successful companies, around the globe, by keeping their data private and secure and their business communication technologically driven.
Customers now want to communicate with businesses with the same ease in which they can reach their friends and family. With WhatsApp Business, Its 1.6 billion-plus customers who send more than 60 billion messages per day, now have a chance to communicate with their favorite brands in the way they want. As e-commerce companies have limited physical customer interaction, it is important that they make their online interactions instant, easy and powerful. Using a platform like WhatsApp, allows businesses to do just that.
Owners can use the WhatsApp Business platform or Whatsapp API for their e-commerce stores, no matter how big or small. By having a Whatsapp-integrated e-commerce store, they can consistently stay in touch with their customers, and increase brand recognition and recall Ultimately, they can use Whatsapp Business for e-commerce to improve the most important factor behind any business success – customer experiences. Here are some ways in which e-commerce firms can leverage this dynamic platform:
Businesses can create a WhatsApp Business profile in 3 easy steps:
Having a business profile on WhatsApp helps businesses create visibility by providing an opportunity to connect with customers directly, expanding reach to global reach and thus, increasing the potential growth of the company. Through this profile, businesses can also provide company information to customers that can help them connect to you easily. In such a way you are always connected to each and every customer.
Businesses can now easily organize all their customer communication. With the options of using “labels” as we create folders to organize emails, businesses can label each conversation into a specific category and quickly find the exact information when needed. Companies can also create a ‘broadcast list’ by adding the contact information of a group of customers to the list. With this, they can send messages to multiple people at once, without them seeing the other recipients. Moreover, since businesses use different communication strategies for different customers, they can also create separate lists for customers, for example, a list for ‘regular customers’, ‘potential customers’ and so on.
This enables them to send all the required information to the specific category, at once. Since all the communication takes place through one platform, businesses can easily track their interactions with each customer. In addition, through the search feature available on WhatsApp, businesses can also search for particular keywords to find the exact sentence out of all the conversations.
For example, if there is a miscommunication of pricing, businesses can search for the keyword and locate the exact communication they had with the customer regarding their costs. In such a way, no party can falsely accuse the other. In a similar way, if a company representative has forgotten what the customer had reached out to them for, he can easily track down the conversation and provide all the information, the customer needs.
Let’s look at some more WhatsApp e-commerce use cases.
Businesses can now get instant analytics for their communication process. Carefully understanding their past communication patterns, businesses can gain keen insights that can help them drive future business planning. Business can now enjoy access to immediate information on the status of each communication through powerful messaging features available on WhatsApp like last seen detail, message delivery status and the indication of read messages.
Two-way communication: e-commerce and WhatsApp Business
Every business can utilize efficient two-way communication with their customers, depending on their needs. This means that customers can initiate Customers can directly contact you for additional information or assistance through WhatsApp’s private channels. When they need to change their hotel reservation or receive a new boarding pass after flight changes, they can message you and you can solve the problem then and there. Customers no longer need to call your business line, pass through IVR, stay in the queue and then get in touch with a customer representative.
Multimedia attachments
WhatsApp conversations with businesses as and when they need additional information, have queries or want to give feedback. With the inclusion of 7 different multimedia attachments- audio, video, documents, images, location, contact information, and text, you can answer customer queries you can enrich your message and ensure that you are providing them with all the required resources. Your customer wants the same perfume they bought last month but is no longer in stock? No problem. You can now notify them when it is back in stock and even send a picture of the product to ensure its the one they are looking for. Using GPA for live location sharing, you can share a link with customers that can easily help them track their delivery, on WhatsApp.
Quick replies with a Whatsapp Business integration for e-commerce
With quick replies, you can send more messages with lesser effort. It lets you save and reuse messages that are frequently sent out to customers so you can easily send the saved answer for frequently asked questions in no time.
Whatsapp Business ecommerce integration and automated messages
Dont keep customers waiting! Reply to customers even when they message you during non-business hours and keep them updated about when to expect a response. You can also automate greeting messages at the start of your conversation for new customers.
Other WhatsApp e-commerce use cases include sending PNR status, QR codes and more to ensure that all their processes are running smoothly and important data can only be accessed by the authorized user. The WhatsApp Business API helps you reach your customers on a platform they frequently use. You can gather instant feedback through their replies and leverage the data you receive to understand your customers and serve them better.
If you wish to learn more about how to get started with WhatsApp Business for e-commerce or WhatsApp API for e-commerce, watch this quick set of videos.
WhatsApp Update – With more consumers turning to chat with businesses on WhatsApp, the instant messaging service provider recently announced updates to the WhatsApp Business API that will make it quicker for businesses to get started and for people to easily chat with these businesses. As per the latest update received from WhatsApp, all the existing businesses on the WhatsApp Business API from the following countries, i.e., Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany, Nigeria, Egypt, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, USA, Indonesia, and Mexico will be able to send non-transactional notifications to their opted-in customers.
With this new update, businesses can drive many new use cases on the platform, such as sending product recommendations, promotional offers, and most importantly, re-engaging with their users by sending regular reminders and updates related to their products and services. All the businesses that belong to one of the countries listed above as the country setting in Business Manager can send non-transactional notifications. There won’t be a need for any additional integration.