WhatsApp messages for business messaging, send and receive messages!
Did you know that you can send WhatsApp messages on behalf of your organization to the consumer WhatsApp app and communicate in a similar way to what you can do with text messages? You get your own organization’s “presence” on WhatsApp, meaning you appear there under your organization’s name and brand.
Messaging can be one-way or two-way and includes links, images, videos, and action buttons, for example. It should be noted that the WhatsApp application here refers to the normal WhatsApp application that we all use.
A big advantage of WhatsApp is that it allows for free-form conversations in text format, but also with voice messages, images and videos. Customers can be offered the opportunity to make an appointment or order directly, for example. From a WhatsApp message by pressing the action button. Two-way communication, i.e. replying to a message, is thus made very straightforward and easy.
From an organization’s perspective, the WhatsApp channel can act as both an outbound and inbound channel. Messages can be sent and replies can be received. A customer can also contact the organization through a WhatsApp business account by sending a message to the organization’s WhatsApp number and the customer can be replied to.
WhatsApp is great as an inbound channel for customer service because a customer can message your organization and wait for a response. Your organization’s response will be sent to the customer’s WhatsApp phone once the customer service has had time to deal with the issue. This makes it very different from online chats or phone service, which are context-sensitive.
What should I know?
In practice, WhatsApp communications are subject to the same legal requirements as all customer communications. WhatsApp has also developed a few of its own rules for managing communications. The purpose of these is to keep organizations’ WhatsApp communications as relevant as possible from the customer’s perspective.
One example of this is that the message must be sent using a pre-approved message template. The message template can contain variables such as the customer’s name, product, code. If the message dialogue continues from here, it can be completely free-form. When a customer contacts the organization, the communication can be completely free-form from the beginning.
Customers you want to send WhatsApp messages to must have permission to communicate digitally. The clearest way to do this is to do it separately outside of WhatsApp with a separate consent request, as with other customer communications. Existing permissions can be used if the WhatsApp channel is specified. In addition, opt-in requests can be made in the application for certain use cases.
How do I get started?
You can conveniently get messaging and the services you need for communication from one and the same service platform, SmartDialog.
Establishing a connection
- A Facebook Business account will be created for your organization
- The organization gets its own unique WhatsApp number, which is registered based on the Facebook Business ID
- The organization accepts the Whatsapp Client Terms and Conditions
- When setting up, we consider the message templates that can be downloaded (you can download more of these and change the existing ones later)
Service and interface
- An agreement is made for the necessary services
- Services are being created (1- and 2-way messaging service, Dialogue service)
- Enables sending, receiving, and possible forwarding of messages
- Creating an automatic response or response search
- Possibility of integrations, e.g. MS Power Platform, Zapier, Hubspot
Restrictions
- Outgoing messages can only be sent using a pre-approved message template
- Incoming messages can be replied to freely for 24 hours, during which time media, images, videos can also be sent
You can utilize the service platform’s modern API interfaces, connectors, or the web management interface’s messaging tool according to your needs. We handle the connection and maintenance of messaging connections on a turnkey basis, and we support the use of the service platform 24/7.
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