How to use WhatsApp Business for Client Support
WhatsApp Business is a valuable tool for businesses, whether you’re answering customer queries or managing orders via chat. It’s all about enhancing communication as WhatsApp Business helps to simplify interactions with clients by providing tools to automate, organise, and swiftly respond to messages. It’s intended to feel and work just like the regular WhatsApp Messenger but with added extras that help you raise the profile of your business and support your client communications.
Why WhatsApp Business is Crucial for Client Support
Every business knows that the key to success is keeping your clients and customers happy. This means excellent customer service is an absolute must - the cornerstone of which is fast, effective communication. And in a digital world, meeting your clients on their preferred platforms has become a necessity. However, actually achieving this is not always so easy, especially when you have a high volume of client queries but a small team or limited manpower to respond. WhatsApp Business is an affordable tool which helps solve these problems.
WhatsApp Business takes the very best of your normal, personal WhatsApp and enhances its features to allow for better client communications and, ultimately, better client support and customer service. Less expensive than most CRM tools but with many of the benefits, using the tool can be a game-changer.
Utilising WhatsApp Business Features for Client Support
Whilst there are a variety of tools and options available on WhatsApp Business, there are some features worth highlighting as they are key to providing excellent client support, communications and customer service.
Here are some top features and how to use them:
Business Profile: It may seem obvious but by creating a detailed business profile with essential information such as your company’s address, email, and website, you can save a lot of time as clients can easily find information.
Catalog Feature: This feature allows you to display your products effectively, showcasing images, descriptions, and pricing. This simple feature, when you put a bit of time into setting it up with clear and enticing information, can help convince potential clients whilst also saving you time as you won’t have to field as many general queries.
Greeting Messages: This is a lovely feature which helps businesses send greeting messages to new customers when they first connect with the business. It’s a warm welcome that sets a positive tone, setting up a good client relationship from the very beginning.
Real-Time Notifications and automated messages: This will help keep clients informed with instant notifications. For example, you could use it to update clients about an order status, booking confirmations, or any relevant changes to their work with you. By using these tools, you can provide excellent client support as you anticipate queries and needs whilst ensuring consistency and saving time.
Quick Replies: These are automated, pre-defined short replies you can set up in response to common queries and frequently asked questions. Although it may seem less personal, it is still a great support tool as it means your clients can get instant support even if you are not available at the time for a personalised reply.
Away Messages: These are automated messages which work just like an Out of Office email. It’s a professional way to manage expectations and provide alternative contact options.
Labels: Sometimes providing effective customer support is less about responding to the customer and more about keeping yourself organised. The feature helps you organise your contacts or chats using labels, by categorising conversations based on topics, priority, or customer status. This will aid efficient tracking and management of conversations.
Multiple Users: It is likely that businesses have more than one person handling client support queries. The WhatsApp Business feature helps your teams collaborate seamlessly by allowing multiple users to handle customer inquiries. It works by assigning chats to different team members. However, the drawback here is that the regular WhatsApp Business platform, as opposed to the paid for API, has a maximum of four users.
Message Analytics: It is important to track how efficient your client communications are to gauge whether or not your business is meeting its client support goals. Message Analytics in WhatsApp Business helps you to monitor your communications’ effectiveness and understand what messages work best, have the most engagement, and where your customer services may be falling short.
When is WhatsApp Business not Enough for Effective Client Support?
WhatsApp Business evidently has some really fantastic features to help your business provide great support and communications to your clients. However, it is not necessarily the complete solution. Unfortunately WhatsApp Business does have some drawbacks, especially for businesses operating in regulated industries.
Firstly, by design WhatsApp Business is still on your phone, most likely your personal device. This means that your client conversations are easily siloed. If one of your team members forgets to check or pass on a message, goes on holiday, or leaves the organisation, there is a whole client interaction and history that is lost. This is not only incredibly unhelpful for the team member taking over the relationship but can be damaging if the client feels their quality of service is damaged as a result.
Secondly, WhatsApp Business is not ideal for those in regulated industries such as accountants, financial services, wealth management and the legal sector. This is because key to all of these industries is transparency, communications oversight, and the correct storage of data and client communications - all of which are mandated by industry specific regulations. However, due to its end-to-end encryption on personal devices, WhatsApp Business is unable to fulfil these compliance criteria.
What Alternatives are there to WhatsApp Business?
The good news is there are alternatives to WhatsApp Business available that offer the same, and often many more, great features. For example, ClientWindow is an affordable communications tool for client support. It works seamlessly in the background to help you provide excellent client support through WhatsApp whilst giving your whole team visibility and meeting compliance requirements. What’s even better is the email to WhatsApp function where businesses can use their normal company email and clients use their normal Whatsapp to communicate with each other. ClientWindow can make this happen automatically and without disruption to either user.
Frequently Asked Questions
There are three versions of WhatsApp. First is the regular, personal Whatsapp most people use everyday to talk to friends. Secondly WhatsApp Business is the free-to-download app designed specifically for small to medium business owners. Lastly, the WhatsApp Business API is designed for large organisations; it has a variety of cost options and needs to be set up through a third party vendor.
You can archive chats on WhatsApp Business to keep your chat list organised and decluttered. The archive feature lets you hide specific WhatsApp chats from your main chat list. When you archive a chat, it’s muted (no notifications) and disappears from the main chat list. However, archived chats are not deleted; they’re simply moved to the Archived folder.
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WhatsApp Business is a valuable tool for businesses, whether you’re answering customer queries or managing orders via chat. It’s all about enhancing communication as WhatsApp Business helps to simplify interactions with clients by providing tools to automate, organise, and swiftly respond to messages. It’s intended to feel and work just like the regular WhatsApp Messenger but with added extras that help you raise the profile of your business and support your client communications.
Why WhatsApp Business is Crucial for Client Support
Every business knows that the key to success is keeping your clients and customers happy. This means excellent customer service is an absolute must - the cornerstone of which is fast, effective communication. And in a digital world, meeting your clients on their preferred platforms has become a necessity. However, actually achieving this is not always so easy, especially when you have a high volume of client queries but a small team or limited manpower to respond. WhatsApp Business is an affordable tool which helps solve these problems.
WhatsApp Business takes the very best of your normal, personal WhatsApp and enhances its features to allow for better client communications and, ultimately, better client support and customer service. Less expensive than most CRM tools but with many of the benefits, using the tool can be a game-changer.
Utilising WhatsApp Business Features for Client Support
Whilst there are a variety of tools and options available on WhatsApp Business, there are some features worth highlighting as they are key to providing excellent client support, communications and customer service.
Here are some top features and how to use them:
Business Profile: It may seem obvious but by creating a detailed business profile with essential information such as your company’s address, email, and website, you can save a lot of time as clients can easily find information.
Catalog Feature: This feature allows you to display your products effectively, showcasing images, descriptions, and pricing. This simple feature, when you put a bit of time into setting it up with clear and enticing information, can help convince potential clients whilst also saving you time as you won’t have to field as many general queries.
Greeting Messages: This is a lovely feature which helps businesses send greeting messages to new customers when they first connect with the business. It’s a warm welcome that sets a positive tone, setting up a good client relationship from the very beginning.
Real-Time Notifications and automated messages: This will help keep clients informed with instant notifications. For example, you could use it to update clients about an order status, booking confirmations, or any relevant changes to their work with you. By using these tools, you can provide excellent client support as you anticipate queries and needs whilst ensuring consistency and saving time.
Quick Replies: These are automated, pre-defined short replies you can set up in response to common queries and frequently asked questions. Although it may seem less personal, it is still a great support tool as it means your clients can get instant support even if you are not available at the time for a personalised reply.
Away Messages: These are automated messages which work just like an Out of Office email. It’s a professional way to manage expectations and provide alternative contact options.
Labels: Sometimes providing effective customer support is less about responding to the customer and more about keeping yourself organised. The feature helps you organise your contacts or chats using labels, by categorising conversations based on topics, priority, or customer status. This will aid efficient tracking and management of conversations.
Multiple Users: It is likely that businesses have more than one person handling client support queries. The WhatsApp Business feature helps your teams collaborate seamlessly by allowing multiple users to handle customer inquiries. It works by assigning chats to different team members. However, the drawback here is that the regular WhatsApp Business platform, as opposed to the paid for API, has a maximum of four users.
Message Analytics: It is important to track how efficient your client communications are to gauge whether or not your business is meeting its client support goals. Message Analytics in WhatsApp Business helps you to monitor your communications’ effectiveness and understand what messages work best, have the most engagement, and where your customer services may be falling short.
When is WhatsApp Business not Enough for Effective Client Support?
WhatsApp Business evidently has some really fantastic features to help your business provide great support and communications to your clients. However, it is not necessarily the complete solution. Unfortunately WhatsApp Business does have some drawbacks, especially for businesses operating in regulated industries.
Firstly, by design WhatsApp Business is still on your phone, most likely your personal device. This means that your client conversations are easily siloed. If one of your team members forgets to check or pass on a message, goes on holiday, or leaves the organisation, there is a whole client interaction and history that is lost. This is not only incredibly unhelpful for the team member taking over the relationship but can be damaging if the client feels their quality of service is damaged as a result.
Secondly, WhatsApp Business is not ideal for those in regulated industries such as accountants, financial services, wealth management and the legal sector. This is because key to all of these industries is transparency, communications oversight, and the correct storage of data and client communications - all of which are mandated by industry specific regulations. However, due to its end-to-end encryption on personal devices, WhatsApp Business is unable to fulfil these compliance criteria.
What Alternatives are there to WhatsApp Business?
The good news is there are alternatives to WhatsApp Business available that offer the same, and often many more, great features. For example, ClientWindow is an affordable communications tool for client support. It works seamlessly in the background to help you provide excellent client support through WhatsApp whilst giving your whole team visibility and meeting compliance requirements. What’s even better is the email to WhatsApp function where businesses can use their normal company email and clients use their normal Whatsapp to communicate with each other. ClientWindow can make this happen automatically and without disruption to either user.
