Over two billion people worldwide use WhatsApp to exchange messages with colleagues, friends, and family via private chats or groups. SMS is a relic of the 90s and has been supplanted by instant messaging applications. Many companies have seen great potential in this change and have started using these apps to chat with their customers. WhatsApp Business was born from this need. What is WhatsApp Business? We will explain it to you immediately.
It is a version of WhatsApp developed to help small and medium-sized enterprises to create fast and direct communication channels with the public.
What are the features of WhatsApp Business?
To make the most of WhatsApp Business, you need to go beyond the logic of simple question-and-answer messaging.
Being an app designed for small and medium-sized businesses and professionals, you can use it to:
- improve customer care
- retain customers
- sell your products.
How to install WhatsApp Business?
To install the application, you first need to have a business phone number which, unlike the traditional version, can also be a landline.
You can also use WhatsApp Business via PC in its web version, but you can connect it to a single main device.
Be careful that your number and your phone are not already occupied by the personal WhatsApp service. The two versions cannot interact.
Which device to choose to use WhatsApp Business?
To install WhatsApp Business, we suggest you choose between:
- a Dual Sim phone. This way, you can manage your personal and business accounts through two different numbers and keep the profiles separate. This is one of the most popular choices because a smartphone with two SIM slots is very easy to find;
- a smartphone that allows you to separate user profiles. As with the computer, many mobile phones allow you to create different profiles. You can take advantage of this possibility by installing WhatsApp Business and your personal WhatsApp on different accounts;
- a landline phone. If you choose to use a landline phone, you won’t have to solve the interaction problem between the two apps. This solution, therefore, seems the most natural one, but remember that to confirm the activation, you will not receive an SMS but a call.
How to create an account on WhatsApp Business?
Once you have chosen the device on which to install the application to create the profile, you must enter various information:
- Company name
- Profile picture
- Corporate mission and values
- Address
- Company opening hours
- Email address
- The Web site
These data transform your WhatsApp Business profile into a sort of “showcase” for your company.
In this window, your customers will immediately have a lot of useful information about your business and your services.
How to add and get contacts on WhatsApp Business?
To fully utilize the full potential of WhatsApp Business, you need to add new contacts. Here are some ways you can do this:
- QRcode
After reaching 50 million users, WhatsApp Business has introduced the possibility of adding contacts also via QRcode.
If you have a physical store, this option is very useful because you can entice your customers to contact you by entering the QRcode in the window of your store.
If you don’t have a physical store, don’t worry, you can still adopt the same technique by inserting the QRcode on your website or advertising flyers. 
- CTA
Customers are more likely to have quick, written conversations than to make phone calls.
You can use this preference to your advantage by placing the link to WhatsApp and the “Click to chat” CTA on your site, inviting them to contact you.
- Promotions
To acquire other numbers, you can use the promotions strategy and provide discounts only to those subscribed to your WhatsApp Business channel.
This way, you will be able to obtain customer contacts in exchange for a benefit, and, in addition to enticing them to use WhatsApp Business, you will create a strong sense of community in them.
How to ensure privacy with Whatsapp Business?
Among the objectives of WhatsApp Business is not to promote Spam, and certainly, you also do not want to be considered aggressive or intrusive with your promotion campaigns.
For these reasons, WhatsApp Business has introduced the obligation of consent. As with newsletter subscriptions, you will not be able to send messages to your contacts without their consent.
Without their explicit permission, you will only be able to answer their questions.
3 advantages of WhatsApp Business for your communication
If you have obtained consent from your users, you can use messages in three main ways.
1. Take advantage of automations
A very serious mistake when using an instant messaging app, especially from a company, is to leave a message unanswered.
Using automatic messages saves you from this inconvenience, avoiding customer frustration.
You can use these messages for several purposes:
- To welcome. Set up a welcome message for all customers who write to you for the first time. This little attention makes the customer feel pampered, considered, and important.
- Communicate your absence. Notify customers of your absence and inability to respond. If you are not present for holidays, you can communicate a return date, or if the company is temporarily closed, you can give information on the reopening time.
- Follow up. You know when you check some product online, and then the company email arrives reminding you that maybe you wanted to buy something? Here, with WhatsApp Business, you can use the same mechanisms by sending messages after a certain period of customer inactivity.
- Quick reply messages. Surely you will happen to receive lots of FAQs. To facilitate your work, you can save the answers, so you have to send them, gaining speed and effectiveness.
- Do SMS marketing. You can create messages dedicated to pre-established customer groups to give information on services or products that you think may be of interest.
2. Organize yourself better
The potential of messaging did not end there. WhatsApp Business can also be used to better organize yourself, check statistics, and analyze your audience.
WhatsApp Business allows you to create up to 20 labels with different colors to organize your messages, just like it happens in your inbox.
Not only will important messages not be lost, but you can easily trace all the conversations that interest you the most through the different categories.
3. Monitor interactions
The application also allows you to check some data:
- the answers received,
- unanswered views
- the average reading time
- the dropout rate.
The data collected through the statistics and the analysis of the conversations are very valuable for studying your target audience and the strengths and weaknesses of your business.
Through the most frequently asked questions and feedback, you can understand where to improve and what your audience wants. In this way, you can profile your buyer personas even more and understand where to invest.
How to sell on WhatsApp Business?
In addition to the showcase of your business, on WhatsApp Business, you can build a real online store through the catalog function and the shopping cart function.
- You can give visibility to your services and your products by creating your own catalog. The apps catalogs work in a similar way to Facebook or Instagram shop windows: customers can browse them and learn more about your entire offer.
- The app has also added the shopping cart function. Thanks to this upgrade, your customers are not limited to browsing your catalogs but can select them and send a message with the order, concluding the purchase from the chat, without any other thoughts.
How to build customer loyalty with WhatsApp Business?
Using WhatsApp Business more creatively, you can improve community management and increase the sense of exclusivity and inclusiveness, as well as increase the engagement of your audience.
Here are a couple of tips:
- Send exclusive discounts, unpublished content, preview information. In fact, this initiative develops the conviction of being part of a small circle of people who enjoy exclusive benefits. Your audience could turn into a community and increase your sales, not just because they got a discount, but because they felt important.
- Start contests where you ask customers to send messages and content in line with the company philosophy. In this way, you can create in your customer a sense of belonging to the company values and involve them, greatly increasing their engagement. Gamification is, in fact, one of the major strategies for obtaining results of this type. Stimulating its customers to be protagonists through the content they generate makes them more active and reactive, as well as ready to buy.
Now that you know how to use messaging to organize your Customer Care and create shops and catalogs to increase conversions, are you ready to explore the potential of WhatsApp Business?
