How WhatsApp Business API can help brands reach more customers

The emergence of WhatsApp as a business communication tool marks a major shift in the pre-existing structures and hierarchies in the customer engagement landscape. Harsha Solanki, Managing Director, Infobip – India, decodes WhatsApp Business API and analyses how it can help brands substantially bolster their omnichannel engagement strategy.

As a viral outbreak plunged the world into a state of uncomfortable uncertainty in 2020, brands across sectors employed digital technology to cast new light upon things and illuminate the way towards a new normal. Brand marketers, naturally, adapted to this rapidly transforming dynamic. With digital emerging as the primary mode of engagement in the post-pandemic world, they began making innovative use of existing and emerging communication channels to drive engagement, expand outreach, and improve retention.

However, even as these newer channels become an ever-important part of the marketing value chain, the truth is that the potential of digital engagement within the context of the business remains largely underutilised. While most brands now use social media channels to reach out to their customers, they do not often appreciate the true value that relatively simpler digital tools can add to their customer engagement strategies.

In particular, brands are guilty of neglecting one of the most powerful tools in their digital arsenals – WhatsApp.

WhatsAppening: Why WhatsApp should be one of the most preferred channels for customer engagement

One of the most popular messaging apps in the world, WhatsApp has more than 2 billion users across 180 countries who use it to text, call, and share information in 60 different languages. More than half of the American users use the app at least once a day. It holds even truer for India, home to more than 400 million WhatsApp users every month and one of the app’s biggest markets among South Asian countries. WhatsApp boasts of an impressive 64% penetration level that cuts across the urban-rural divide in the country; a recent survey found that, in 2018, over 39% of Indians living in rural areas spent between one and two hours every day on WhatsApp, while around 5% of the respondents spent a whopping seven hours daily on the app.

The reason why consumers across demographics and geographies depend on WhatsApp are rather straightforward. It is a secure communication channel and one of the most easy-to-use applications that people use to connect with each other, be it colleagues, friends, or family.

Considering these data-backed arguments, it is astonishing that the average customer does not use the app to engage with brands – yet. This is because, like the air we breathe, WhatsApp’s omnipresence is often taken for granted, with many brands overlooking the channel in their outreach and engagement strategies. Part of this boils down to the lack of awareness about the role that it can play in complementing and driving new-age customer engagement strategies. Brands are also often restricted by the fact that they do not possess the necessary solutions that can help them capitalise on WhatsApp’s massive reach.

This is where WhatsApp Business API enters the picture

The easy-to-integrate solution can help businesses automate, streamline, and optimise their customer engagement strategies and reap superior dividends. More importantly, it does so without the need to spend an enormous amount of capital on setting up a tech-intensive infrastructure.

With the WhatsApp Business API, brands can substantially bolster their omnichannel engagement strategy. They can share notifications, e-receipts, package delivery locations, e-tickets, financial transaction alerts, etc., with customers who choose to receive them on their WhatsApp chat window itself. The API solution also enables businesses to provide customers with a highly personalised channel that offers superlative support. With the WhatsApp Business API, enterprises can drive enhanced, 24/7 customer support augmented with automated self-service solutions powered by chatbots.

The addition of chatbots – not just over WhatsApp but across all the channels preferred by the consumer, including Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Signal, SMS, Viber, etc. – can take care of repetitive, generic queries. The solutions offered by leading players in this space can provide quick answers to FAQs or offer menu options to customers by setting up rule-based keyword chatbots powered by “if/then” logic. Besides enabling omnichannel messaging from a single interface, such advanced chatbot solutions allow agents to focus on queries of a more complicated nature to build customer relationships and drive loyalty. The deployment can also substantially reduce the average response time, thus enhancing the overall customer experience.

One of India’s leading NBFCs reaped the benefits of this approach when it used the WhatsApp Business API to educate customers about types of financial loans through an interactive chatbot. The integration helped them reach a younger audience and tap into a more diverse audience base for their gold loan products. This marked a significant expansion in the NBFC’s customer base and enabled it to reach out to newer demographics across the country.

Communicating the value of the WhatsApp Business API to customers

Before launching WhatsApp as the new business communication channel, businesses need to prepare an effective awareness campaign aimed at existing and potential customers. In line with the strict rules of engagement outlined by WhatsApp, they can connect with only those customers who have opted in to receive notifications or reached out to the brand channel directly. Hence, it is vital for businesses to communicate the value of this innovative channel to their customer base.

Businesses have a variety of options at their disposal to achieve this feat, including PR activities, newsletters, digital ads, newsfeed announcements on official social media channels or websites. They can also leverage Facebook and Instagram ads that click-through to WhatsApp so customers can easily start a chat with them. Enterprises can use this method to drive opt-ins, conversion rates, and customer experience and retention.

The emergence of WhatsApp as a business communication tool marks a major shift in the pre-existing structures and hierarchies in the customer engagement landscape. Digital technology is creating newer pathways in a rapidly evolving world, where businesses can no longer rely on conventional sensibilities and methodologies to target the new generations. Brands that match their stride with the latest goings-on in the industry will stand to gain a competitive edge over their peers and reap superior dividends.