There is no denying that the internet has brought along with it several opportunities to stay connected with anybody in any part of the world. Businesses expanded from offline to online, allowing enterprises and organization to find new customers and introducing the audience to new products and services. Used rightly, the internet has provided a win-win situation for many people.
WhatsApp is one such application that made people reconnect with childhood friends and distant family members. A real-time interactive application that allows people to send text messages, images, audio and video files, make audio and video calls, the app allows businesses to connect and interact with customers. The WhatsApp Business app provides WhatsApp API Documentation to connect the app with a platform using a single REST API. This enables enterprises to communicate with customers and the target audience anywhere in the world.
But, there are certain rules and regulations put in place to ensure customer satisfaction. Business enterprises need to follow the procedures to make sure that they are not deleted or blocked by WhatsApp for violating the rules. This has been done to see to it that users do not get irritated by unwanted messages. So what do the business enterprises have to do to be able to send messages and notifications to customers?
- The businesses have to obtain explicit opt-ins from customers. That is, the customers have to agree to get the updates from a business on their WhatsApp. It can be done in a number of ways.
- Customers initiating a conversation with the business.
- Customers agreeing to get updates by giving a missed call to a number,
- Selecting the option while filling a form,
- Sending their acknowledgment in an email or message, etc.
- Once the opt-in is explicitly obtained from customers, businesses are free to send them notifications, informational and promotional messages.
- At the same time, a business does not need permission to reply to a message sent by customers on WhatsApp. But, the condition is that they have to respond to the query/ complaint within 24 hours after it is received.
- The business-initiated transactions, informational messages have been pre-approved by WhatsApp as message templates.
Message templates are pre-defined formats in which certain messages will be sent to customers. These are reusable messages which can be edited to add and delete the customer and the transaction details and sent. Three kinds of message templates have been pre-approved. Let us see what they are.
- Welcome Message
- A standard welcome message where the name of the customers can be replaced accordingly is one template.
- Any part of the text, except for the name parameter should not be altered.
- Order Confirmation
- This is sent each time an order is booked by a customer.
- This message has two parameters, order ID and delivery date.
- The rest of the message should be intact.
- Issue Resolution
- This message is sent to update the customer that their query/ compliant, etc. has been seen to and resolved by the support staff.
- The complaint ID is the only parameter that can be changed in the message.
With more than 1.5 billion users, using WhatsApp API Documentation to integrate and send messages can bring a boost in sales for business enterprises. Handling the process can get tiring for the support staff as it is a 24*7 job work. To make things easier, bots can be created and used as substitutes for certain communication purposes.
The bot will act as a customer service agent and respond to generic queries, send automated responses and ensure the customer that the support staff will take up their work as soon as possible. What are the advantages of using these bots?
- Send immediate automate replies to customers. This leaves a good impression on the customer.
- Answer FAQs. This saves time for the support staff to focus on other important jobs such as solving an issue or troubleshooting.
- Keep track of messages. The bots keep track of all the messages received from customers. The support staff can manually respond to the messages as and when required.