The best tool to manage WhatsApp for Business in 2024
The global outbreak of COVID-19 has dramatically reshaped the usual practices of many businesses. While many retailers are considering shutting their physical stores and moving their operations online, instant messaging is becoming increasingly popular as a must-have communication tool.
As of the third quarter of 2023, WhatsApp was the most active social network among internet users in the United Kingdom (UK), with 79% of users using the service.
- Statista
With the most active users worldwide, almost every business has WhatsApp installed. It can be incorporated into the business core software platforms in various ways, from offering immediate help guides to personalising customer experiences, supplementing product information and announcing limited discounts.
However, accomplishing these tasks can be quite demanding as not all businesses can unleash their full potential due to limited resources. If you find yourself burdened with excessive workload, the WhatsApp manager software that SleekFlow provides will definitely make you feel relieved.
WhatsApp VS WhatsApp Business
It is very common for some e-commerce businesses to use their own WhatsApp account for both personal and business purposes, even though it is not recommended. Apart from the messy chat management, there are actually many exclusive features in the WhatsApp Business App:
1. WhatsApp Business profile
In regular WhatsApp, the personal profile only includes the user’s name, profile picture, status and phone number. As opposed to that, you will be able to include more information on the WhatsApp Business app’s company profile as it shows more than just your company name, profile picture and phone number. It also shows your business description, business category, opening hours, email and website.
2. Automatic welcome/ away messages
Unlike the standard WhatsApp, where you have to manually send messages, the WhatsApp Business app allows you to automatically trigger simple messages. For example, if a customer reaches out to you during out-of-office hours, WhatsApp will automatically send an “Away Message” in accordance to your unavailability. If a customer sends you a message for the first time or in a long while, they will receive a pre-defined onboarding message to help them move forward.
Learn more about Flow Builder and automate customer interactions anywhere, anytime.
Discover 10 essential chat flows you should create using our visual Flow Builder to streamline your messaging workflows.
3. Search filters on WhatsApp
In WhatsApp, users can only search for chats using words or phrases. However, in WhatsApp Business, you can go a step further and narrow down the search criteria by filtering the messages according to keywords, unread messages, broadcast lists, labels and more.
4. WhatsApp link
The fact that you cannot send messages to an unsaved contact is particularly annoying. Fortunately, there is a short link feature available in WhatsApp Business. The short link is a “click-to-chat” URL that allows customers to begin a chat with you without adding your number to their contacts. You can even customize a pre-filled message to be sent when customers click on your link.
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5. Quick replies
The customers are always looking for more details, as a result, they might ask the same questions over and over again. To help you speed up your reply process, WhatsApp Business offers a Quick Reply feature. You can create keyboard shortcuts for the most frequently sent messages. After setting up your quick replies, simply type in “/” and all the preset quick replies will pop up for your selection.
6. Chat labels
This convenient feature can only be found on WhatsApp Business. Labeling comes in handy when you want to quickly track information such as orders and leads within a tap, not only can you organize your entire chats or a specific message with labels, but you can also add colors for easier identification.
Source: Wondershare, TeleMessage, Twilio
7. WhatsApp catalog
WhatsApp Business catalog allows businesses to showcase their products or services to potential customers on WhatsApp. It provides businesses with a platform to upload detailed information about their products or services, including the product name or title, price, description, website link, and product code.
Unlike sending catalog or menu as pdf files, you can quickly update the stock availability on WhatsApp catalog. This means that you can minimise orders placed for items that are out of stock and avoid customer disappointment.
There are 2 ways to create a WhatsApp Business catalog: using the free WhatsApp Business App or the WhatsApp catalog API.
Explore our comprehensive guide for easy steps on creating a WhatsApp Catalog via SleekFlow.
Reasons to use WhatsApp Business
Simply put, WhatsApp Business is a powerful tool to streamline your business process.
1. Sales
Long queues scare away customers, so does waiting time. Fortunately, with WhatsApp Business, you only have to spend a little time and effort to make your customers happy. Using Quick Replies, you can answer customers’ queries within a shorter period of time. In addition, you can use labels to effectively categorize your customers for better follow-up, once their status has changed in your business, you can swiftly change their tags so the sales representatives won’t get confused.
Using Salesforce? Find out how you can track details about contacts, leads and opportunities right next to the chat.
2. Marketing
The “click-to-chat” link is a great tactic to initiate conversation across platforms. You can embed the link into your CTA button, email signature, banner ads and social media pages, converting visitors into valuable leads.
Besides that, click to WhatsApp ads are also a popular method of collecting new leads. With potential customers reaching out to chat with your brand, they tend to be leads of higher quality, not to mention that they will be free-entry point conversations with a 72-hour window.
Free-entry point conversations are chats where messages sent within that time period are free of charge. Find out more about the latest updates on WhatsApp pricing.
Apart from attracting new users,these WhatsApp marketing tools can foster stronger bonds with existing customers. For example, with the WhatsApp contacts gathered, you can send them birthday greetings and festive wishes, which is conducive to keeping your place in customers’ hearts and minds.
To further study WhatsApp marketing, see the best WhatsApp marketing software you should know!
3. Support
WhatsApp is now dominating the messenger landscape, in other words, it might be many of your customers’ most preferable instant messaging channels. You can provide customer support and deliver important notifications including appointment confirmations and payment reminders to customers. Since WhatsApp is capable of functioning smoothly even on low-data devices, it creates reachability for literally anyone with a smartphone, offering direct access to quality support.
In fact, big brands like ZENXIN Organic, Bartega, and STACCATO are well leveraging WhatsApp for their customer service!
SleekFlow streamlines Bartega’s need for WhatsApp marketing and communication. With SleekFlow, we are able to save costs, increase customer engagement, while also increasing sales
Nadia Daniella
Co-founder
Level up: unlock the power of conversational commerce with WhatsApp Business API
The paid version of WhatsApp is called WhatsApp Business API or the WhatsApp Business Platform and is designed specifically for businesses to activate WhatsApp as a tool for sales, marketing, and customer support teams.
SleekFlow is an authorised WhatsApp Business Solution Provider (BSP). We provide WhatsApp Business API connection service and WhatsApp Cloud API hosting service.
After you become verified for a "Green Tick" account, WhatsApp Business API accounts also have access to more features, such as WhatsApp interactive messages, chat buttons, product catalogs, in-chat payment, and more.
Interested? Check out our guide on how to apply for WhatsApp Business API.
Let's compare the different features of the three WhatsApp versions in the table below:
Why you should consider using WhatsApp manager software
WhatsApp Manager refers to a centralised messaging platform, instead of handling the enquiries on the original app, you can manage the conversations with an all-in-one platform and deliver better customer experiences from your sales, support and marketing teams.
1. Integrate all messaging channels into one
Although WhatsApp is the most popular instant messaging app, it is not the only one. Other apps such as WeChat, Facebook Messenger, Telegram and LINE also have their unique audience and significant strengths, you should therefore be well prepared across every touchpoint. With WhatsApp Managing Software, you can merge multiple social channels into one single place, eliminating the need of switching between apps.
2. Maximise your team’s performance
As WhatsApp Business does not support more than 2 devices at the same time, this might affect the efficiency of your communication with customers. If having multiple logins to WhatsApp Business is important to your operations, WhatsApp Manager Software can be your solution. It often includes a shared inbox function and each team member will have their own login ID as well as password to access the same WhatsApp Business account so as to ensure high security.
Apart from the multi-staff logins, the admin can also tag and assign roles to the team members within the WhatsApp inbox, avoiding duplicate and conflicting responses. If you wish to review the performance index, there will be a set of metrics on the message frequency, response rates and individual performance, which allows you to conduct a detailed analysis.
3. Run a better WhatsApp campaign for marketing
When it comes to sending customised messages such as birthday wishes with the recipients’ names attached, you might have experienced the need to copy and paste the same message again and again. However, with WhatsApp Manager Software, you can deliver a highly personalized experience almost effortlessly – segment, filter and label customers to schedule and bulk send tailor-made messages, delivery updates and season’s greetings in one click, saving your team’s time and effort.
You can even easily automate lead qualification for your WhatsApp marketing campaigns with Flow Builder, allowing you to reach your target segment more effectively. For example, you can set a trigger to automate a personalized message with a discount code for customers who registered as members. Then, set up another trigger to add labels to the contact to identify the lead source and their interest. In the future, you can trigger follow-up messages for retargeting campaigns to encourage customers to make a purchase again.
For Shopify merchants, some WhatsApp managers can even integrate with Shopify seamlessly to make your post-purchase follow-up easy. For example, SleekFlow can automatically trigger an abandoned cart message. A reminder can be sent automatically after 24 hours with a promo code.
4. Automate workflows for sales, marketing and support
One special feature of the WhatsApp Manager Software is that you can achieve workflows automation without coding. In the past, you might have to assign the chats to the representatives manually, but with a WhatsApp Manager, you can quickly route the conversations to the right teammate using keywords, time and language to streamline the entire workflow as well as the customer engagement journey.
Explore the different routing methods you can use on WhatsApp manager software.
5. Deliver consistent service and customer experiences
Harnessing the power of AI, WhatsApp Manager Software enables businesses to slash response times by generating smart replies directly from the company database, ensuring accuracy while minimizing manual search efforts. Additionally, AI-powered chatbots enhance communication by refining AI-generated responses in real-time to precisely cater to customers' needs, thereby elevating the overall customer experience.
With SleekFlow AI, you can now train the generative AI powered by ChatGPT-4 Turbo to become your business expert. Read through our complete guide to learn how to train AI for enhanced customer service.
Nutrition Kitchen enhances their overall workflow and boosts sales with SleekFlow as their WhatsApp Manager
Nutrition Kitchen is a company that provides chef-cooked healthy meal delivery, tailored to various dietary needs, such as weight loss, muscle gain, or general health maintenance. By delivering healthy meals to customers’ doorsteps, they save consumers’ time, money, and energy, and, with close to zero waste to the planet.
With the rising demand for healthy meals, Nutrition Kitchen is committed to proposing varied, personalised meal plans with detailed considerations of the combined nutritional value of each menu item. As they expand into new markets like Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and beyond, the necessity for scalability enhancement becomes imperative. This has prompted them to transcend their reliance solely on email communication.
The result? A significant uptick in sales and customer engagement. Leveraging the Official WhatsApp Business account for outbound marketing, Nutrition Kitchen has witnessed a substantial increase in sales compared to traditional email campaigns.
Moreover, with strategically set up automation workflows on SleekFlow, Nutrition Kitchen can automatically send abandoned cart reminders and extend the accessibility of unsubscriptions for their customers. This streamlined approach ensures targeted communication with high quality customers, ultimately driving revenue growth.
SleekFlow has opened up a new channel for us to conduct marketing and broadcasting effectively.
Wilfred Belsey
Head of Retention & CX, Nutrition Kitchen
Witness how Nutrition Kitchen empowered success
Read how they incorporate SleekFlow into their communication strategy to bump up sales.
WorldRemit, a UK FinTech company, added WhatsApp notifications to its service
Leading digital money transfer company WorldRemit, which enables migrants to send money from their smartphones to people in over 145 countries, was the first UK FinTech company to integrate with WhatsApp Business solution in 2018.
Given the challenges of SMS delivery in many markets, customers can often miss out on real-time information about their transfers. But now, they can receive instant notifications on the status of their transaction on WhatsApp.
This integration will make our safe, fast and low-cost remittance service even more convenient for millions of WorldRemit customers around the world.
- Alice Newton-Rex, Chief Product Officer at WorldRemit
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