With more than 1.6 billion active users every month, WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging app. The app is most commonly known for communicating with anyone that owns a smartphone, whether its friends, family, or colleagues. But did you know that you can also use it for your customer communications? And that you can integrate it with a WhatsApp chatbot?

Before we get into that, you might be wondering about the benefits of establishing a business presence on WhatsApp. Here are some pretty impressive statistics that might surprise you:

• GlobeAir, an European private jet company, discovered that displaying their WhatsApp number on their site resulted in 27% more sales leads. This resulted from visitors initiating chats.

• According to a study by Nielsen, 67% of mobile messaging app users expect to use chat to communicate with businesses over the next two years. Furthermore, 53% of those surveyed indicated that they're more likely to patronise a business that they can message directly.

• Messaging a prospective customer after making initial contact can raise conversion rates by 113%

What’s more, all your customer communications via WhatsApp can be made much easier with a WhatsApp chatbot. But for your businesses to be on WhatsApp in the first place, it needs a WhatsApp Business API.

There are three key use cases for the WhatsApp Business API:

• Establish your brand’s presence on WhatsApp

• Respond to current and potential customers within 24 hours

• Send programmed notification messages to customers

So how exactly will your business “presence” look like on WhatsApp? This would come in the form of your WhatsApp Business profile, as well as your messaging interactions with customers.

Your WhatsApp Business profile will include the following:

• Cover photo

• Description of your business

• Address

• Email

• Website

• Business hours

Note that your WhatsApp Business profile will not be searchable on WhatsApp. Also, your account will be listed as a Business account.

Before your business can send messages to users, WhatsApp requires users to first give their consent.

There are two ways in which users can give consent for you to message them: 1) the user messages your business first, or 2) the user opts in as a contact.

Under the opt-in method, the user provides consent by checking a box or providing their phone number. After users opt in, you can integrate them into your customer service software.

With the WhatsApp Business API, you can check whether a user’s phone number is for a valid WhatsApp account before you message the individual.

However, keep in mind that you may end up getting banned if you check too many phone numbers without sending out any messages. This is most probably to deter spamming activity on WhatsApp.

Note that you’ll need to connect your WhatsApp Business API with an customer service software tool before you can send and receive messages.

The messaging features are rather basic — consisting of plain text, emojis, files, and media.

With that said, it would be useful to utilise media types which WhatsApp can play natively. This includes audio, as well as the picture-in-picture feature where users can view Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram videos in a window within the app.

You can also make use of emojis and stickers in your interactions with users to keep things interesting. Like a normal WhatsApp account, you’ll be able to see if and when your messages have been sent, received, or read.

As mentioned earlier on, you can integrate your WhatsApp Business account with a WhatsApp chatbot. With this feature, your business will be able to address customer queries round the clock, among many other benefits. We’ll go more into this later.

There are two forms of messaging that your business can use on the WhatsApp Business API: 1) session messaging, and 2) template messaging.

WhatsApp Message Type

1) Session messaging

Under WhatsApp’s session messaging feature, businesses cannot message a customer after 24 hours from the last incoming message from that customer.

This feature encourages businesses to respond quickly to their customers. At the same time, it prevents businesses from sending out “spammy” messages after the 24-hour window has elapsed.

When a user sends a WhatsApp message to your business, a 24-hour timer begins. During this 24-hour time frame, your company can message that user without any restrictions.

Once the 24 hours has elapsed, you’ll only be able to message the user through template messaging.

2) Template messaging

A WhatsApp template message is essentially strings of text containing placeholders pre-approved by WhatsApp. For example, a string of text could be “Your {{order_number}} is confirmed and will be delivered on {{delivery_date}}”

WhatsApp charges for each template message, with the price varying depending on the message destination and origin.

These template messages have to be pre-approved so that businesses don’t send out sales-related or bulk marketing messages after 24 hours from the last incoming message from a customer.

WhatsApp template messages are designed to provide updates to customers. These could be for order updates, delivery updates, two-factor authentication, as well as travel notifications.

Your business can also make a request for additional template messages, with the approval process usually taking around one to two weeks. This requesting process will involve choosing a template messaging category such as Shipping Update, Reservation Update, and Payment Update.

While most of the template messaging categories revolve around transaction updates, there are categories that allow your business to update on how new features work. For example, such updates can be done with the Account Update category.

WhatsApp has also added a localisation feature, where message templates are stored as bundles for a certain language or locality. That way, you can send template messages to different areas that use different languages.

Note that WhatsApp will reject a template message if it contains any of the following:

• Promotional messages or those that reflect up-selling

• Spelling errors

• Cold messaging

• Incorrect formatting

Want to secure approval for your message templates? Be sure to abide by these message template guidelines.

Ready to start using WhatsApp for your business?

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Business name and details: This includes your company website, address, email, and a short description of your business

• Company logo: This should be minimally 300 x 300 pixels

• Mobile phone number: An OTP will be sent so that your business can authenticate the number. Call centre numbers are allowed. Also, note that the number should not already be registered with a normal WhatsApp account.

• Message templates

With AiChat, launching the WhatsApp Business API for your business is a simple four-step process, which can be completed in only three weeks.

Timeline

Phase

What happens here

Week 0

Pre-Production

• Decide on your success metrics and KPIs. This could revolve around messages opened, messages read, and engagement rate etc.

Week 1

Registration & Sign-off

• Sign Terms of Service

•Share account details for WhatsApp Business registration

Week 2

Account Setup

• Register sender name

•Message templates registration and approval

•Set up virtual machine

Week 3

Launch WhatsApp Business Profile

Start sending and receiving messages over WhatsApp.

While the WhatsApp Business API is already a boon for businesses, you can take things further by integrating it with AI powered software: a WhatsApp chatbot.

Here’s what you can look forward to with AiChat’s chatbot for your WhatsApp Business API.

WhatsApp for Business Chatbot

With a chatbot integrated with your WhatsApp live chat support, you can provide instant responses to current and potential customers, even after office hours. You’ll also be able to address at least 30% of frequently asked questions in real-time through a virtual assistant.

This means you get to provide an improved customer experience, resolve issues quicker, and let your customer service staff focus on other aspects of their work.

Also, each time your WhatsApp account receives a message in a live chat, the WhatsApp chatbot can provide the best matching answer to an agent in your company. The agent can then reply to the customer with the relevant answer template without having to consult others or sieve through large volumes of information.

An added bonus is that the AI bot will learn from the agent-customer interactions over time, and become smarter at choosing matching answers for agents.

Just because you have an AI chatbot integrated with your WhatsApp doesn’t mean things have to be complicated.

With AiChat’s Drag-and-Drop Bot Builder, building your chat bot is intuitive, simple, and fun. You won’t even need any knowledge in programming. Simply connect WhatsApp to AiChat and your bot will be up and running before you know it.

WhatsApp probably won’t be the only messaging channel you’ll be dealing with. Chances are you’ll also have your website and Facebook messaging channels to manage.

With AiChat, you can streamline all messaging channels into one single unified channel for your customer service team. This is especially useful if you’re executing a conversational marketing or conversational commerce strategy across many messaging channels.

Your business can also acquire more leads by proactively engaging users on WhatsApp.

Once the leads are qualified, a bot will direct them to the most suitable agent or department, all while keeping your CRM in sync.

Once your leads are qualified and ready to make a purchase, the AiChat software bot can do appointment bookings automatically. It will also connect users with the most suitable sales people.

Want to learn more about your customers and their experiences?

You can create a customised conversational survey by using the chatbot form builder. This can then be deployed on your WhatsApp channel for improved response rates.

With the WhatsApp chatbot integration, you can also get hold of critical information such as customer sentiments and interests, as well as the different customer groups.

Additionally, you’ll get a good grasp of current and past activities in your WhatsApp channel.

Last but not least, the chat analytics dashboard allows you to monitor areas like bot performance, engagement rate, chat sentiments, and user retention.

You can then use these powerful insights to optimise your messaging and engagement strategies for better results.

Interested to implement a WhatsApp chatbot for your business? We’re experts in developing WhatsApp chatbots. Feel free to contact us here.