Instant messaging has become part of our everyday activities. Instant messaging channels such as text messaging, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger are already being used for communication between consumers.
For businesses, the growing popularity of instant messaging channels such as WhatsApp is creating new opportunities to serve existing customers and reach potential buyers.
The Use of Instant Messaging Applications Is Growing in Corporate Customer Communications
Until now, customer communication has been mainly one-way communication from the company, or at most offering a one-time response, for example in the form of feedback or an order. This is no longer sufficient—customers need to be offered more diverse and easier ways to interact with the company.
Consumers value ease of communication and interaction. The versatile use of instant messaging channels allows each customer to be served where they prefer or what is easiest and most natural for them.
Conversational Marketing as the Future Trend of Marketing
WhatsApp Provides a Platform for Business-to-Customer Interaction
One of the most popular instant messaging channels is WhatsApp, which is no longer a gateway for consumer-only communications. The app is becoming a standard feature on phones and can be found on more and more devices regardless of age. Today, in addition to traditional but highly effective text messaging, companies can also send and receive messages via WhatsApp.
In this context, WhatsApp refers specifically to the standard WhatsApp application used by the general public, rather than the WhatsApp Business version. Indeed, the opportunities for instant messaging available to businesses and organizations today are significantly more diverse than they were only a few years ago.
The great advantage of WhatsApp is that it allows free-form conversation in the form of text, but also with voice messages and images. Through it, customers are offered the opportunity to change, for example, an appointment or order by replying directly to the confirmation message.
Introducing WhatsApp
Starting to use the WhatsApp channel is very easy. A company identity is established for the business and the company receives its own dedicated WhatsApp phone number. After this, ready-made templates are defined, which can be used to start discussions with end customers or to send only a notification about a specific issue, for example.
There can be several hundred ready-made message templates, which means these can be reserved for a wide variety of uses. Message templates are only used for sending messages: if you receive and reply to messages from WhatsApp, communication is as free as in normal consumer communication.
There are three ways to start WhatsApp conversations with end customers:
- Reply to a business or organization message in WhatsApp (B2C)
- Send a message to a company or organization WhatsApp account/number (C2B)
- Start a conversation from an online form—simply initiate the conversation with the form, then continue the conversation in WhatsApp (C2B)
How Do I Get Started?
It is possible to have discussions on several instant messaging channels at the same time, but it requires a considerable amount of development work and resources from companies. Alternatively, conversations and connections to different instant messaging channels can be conveniently handled on one and the same service platform, SmartDialog.
You can take advantage of the platform’s modern API interfaces and/or web-based chat tool, depending on 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.