How to build a WhatsApp chatbot in 5 simple steps

ChatGPT is becoming a go-to tool for all of us to get answers quickly. But if if you need answers about something you purchased, what is your go-to channel to reach out to a business? Email, call, social media, or real-time messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram?

About 64%¹ of people prefer messaging over emails or phone calls, and in an era where Meta’s WhatsApp has more than 2 billion users in 180 countries, reaching out to customers on their preferred messaging channel has become more critical than ever. 

Meanwhile, 90% of the businesses that use chatbots in their support strategy report faster complaint resolution and happier customers, as many of the most frustrating aspects of support like waiting for an agent or having to repeat purchase details are done away with.²

It’s clear that adding WhatsApp as a chatbot platform can boost your support efficiency, but the benefits are significantly multiplied by creating chatbots in WhatsApp itself. If you are an existing user of WhatsApp Business API or want to begin now, you will need to use a chatbot builder to create customized bots and deploy these bots into WhatsApp through a partner such as Freshchat.

This article will help you understand what a WhatsApp chatbot is, how it can help streamline your support, and how to build a WhatsApp chatbot without writing a single line of code.

What is a WhatsApp chatbot?

A WhatsApp chatbot is a computer program designed to automatically answer customer queries about your products and services, share content, and send notifications regarding orders, payments, shipping on WhatsApp. The response can be in the form of a message, image, buttons, or a video to respond to user interactions in real-time. WhatsApp chatbots are available with WhatsApp Business API and is initiated when a user messages your business. To see the example of the WhatsApp chatbot from Freshchat, click on the banner below.

Why use WhatsApp chatbots?

WhatsApp as a messaging channel has gained popularity amongst today’s digital customers. In fact, 67% of consumers prefer using messaging apps when interacting with a business. Deploying a WhatsApp bot on business platforms like WhatsApp enables businesses to assist their customers wherever they are, with ease.

Here are the top five reasons to use WhatsApp messages for your business:

1. Reduce response time : The average first response time (FRT) for a live chat in all industries is three minutes according to Freshworks Customer Service Benchmarks. A lower response time results in more satisfied customers who tend to stick with a brand longer than usual and spend more. Response time can be reduced to nearly zero by using WhatsApp automation.

In the WhatsApp Business app, these automated messages are available only in the form of “greeting messages” where a business can just set up an automated greeting message for the first customer interaction.

But with WhatsApp chatbot and APIs, businesses can set up custom flows for different conversation stages, create custom messages, reduce the response time, and can answer most commonly asked questions without human intervention.

2. Automate commonly asked questions: As more people are moving towards online shopping and bookings, the number of queries related to order confirmation, tracking, cancellation, and the refund has seen a huge spike. These queries, if not automated, can take a considerable amount of the agent’s time. Hence it’s very important for businesses to automate these FAQs to reduce the burden on the agent side and help them focus on selling. 

Without bots, some of these queries can be handled using “quick replies” on WhatsApp chat, but again, these messages have to be sent manually by a human agent. Also, queries like sending the order details or tracking information can’t be addressed by “quick replies” and have to be handled manually.

With the help of WhatsApp chatbot FAQs, order tracking information, cancellation request, all can be handled automatically. This automation not only provides quick responses but can also work 24/7.

3. Automate product suggestions: When it comes to selling and cross-selling, businesses really don’t need fancy marketing campaigns or lead generation strategies. The user is already there conversing with the WhatsApp bot, businesses just need to ask them their choices, show them suggestions, and help them checkout. 

With the native WhatsApp Business app, this is possible with the catalog feature. But the issue with this catalog feature is one has to manually send these catalogs to the customers and this flow can’t be automated.

But, with the WhatsApp chatbot, the complete cross-selling flow can be automated and will not require any human help. A bot can ask about the customer’s interest, show them the desired products, help them select the color and size, and finally help the user check-out. Here’s a live example of how that flow will look like.

4. Reduce cart abandonment rate: The average cart abandonment rate across all industries is about 70%. One way to solve for this is via emails, but the open rate of emails is just 35%. WhatsApp, being the most popular messaging app, can see even better open rates and can reduce the cart abandonment rate considerably.

WhatsApp bots can track items added to the cart and encourage customers to checkout by giving nudges or discounts.

5. Help & support : Despite all the FAQ knowledge bases you build, people will still reach out to the support agents to know their account details, any active services, the validity of the services or renew their plan. In that case, sending them again to a FAQ section degrades the customer experience. The best way is to provide all the answers automatically on WhatsApp and address any service request immediately, boosting customer satisfaction.

Without WhatsApp bots, providing this great user experience will require a lot of manual work and could lead to a lot of unaddressed queries.

With a WhatsApp chatbot, you can automate all the queries and also provide basic services like sending the current plan information, upgrading a plan, or renewing the current plan for a customer. 

Here’s a WhatsApp chatbot example that automatically addresses the queries related to phone subscriptions.

How to build a WhatsApp bot – Explained step-by-step

Building a WhatsApp bot is pretty simple and can be done without writing even a single line of code, provided you use the right tools. Building a WhatsApp bot involves two major steps:

• Applying for WhatsApp API

• Building a WhatsApp bot

How to apply for WhatsApp API

Currently, WhatsApp is in limited public preview and encourages businesses to consider using a Business service provider. There are currently only about 46 global providers who specialize in WhatsApp business, and Freshworks is one of the top providers.

Here are the steps you should follow to apply for WhatsApp API and set up your dedicated WhatsApp Business number.

Step 1: Sign up for WhatsApp business API . Once you sign up, you’ll receive an email explaining the next steps to follow to get your application approved.

Step2: Next, you need to provide details like the Facebook Business Manager ID, phone number, and name. Follow the below image to access Facebook Business Manager ID.

Step 3: If you choose to partner with Freshchat as your business service provider, you will then have to verify that by going to ‘business settings’ and approving the request from Freshworks.

Step 4: Finally, you will have to provide basic details like their profile icon and name for your WhatsApp business account. Your WhatsNumber will be authenticated using an SMS or voice call.  Once this is done the business is all set to use the WhatsApp integration in Freshchat.

How to build a WhatsApp bot?\

If you want to build efficient, no-code WhatsApp chatbots to respond to customer queries, you can use the Freshchat (free 14-day trial). Here’s how our user-friendly bot flow builder works:

Step 1: Sign up for Freshchat (It’s free and each WhatsApp Business account gets 1000 free service conversations each month).

Step 2: Click on the “Templates” tab. Freshchat offers a range of WhatsApp chatbot templates for most industries and use cases. Choose from templates for financial services, ecommerce, travel, healthcare, edtech, logistics, and telecom. Click “Use” on the chatbot template you want to use, name your chatbot, and choose WhatsApp as the channel.

If you want to create a new bot from scratch, just click New bot and proceed.

Step 3: This is where you configure the conversation flow for your chatbot. If you’re using one of our WhatsApp chatbot templates, you can go through the flows that we’ve built.

For instance, if it’s a financial services bot, the template will have options such as “Account balance flow”, “Update profile flow”, and “Report an issue” flow.

If you’re building from scratch, you can use the “Map intents” section to map user intents to actions. For instance, if the customer’s intent is retrieving account balance, you can map it to the next step, which is fetching their account balance.

Step 4: Once you are done creating a chatbot flow, preview it by clicking on the Preview button on the top right-hand side. Make changes where required.

Step 5: Click Publish on the top right corner to publish the bot. Then click Deploy. Once deployed, all customer conversations with the bot will appear in the “Conversations Inbox”.

Why use Freshchat?

Freshchat provides 360° customer engagement during different stages of the customer journey. With the help of bots & AI, webchat, custom reporting, unified inbox, and different automation tools like Intelliassign, it offers a suite of messaging solutions to help your business be successful on WhatsApp.

Some of the key features:

• Early and easy access to WhatsApp Business account

• Fast approvals from WhatsApp on messaging templates

• Rich APIs that connect data between your tools and bots conversations

• Custom Analytics

• Unified and smart agent inbox

• Enterprise-grade security

• Run banner ads on Facebook and Instagram or Google CPC  that click to WhatsApp

NLP(Natural Language Processing) chatbots that understand the buyer’s intent and automate sales, customer support and notifications using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Divert traffic from IVR support on phone to WhatsApp

Connect with your favorite CRM, e-commerce store, payment gateways, helpdesk, telephony system and provide omnichannel customer support.

Final Thoughts

WhatsApp bots are one of the most efficient ways to automate repeated tasks, improve agent efficiency, and ultimately grow your business on WhatsApp. And the easiest way to set this up is to partner with an official WhatsApp Business Solution Provider (BSP) like Freshchat. You can start with a free account using our 14-days free trial, get your WhatsApp number verified, and start building your own WhatsApp chatbot in our visual chatbot builder.