If you order something online and you wake up to a message, ‘Thank you for ordering!’ on your WhatsApp, that means the message probably would have been sent from the user’s WhatsApp Business Account.
For every order placed or not placed, getting a follow-up on your WhatsApp shows that businesses use WhatsApp to promote their products and services.
When WhatsApp came up with its B2B initiative, it attracted more than 5 million users. It included small, large, and medium-sized businesses from around the world. But if recent stats are to be believed, WhatsApp Business has over 50 million users.
The number of WhatsApp For Business users is increasing with time. If you are a business owner, regardless of the niche, you must also use WhatsApp to manage business operations. You'll be amazed to know how your business can benefit from WhatsApp marketing.
This blog will cover the benefits, limitations, features, use cases, tips, and tools to use WhatsApp For Business efficiently.
But, before that, let us first see the blog overview:
- Definition Of WhatsApp For Business
- Types Of WhatsApp Business Accounts
- 3 Ways To Manage Your WhatsApp Business Chat
- Benefits Of Using WhatsApp Business Account
- Limitations To Using WhatsApp For Business
- How To Use WhatsApp For Business?
- WhatsApp Business Use Cases By Brands
- Tools To Integrate WhatsApp Business
- To Conclude!
- FAQs
You can easily navigate to any section or keep scrolling.
Definition Of WhatsApp For Business
WhatsApp Business is an application for businesses. Start-ups, private enterprises, public organizations, large business owners, and small business entities, irrespective of the niche, can use WhatsApp For Business.
The platform makes interaction, buying, and selling products and services quick, handy, and smooth. WhatsApp Business offers asynchronous messaging, meaning users can stop and restart conversations at their convenience.
WhatsApp Business was introduced with a goal to bring businesses on board and help them support their clients and customers by facilitating convenient interactions. WhatsApp For Business makes two-way communication easy and smooth with its features, such as instant replies, chat filters, etc.
Initially, the WhatsApp Business application was launched only for Android users. Almost a year later, the iOS WhatsApp Business application also came up.
Types Of WhatsApp Business Accounts
There are two categories of WhatsApp Business account.
- Official Business Account (OBA)
- Business Account
What Is An Official Business Account (OBA) On WhatsApp?
A business account with a green check mark badge in the upper right corner of the profile name is recognized as an official business account. It is the green tick mark badge itself that will differentiate a business account with OBA.
How Does OBA Work?
Your brand should be notable to get a verified badge on the WhatsApp Business account. Here are some other criteria your business must follow;
- Authentic: It means your brand/business should be the most searched and talked about.
- Verified: Your business has followed the official verification process, irrespective of the niche.
- 2FA: The business has set up and completed the two-step verification process.
If people often search for your business and you think it is a well-known brand entity, you can put a request for your business’ official account.
Before getting your WhatsApp Business Account, you must also comply with WhatsApp Commerce and WhatsApp Business Messaging Policy.
What Is A Business Account On WhatsApp?
If you use the WhatsApp Business platform, even by default, it is considered a Business Account. For instance, if you decide to convert the current personal contact number into a business account, it will be called a business account.
WhatsApp For Business gives you the freedom and flexibility to manage your WhatsApp chat. Here are the ways to do it.
3 Ways To Manage Your WhatsApp Business Chat
WhatsApp For Business gives you the freedom to manage your chats in the following ways;
- By Using A Partner: You can work with other companies to manage conversations with your clients and customers.
- By Using WhatsApp Cloud by Meta: By using this feature, your customers will be able to see that your business manages the chat by using a secure service by Meta.
- By Managing Chat By Yourself: If you manage the conversations yourself, the customers will see that the calls and messages are end-to-end encrypted on the top of the message window. It means that no one, even WhatsApp, cannot read or listen to the messages exchanged between two parties.
Benefits Of Using WhatsApp Business Account
WhatsApp Business allows you to send messages and perform different activities steadily with utmost safety. Apart from this, it offers the following benefits;
- Worldwide reach
- The message opening rate is high.
- Increased customer satisfaction (CSAT)
- Increased net promoter score (NPS)
- Instant customer support service
- Additional message security
- GDPR-Compliant, i.e., General Data Protection Regulation
Even though there are a lot of advantages to using WhatsApp For Business, there are some limitations as well. Before making any decision, one must consider both the pros and cons. So, let’s see what’s on the other side of using the application.
Limitations To Using WhatsApp For Business
Listed below are some of the drawbacks of using WhatsApp Business.
- The application allows you to register only 25 contact numbers per account.
- WhatsApp Business account can only be managed by one person at a time.
- WhatsApp Business Account cannot be migrated to another account.
Here the advantages outweigh the disadvantages in more ways than one. So we must look into the pros to get the best out of the platform.
How To Use WhatsApp For Business?
The interface of WhatsApp For Business is similar to WhatsApp for general or personal messaging. But because it is an application made solely for businesses, it has extra features and elements to help run the business smoothly. Here’s how you can use different features of WhatsApp For Business.
Set Auto- Replies on WhatsApp Business Account
Quick Replies
WhatsApp For Business helps businesses save time by answering common questions immediately. As the name suggests, the feature of Quick Replies allows you to do so.
Auto Greetings Messages
When you are away for some other business-related work, the automated message feature of WhatsApp business comes to your rescue. Through this feature, businesses can send bulk greetings to customers and clients.
You can also craft innovative Greeting Messages that your customers and clients will get when they start a conversation. The auto-reply feature lets you stay connected with the customers. You can reply to them on time without causing any delay.
Away Messages
You should set Away Messages when you are away or when you are unavailable for work. You can customize your message and reply to those who try to connect with you even after your business hours. The best part of this auto-reply feature is that it allows you to activate the message at your chosen time.
Go through the steps to set up the auto-reply feature in WhatsApp Business and avail yourself of its benefits.
Create Communities
It is a new feature that allows businesses to connect with those who matter by creating communities. Connect with multiple groups at work and organize business conversations under one umbrella. For example, if you are a restaurant owner, you can create a community of chefs and share important information related to them in a single community group.
For Android users, click on the new communities option at the top of the chats. For iOS users, tap on the new communities tab at the bottom. You can create an entirely new community or add existing work groups.
Send 2GB Files
Earlier, one could send files up to 100 MB only, but the increase in file transfer size will significantly help small businesses. While handling day-to-day tasks, business people often have to send important files or documents to other groups. WhatsApp has made it more accessible as you can send files up to 2GB. Furthermore, all your transactions will be secured through end-to-end encryption.
Can Add Up To 512 People In A Group
WhatsApp For Business allows you to add about 512 people to a single group. The feature will bring businesses closer to their current customers, clients, and employees.
Voice Message Updates
The new update, i.e., out-of-chat playback in voice messages, rolled out in March 2022, is a boon for businesses worldwide as it allows them to multitask while listening to the message received.
Create Business Catalogs
WhatsApp For Business allows you to create your catalog of your products and services. The feature makes it easy for customers to check your services. They can browse through all that your business serves.
By creating a catalog, you will not have to send every item or product’s details to every customer on a personal level. Moreover, you no longer have to direct your customers to your website to check the services.
Creating a catalog is not enough, you must also keep updating it with new offers, products, and services. Also, note that every time a new image is uploaded to the catalog, it goes through a review to confirm that any addition is able to meet the WhatsApp policy.
Everything about your business will be available on your WhatsApp Business Account. You can also add a unique title, price, description, product code, and website link to individual products and services. A catalog can hold up to 500 items at a time. So, you can send an entire catalog to current and potential customers to maximize sales.
WhatsApp Carts
To make shopping and purchasing easy, WhatsApp introduced the feature WhatsApp Carts. The feature is excellent for businesses that sell inventory. It makes transactions smooth, as customers can close a purchase just in a few steps.
Do you know?
Agradaya, a herbs and spices business in Indonesia, was the first to get early access to the WhatsApp Carts feature. After using the feature, they expressed their satisfaction and said that the feature had made it convenient for them to know the demands of their customers.
Customers can browse catalogs, select the product/service they wish to buy, then finalize the complete order in a single stream of messages. This feature has made it convenient for businesses to understand what customers like and dislike.
Access Message Metrics
Whatsapp For Business also allows you to access essential message statistics, such as how many messages were delivered, sent, and read. The feature shows you what’s working and what's not for your business.
The feature is also useful for tracking the performance of customer service agents. You will get to know how they are engaging with the customers. Apart from this, you can see the number of chat sessions, live chat response time, average resolution time (ART), and chat to conversion rate.
It tells you which type of messages are getting the most engagement. Looking into the stats becomes important when running your business. You are able to deliver an excellent customer WhatsApp chat experience.
Important note: Some of the chat metrics features mentioned are not available on the WhatsApp Business account. But you can access them on WhatsApp Business API.
Set Contact Labels
Because businesses have to deal with different customers simultaneously, WhatsApp For Business allows you to identify the customers, organize the contacts and categorize them at your convenience. Handling multiple chats from different customers at a time can get challenging.
Businesses can set labels to make the process more streamlined. For instance, if someone is new to your customer list, label them in the new category. For an old customer, add the contact into a different category, label them old and trusted customers, and so on. You can create different label types as per the type of customers you have. You can add labels to the chats and messages.
Reply Buttons And List Messages
Besides the quick reply buttons, WhatsApp in June 2022 introduced new formats to interact with their users, i.e., Reply Buttons And List Messages.
With the List Messages feature, businesses can make a list of 10 options so that customers can click on the service they want. The feature helps in reducing the manual typing work. The Reply Buttons feature assists the customer in choosing from the three options by tapping on the option they like.
Reply Buttons are great for getting quick responses like yes or no answers. List Messages are good for options like selecting nearby locations, customer care service, etc.
These two features are a great time saver as these will help you in building rich customer experiences.
WhatsApp Business Use Cases
WhatsApp business has spread its wings. Brands use it globally to reach wider audiences, create awareness, and earn revenue. Here are some examples of WhatsApp Business use cases:
JioFiber For Customer Service
Jio uses WhatsApp For Business to communicate with their customers. It uses the platform to provide customer service. The users can ask queries related to the Jio products and services on JioFiber Offers.
Customers can also request a call back to enquire about any particular service. One can perform activities like recharging, viewing plans and latest offers, checking credit limits, and paying bills. The activities are carried out using WhatsApp Chat Bot.
Just like Jio, there are other telecommunication services as well that resort to using WhatsApp to offer first-class customer service.
Read more: 11 Brilliant Ways To Use WhatsApp For Customer Service
Indeed For Talent Acquisition
WhatsApp makes the recruitment process a lot more quick, easy, interactive, and smarter. Because communication happens faster than ever, recruiters are able to filter out the interested and non-interested candidates without spending a lot of time.
Large organizations such as Indeed, Infosys, and others are resorting to WhatsApp For Business for hiring people for different positions. WhatsApp Business account is used for sending broadcast messages regarding job offers, events, and company news.
Estee Lauder
The beauty brand used WhatsApp to provide skincare consultations. During COVID-19, an AI chatbot was created to replace over-the-counter skin care consultations. The brand provided tips on maintaining a productive skincare routine.
ABSL Mutual Fund For Financial Services
Aditya Birla Sun Life uses WhatsApp For Business to send timely service notifications. Through WhatsApp, investors can also register themselves for new SIPs. Not only this, but investors can also generate their account statements, portfolio details, and details about all other schemes.
Marketing Campaigns
Brands have also resorted to WhatsApp For Businesses to create impressive marketing campaigns. For Instance, Adidas launched the ‘Rent A Pred’ campaign, Unilever launched the ‘I Will Bring You Back Your Beloved Clothes’ campaign, and Absolut Vodka came up with a successful campaign, the ‘Doorman At the Party’ campaign. All these WhatsApp marketing campaigns were a huge success and made their mark on their customers.
3 Tools To Integrate WhatsApp Business
The way businesses communicate has changed excessively since WhatsApp came into being. Despite the introduction of WhatsApp For Business, there still was a need to structure and optimize chats. To meet all the needs of large and small businesses, effective tools came into existence.
Businesses can use some of the finest tools to keep the customer conversation flowing. Some tools to integrate WhatsApp Business are as follows;
Statusbrew
Statusbrew is a top-tier social media management tool trusted by over 10,000 global brands with support for all the major social networks including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google My Business.
The tool now allows you to integrate your WhatsApp Business to communicate smoothly, efficiently, and conveniently with your customers. Not just this, Statusbrew lets you engage, publish, listen, report, collaborate, and advertise, all from a single platform.
Book a free demo now and learn how we can help you provide better support to your customers via WhatsApp and manage other socials as well!
Sprout Social
The WhatsApp integration into a cloud-based social media management software allows you to communicate at scale and deliver high-quality and seamless experiences to customers and communities.
With WhatsApp messaging, one can respond faster, create global connections, provide immediate customer support, recommend products and services, tailor responses, unify different channels, and speed up the response time.
If the pricing model is to be considered, every WhatsApp number that gets connected to the Sprout platform is considered a single profile. Per every 1000 conversations, you are charged $100 over the free limit. This is the flat pricing rate.
Callbell
It is a live chat solution that allows businesses to communicate with customers across different messaging apps. Callbell will enable you to integrate the main messaging applications into a single interface, which includes Messenger and WhatsApp.
Callbell allows you to streamline your customer service, route the chats, and enhance sales. The pricing model is for businesses of all sizes.
To Conclude
To sum up, we can say that WhatsApp For Business gives you a chance to transform the way you conduct your business operations. It offers you the freedom and flexibility to take care of your business activities on the go.
Everything from selling, communicating, engaging, and offering customer service can be managed within a few clicks. Whether you deal in e-commerce, retail, or banking, or you are a sole proprietor, non-profit organization, digital marketer, or anything else, WhatsApp For Business will keep you updated even with the tiniest move.
So, what are you waiting for?
Try Statusbrew now and take your business along with you, whenever and wherever you want.
Statusbrew is a unified Social Media Management tool that supports Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Linkedin, and even Google My Business!
FAQs
Here are some commonly asked questions and answers about WhatsApp Business tips, and tools;
What is so special about WhatsApp Business?
The features it provides make it special, such as quick replies, automated messages, tags, etc. It allows you to showcase your entire business profile, like your products and services, in the most convenient way.
How is WhatsApp different from WhatsApp Business?
WhatsApp is an application used generally for sending and receiving messages. However, WhatsApp Business also allows you to send messages but in a more professional way as it offers different templates and tools. WhatsApp Business, as the name suggests, is primarily for businesses (small, medium, and large), regardless of the niche.
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