WhatsApp Messages in Business Communications—Send and Receive Messages!
Did you know that you can send WhatsApp messages on behalf of your organization to consumers’ WhatsApp applications and conduct the same type of communication as you can with text messages? You can establish your organization’s presence on WhatsApp, meaning you appear there under your organization’s name and brand.
Communication can be one-way or two-way and include, for example, links, images, videos, and action buttons. To clarify, the WhatsApp application referred to here is the standard WhatsApp application that we all use.
A major advantage of WhatsApp is that it enables free-form conversation in text format, but also through voice messages, images, and videos. Customers can be offered the opportunity to, for example, make an appointment or place an order directly from a WhatsApp message by pressing an action button. Two-way communication—i.e., replying to messages—can thus be implemented in a very straightforward and easy manner.
From an organization’s perspective, the WhatsApp channel can function as both an outbound and inbound channel. Messages can be sent and responses received. Customers can also contact the organization through the WhatsApp business account by sending a message to the organization’s WhatsApp number, and the customer can be replied to.
As an inbound channel for customer service, WhatsApp is excellent because the customer can send a message to your organization and wait for a response. Your organization’s reply will appear in the customer’s WhatsApp when customer service has had time to process the matter. Thus, it works very differently from web chats or phone service, which are situation-dependent.
What Should I Know?
In practice, WhatsApp communication is subject to the same principles as all customer communication. WhatsApp has also established a few rules of its own for managing communication. The purpose of these is to keep organizations’ WhatsApp communication as relevant as possible from the customers’ perspective.
One example of this is that message sending must be done using a pre-approved message template. The message template can contain variables, such as the customer’s name, product, or code. If the message dialogue continues from there, it can be completely free-form. When a customer contacts the organization, communication can be completely free-form from the start.
Permission for digital communication must be obtained from customers to whom you wish to send WhatsApp messages. The clearest way is to do this separately outside of WhatsApp with a separate permission request, as with other customer communication. Existing permissions can be used if the WhatsApp channel is specified. In addition, opt-in requests can be made within the application in certain use cases.
How Do I Get Started?
You can conveniently obtain the messaging connection and the services required for communication from one and the same service platform, SmartDialog.
Establishing the Connection
- A Facebook Business account is created for your organization
- The organization receives its own unique WhatsApp number, which is registered based on the Facebook Business ID
- The organization approves the WhatsApp Client terms
- During setup, message templates to be submitted for approval are planned in advance (more can be submitted and existing ones modified later)
Service and Interface
- An agreement is made for the required services
- Services are created (one-way and two-way messaging service, Dialogue service)
- Message sending, receiving, and possible forwarding are connected
- An automatic response or response retrieval is created
- Integration options, e.g., MS Power Platform, Zapier, HubSpot
Limitations
- Outgoing messages can only be sent using a pre-approved message template
- Incoming messages can be replied to freely for 24 hours; media, images, and videos can also be sent during this time
You can utilize the service platform’s modern API interfaces, connectors, or web management interface messaging tool according to your needs. We handle the connection and maintenance of messaging connections on a turnkey basis and support the use of the service platform 24/7.
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