Time for WhatsApp Business!

You’ve heard of WhatsApp, chances are you’re using it to speak to friends and family already, which is no surprise as it’s one of the most trusted personal communication Apps in the world –currently used by over 2 billion people across the globeand still growing. Pretty impressive stuff.

For many users, WhatsApp is seen as a digital extension to the living room, a way to ‘chat’ with trusted people in a secure environment. Wouldn’t it be great if businesses could leverage that power; penetrate the inner circle of trust, speak with customers one-to-one and stay on the contact list as a welcome and valued guest?

To reach that point of acceptance can be a challenge, it takes careful consideration and a conversational strategy, something very different to regular SMS messaging which consumers can quickly get tired of and mark as spam.

We’re pleased to say we can help you gain access to that circle of trust, we can also give you pointers on how to put a conversational strategy together to help you build trust, stay relevant and keep your place there.

The WhatsApp Business API is currently in limited availability through selected solution providers globally. We’re proud to be one of the official providers – it puts us in the perfect position to help you elevate your conversation strategy to the next level.

Consumers today have high expectations of the customer journey, they consider messaging crucial in their buying process and they rely on it to provide a seamless experience. Recent research by Sentient Decision Science in a Facebook commissioned survey shows just how much. More than 70% of the 8,000 surveyed are using messaging in all stages of the buyer process:

• Pre purchase – to make a general enquiry or ask about a product or service
• During purchase – to complete a purchase or schedule an appointment
• Post purchase – to get product / service support or comment about a product

If you’re not able to meet your customers conversational needs with a secure, trusted messaging platform, you can be sure your competition will be there to pick up the pieces.

That’s why the WhatsApp Business API is so special, not only because it can meet your customers in the places where they prefer to do business, but also because it’s a powerful guided brand experience supporting rich media (photos, hyperlinks, PDFs), has an unlimited character count and keeps all chats stored under the same conversation for easy reference.

It all comes down to integrating conversations in the right place at the right time in the customer journey, keeping friction to a minimum and delighting customers at every possible point on their path to purchase.

Integrating WhatsApp Business into your strategy is a straightforward 6 step process:

1. Map out your customers’ journey and any friction points along the way
2. Identify opportunities to reduce any friction with timely notifications
3. Decide on an integration approach: engage an expert solution provider, like Sinch
4. Set up required notification messages
5. Drive discovery and ask for customer opt-ins at the right touch points
6. Agree on metrics and measure results

We’d love to help you get started with WhatsApp Business. From initial onboarding and official verification through to ongoing management and handling conversations at scale, we’re here to help every step of the way. With plenty of experts in house to guide you, we can offer all the support you need to take your customer journeys to a whole new level. We also have a thorough WhatsApp Business API tutorial that is worth checking out.

Don’t wait to register for WhatsApp Business, this is an opportunity that needs to be jumped on quickly. We’ve opened up our WhatsApp for Business API library to all qualified businesses! Check out our WhatsApp API product page for more details on how to get started!