With more than two billion users, businesses are increasingly turning to WhatsApp to connect with their customers on their favorite channel.
The WhatsApp Business API allows businesses of all shapes and sizes to connect with their customers worldwide.
WhatsApp Business solutions effectively reach customers with a 99% open rate and over 40% response rate.
Endless waiting lines, connectivity issues, delayed responses - all of these are the customer service frustrations that are bypassed by WhatsApp, thus making WhatsApp for customer service increasingly popular among businesses.
There are no waiting lines as mobile is asynchronous. Your customers can put their phones away, start their day, and get notified about your answer whenever it arrives. The conversation can even escalate into a live interaction from WhatsApp if required.
Here's how you can implement it in the most effective way in 2024.
11 Effective Ways To Use WhatsApp For Customer Service In 2024
- Solve Customer Queries On Chat
- Send Out Alerts, Updates, And Notifications
- Collect Feedback And Engage With The Customers
- Personalized Recommendations To Drive Engagement
- Collect Quick Feedback
- Provide Post-sales Support
- Allow Customers To Avail Services Quickly
- Share Product Or Service Catalog
- Legitimize Your Business
- Set Away Messages
- Label Your Customers For Better Tracking
Solve Customer Queries On Chat
Nobody likes the long wait times when calling the customer service team. Instead, you can divert the customer queries to the WhatsApp chat. You can offer live support to your customers through customer service reps or automated chatbots.
Live customer support through reps on WhatsApp
This way, a live customer support representative can handle multiple queries at the same time, which cannot be achieved over a call. With automated chatbots, your customer support will run 24x7 with little to no wait times.
This even reduces the load on your call center, which can then be deployed only for issues and queries that require human conversation and intervention. Incorporating WhatsApp for customer service enables faster, more convenient communication, thus enhancing the overall customer experience.
Send Out Alerts, Updates, And Notifications
You can send out order updates such as packed, dispatched, out for delivery, arriving, etc., through WhatsApp messages containing all the information with no character limits. But don't make the message too long with irrelevant text.
Notify customers about upcoming sales and promotions with WhatsApp texts with details about the offer and links to purchase/avail the offer.
Often, customers find it challenging to identify the correct information they need to use a service or product. You can bridge this gap by sending time-sensitive information instantly to your customers through WhatsApp. Send notifications, alerts, reminders, and recommendations to give your customers a better brand experience.
You can even trigger a WhatsApp text immediately when a suspicious activity is detected on a customer's account to inform them so they can look into it and confirm.
In this way, you can ensure real-time communication and prompt responses for customer satisfaction and trust with WhatsApp for customer service.
Collect Feedback And Engage With The Customers
Customer service is not just a one-way communication for businesses. WhatsApp Business API opens the floor for two-way communication for businesses. So, you can not just give information to your customers using WhatsApp but also receive information or feedback from them. Use WhatsApp to collect customer feedback and queries and respond to them in real time!
Unlike other channels, there are hardly any restrictions regarding file formats on WhatsApp. You can send non-promotional and personalized messages using rich media formats like images, audio, videos, or GIFs.
It's an excellent way to start a conversation with your customers and provide an engaging and interactive experience through WhatsApp for customer service.
Personalized Recommendations To Drive Engagement
Retaining a mobile app user's attention is always a challenge. The average mobile user ends up using only nine apps out of the 30 apps downloaded every month on an everyday basis. And WhatsApp is one of the most frequently used mobile apps.
You can leverage WhatsApp for customer service to set up automated messages and send relevant reminders and recommendations to drive your customers' attention to your business.
Also, give your customers a choice to opt for alerts and updates they are interested in. You can also provide users with an option to opt-out of recommendations to not frustrate them and for a better user experience with your brand.
Collect Quick Feedback
Businesses can use WhatsApp for customer service to collect timely feedback from their customers. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp have incredible open rates. So, there are much more chances of customers opening your WhatsApp messages and responding to your feedback requests as compared to a channel like an email.
So, you can use WhatsApp to collect relevant information from customers around the globe to improve your service or product. Several brands use WhatsApp to collect feedback from their customers post-service.
Provide Post-sales Support
In a Facebook study, 50% of the participants who messaged a business continued to communicate via messages across all stages of their customer journey – to get support, to ask about a product or service, or to make a purchase or reservation.
WhatsApp offers businesses a low-effort way to provide post-sales support without making their customers wait in line. You can offer live video tutorials if a product needs more explanation or repair. You can also process refunds faster without a lot of paperwork or the back-and-forth emails.
Allow Customers To Avail Services Quickly
Each time your customers have a query, it's not necessary to direct them to your website or connect them to a customer support representative. Some services can be automated and be provided through chatbots.
You can support your customers by helping them book appointments, send in ID proofs, invoices or receipts as proof of payment to support queries, or access web check-in, their boarding pass, or ticket details through WhatsApp Business API.
Share Product Or Service Catalog
You can easily share product or service images and details with your customers through the WhatsApp Business API solution. You can choose to send a product catalog whenever your customers need it or ask for it or even when you need to send it out.
Unlike email communication or traditional SMS, WhatsApp is easily accessible by customers, even if they are not tech-savvy. The cherry on the cake is that WhatsApp has no character limit or SMS charges! They can save messages, bookmark them, and forward them too!
Legitimize Your Business
You can undoubtedly use a personal (non-business) WhatsApp account for business purposes. But one of the major flaws of using personal WhatsApp for business is that unless you have built enough credibility for your business, customers might get wary or skeptical about doing business with you, especially when you post personal statuses or broadcasts.
With the business profile, you can state your company address, open hours, website, and what your company does or your vision. WhatsApp for customer service becomes more professional and credible through the use of a dedicated business profile.
To create a WhatsApp Business Profile: Open WhatsApp Business App > Tap the menu button > Go to Settings > Business settings > Profile.
Set Away Messages
You or your customer success team might need rest from supporting your customers in a day being human. But that doesn't mean your company can stop working, especially when your customers feel that they need you immediately.
By using the features of WhatsApp for customer service, such as by setting business hours and creating an "Away Message," you can ensure that you lose fewer customers when your support team is not working, show your customers the next step and even notify them of when you can get back to them. This will make them feel like they have been heard.
You will also be obligated to respond. You can set specific responses to some of the common questions and messages you get from your customers using the "Quick replies" feature, helping you create a quick feedback mechanism for those questions.
To activate or edit away messages: Go to Settings -> Business settings -> Away message -> Activate away message -> Edit message if you want.
In "Away message settings," you can also schedule when you want the message to appear with three different options: Always send, Custom schedule, and outside of business hours.
Read more: 10-Step Guide To Set Up Auto Reply On WhatsApp Business [+Templates]
Label Your Customers For Better Tracking
Depending on the nature of your business or the number of orders you get, you might have to save your customers' names with weird anecdotes like "Rose first order" and so on and so forth. Even though you are tagging your customers in the simplest way possible, they can get lost in translation or the middle of all the other customers.
So, you should effectively categorize your customers as soon as their status changes in your business. For instance, you can start labeling your customers as "Regulars, Pending orders, Promo customers," and more.
To add customers to labels: Click the menu button on the customer's chat page > choose a label > click Save.
To add new labels: Click the menu button on the customer's chat page > click New label > click Save.
How Are You Planning To Use WhatsApp For Customer Service In 2024?
We hope this article has given you a better understanding of how WhatsApp can be used to benefit your customer service in 2024. WhatsApp Business is worth considering if you are looking for new ways to improve your customer care. It's constantly evolving with new features and capabilities and is a powerful tool that can help you reach your customers where they are.
You can use WhatsApp in several creative ways to interact with your customers and attract them to your brand. The more relevant and valuable these interactions are, the more your customers will stick with your business and recommend your brand.
And if you are looking for an easy way to manage your social tasks, look no where else because Statusbrew helps businesses like you to effectively carry out their social media campaigns from a single dashboard.
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FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Here are some commonly asked questions about WhatsApp for customer service:
How can I use WhatsApp for business support?
You can use WhatsApp for business support to handle customer queries, collect customer feedback, send timely updates and recommendations, share instant notifications, and scale customer communication efficiently.
Which companies use WhatsApp for customer service?
Some well-known brands that use WhatsApp for customer service are Hellmann, Yoox, Adidas, Decathlon, Bankia, and RACC Mobility Club.
WhatsApp marketing campaigns are also conducted by top brands like Adidas, Netflix and Lenskart.
Why would a business use WhatsApp?
Businesses can use WhatsApp as a support and marketing channel. You can answer customer inquiries, resolve customer issues, take orders, and send updates while running marketing campaigns through direct messages.
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