How to get started with WhatsApp business

Whatsapp is the fastest growing messaging app today. Here’s the answer to the question business owners ask now: how can I use Whatsapp for my business?

Do you find it harder to communicate to customers regularly? One-to-one interaction can be a real challenge to businesses these days, especially after customers started to prefer personalized engagement. Whether in marketing or in daily life, instant messaging rules the stage. People are flooding to instant messaging platforms and Whatsapp is among the most popular. Having a business account in Whatsapp then can be a huge plus for your business. It has become the new favourite of popular brands in interacting with customers.

A Whatsapp business account is an important step in customer interaction management, as you can find most of your customers there. It’s where they interact daily with their friends, family and close ones. While Whatsapp may just seem like an ordinary, simple messaging application, it has a lot of features that will help you with creating customer relationships and nurturing leads. All the options ranging from group chats to video calls not only makes Whatsapp popular among ordinary users but also among brands looking for wider scope for customer interactions.

The main attraction of Whatsapp is that all these services are free. International communication and relationships are easy and completely free with Whatsapp, when you’ve got all your voice notes, group chats and media in your inbox. That means, it works well if you have a global customer base. Other than all these, what increases its popularity among marketers then? Well, that’s what we’re gonna see.

Activating Whatsapp business profile- step by step

To use Whatsapp on your desktop, you’ve to scan a QR code on your computer screen using your mobile phone. You’ve to install the app on your smartphone first in order to open it on any other device.

If you haven’t downloaded Whatsapp business yet, go to Google Play Store or any other local app store and install it. Whatsapp will automatically connect your pre-existing account to the business profile if you’ve already set your account. Add your mobile number after you agree to terms and conditions. That’s all, you’re ready to go! Note that, if your account is started with your personal number, you can change that later on settings.

To make the most of your business profile, there are many other features that may help you in interacting with your customers effectively. But before that, let’s look at how to add business information on your profile.

Adding the website, email id, address and other relevant information

Under Business Settings, see Business Profile and add all the relevant information. Customers identify you as a business account once you set up the account. Another thing that differentiates this from a normal profile is the green tick mark. This will appear on your profile after you get verified by Whatsapp, by checking the accuracy of all the information provided.

How to make use of a Whatsapp business profile?

A Whatsapp business account is useful to your business in many ways. Here are some of them listed for you-

Regular interactions

To increase the visibility and to interact with your customers on a daily basis, Whatsapp is the best option. No matter what you do, whether it’s updating your customer about something new or informing them about the service options you provide, Whatsapp business accounts will keep it so much easier and convenient. It is perfect for maintaining a positive relationship with the customers and having regular conversations. As most of them are more likely to be active in Whatsapp and use it on a regular basis, the visibility is very high. Plus, it’s perfect for resolving issues quickly. In short, it’s an informal platform where you can reach your customers quickly and interact with them informally. Another attraction of a Whatsapp business account is broadcast. You can easily create broadcasts and segment your audience to send some special messages. With automated messages, Whatsapp can send messages of your new product update or answer some queries like a chatbot. You can send the pre-written message to selected customers too.

Better Customer engagement

Searching for the easiest way for followup? Enter Whatsapp Business Profile. Whatsapp works far better than text messages or any other messaging services in engaging with customers effectively. It has higher response rates and better engagement. While all the customers may not be willing to talk to you via phone or even choose not to pick up seeing an unknown number, Whatsapp messages are a convenient alternative, given that most people open chats or messages quickly. To contact the international customers quickly, you can make use of the calling feature too. This easy-to-use informal space is more effective in one-to-one communications with your customers.

Customer support

Providing a Whatsapp number for customer support systems or help desks will help you to extend your service further. As more people are using Whatsapp and they are more likely to send messages through it because it’s the easiest way available, than drafting an email or calling your helpdesk number. The only problem is, if you’ve a large number of customers, your inbox might be flooded with messages. You may lose track of all the messages and miss the important ones. That’s where you need a customer interaction management tool like Cloodot. This will help you to categorize all your messages neatly and find them all, from every platform, in one inbox.

Using Whatsapp for communicating among yourselves

With rapidly growing users, Whatsapp has become one of the most popular messaging apps- even more popular than text messaging- especially in countries like India. So, it’s one of the best ways available for internal communications. If you haven’t started Whatsapp groups of your customer support teams or marketing team, check that out yourself. Rather than introducing any other tool for communicating with your team, be there in the platform everyone is already familiar with. This has more success rates and can be effective in quickly resolving issues that may pop up. It’s easy, fast and informal. You’ll see that it’s a far easier channel to convey all new updates and new information than an email. And yeah, you don’t have to ask them to check because they use it on a regular basis more than any other applications.

Marketing tool

If you like to be a little creative in customer engagement, use Whatsapp to get your creative juices flowing. Marketing and promoting your business can be fun using Whatsapp, as it offers one-to-one, direct interaction with your customers. Plus, it supports a variety of media like photo, video, audio and document. It gives you a chance to experiment with your approaches and design creative marketing campaigns.

Bear in mind that, whatever you do, it does not do to spam your customers with frequent and out of place messages. As Whatsapp is a very informal messaging service, remember to keep your boundaries by respecting the privacy of your customer. Also, it’s always recommended to use Whatsapp interactions as a medium convenient for people to reach out to you rather than to message unknown people without any context. The latter will only create a negative response. In other words, it’s better to use it as a tool to boost your customer support and engage with existing customers.

Other features

To use the Whatsapp account of your business to your advantage, you’ve to know some features that can help you to get started.

Showcase your products using catalog tool

Like we’ve already seen, a Whatsapp business account shows your email, contact details, location and other relevant information. In addition to all that, you can add the details about your products, including pictures, as a catalog. You can list all your popular products with this tool and advertise new offers. This will give your potential customers some idea about what you offer and can browse through your products to decide on their purchase. Before their attention is diverted, they can get all the details about you without searching elsewhere. You don’t need to redirect your customer to a website or answer their queries about price of particular products as the product code, price and every other detail of each product can be listed there conveniently.

Use labels to organize your chats

For easy navigation and access, you can label your chats. This feature will help you to categorize all your messages into groups so that they can be identified easily. By just clicking on the menu of the chat page, you can add a label of your choice and save. If you want to add a new label, do the same as before and click ‘NEW LABEL’. Type the name of the label and click save/ok.

Set up a greeting

With no further delay, you can start engaging with your customers by setting up a simple greeting. Customers receive this greeting as they begin the interaction. This feature can also help you after 14 days of inactivity. This instant message can be used to greet them and introduce your brand or business to them. You can find this option in your Settings, under Business settings. By clicking ‘Greeting message’, you can create or edit your welcoming note.

Replies for FAQs

Without typing the answer for a frequently asked question, you can reply quickly using this feature. With this quick reply option, you can save your replies from previous chats to the common questions and use it in new chats. Just press the / icon on your keyboard and select a reply from the list to send in no time.

Reply even after business hours

Away messages help you to stay in touch with the customer even after regular business hours. This is similar to greeting messages. If a customer reaches you after your working hours, they’ll receive this message. You can activate this message at the time you choose. To find where you can edit and create away messages, go to Business settings, click on Away message and then ‘activate away message’. You’ve the options such as ‘Always send’ and ‘custom schedule’ to choose the timings and preferences.

This is not all. There are some other paid options to enhance customer experience. In addition , Whatsapp has introduced a payment feature, making it easier for businesses to pay just as easily as sending messages. That’s a lot to cover in one article. To know more about using Whatsapp as a business tool, check out our article, An Advanced Guide to Whatsapp for business.