Leveraging WhatsApp for Business

What is WhatsApp Business?

WhatsApp Business is a free-to-download app launched in 2018 that was built to help micro-size businesses communicate more efficiently and securely with their customers. It has all the features of the regular WhatsApp messenger, along with features like quick replies and labels to help businesses sort, and quickly respond to customer messages. 

Later that same year, WhatsApp also released WhatsApp Business APIs with the aim of providing medium-scale scale businesses and large enterprises with the functionalities to integrate WhatsApp business with their CRM, automate processes through their existing tech stack, send unlimited broadcast messages, assign repetitive tasks to bots, use contacts from their own databases instead of relying on phone contacts, and much more. Today’s customer relationships are built on the basis of two-way conversations which can be seamlessly facilitated by WhatsApp for Business.

WhatsApp vs WhatsApp Business  - What’s the difference?

WhatsApp Business app has a similar interface as WhatsApp but also provides basic features to help businesses get started on WhatsApp. 

Features	WhatsApp	WhatsApp Business
Profile	Personal	Business
App charges	Free	Free
Available on	Android and iOS	Android and iOS
Greeting messages
Quick replies
Away messages
Labels
Product Catalog
Users per phone number	One	One
Recommended for	Personal Use	Businesses with one support agent

How to set up the WhatsApp Business app

Setting up a WhatsApp Business account is a simple 5-step process. Before starting the process you should have a smartphone running Android or iOS cell phone and a phone number. If you want to use your personal WhatsApp number for your WhatsApp Business app as well, please note that you can’t use the same number simultaneously on both. 

However, if you have different phone numbers for your personal WhatsApp and your WhatsApp Business profile, you can run both accounts on the same phone by connecting each app with their respective number. In case you want to migrate your WhatsApp Business phone number back to your WhatsApp personal account, you can do that as well.

To use the WhatsApp Business app, follow these 5 simple steps.

Step 1 - Download the WhatsApp Business app from Playstore or AppStore

Step 2 - Verify your business phone number

Step 3 - Fill in details such as business name and category. 

Step 4 - Build your WhatsApp Business profile by adding details such as your business name, address, location, working days, email address, and website.

Step 5 - Set up your greeting message and start connecting with your customers.

Benefits of using WhatsApp for Business:

Global reach: Used in over 180 countries by around 2 billion users, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world. You can leverage this user base to engage more prospects.

Better customer experience: Successful companies are proven to offer customer support across channels. Addingpopular and user-friendly mobile app like WhatsApp to the mix can improve your customer satisfaction significantly.

Employee satisfaction: Using a messaging app like WhatsApp can also be a win for your internal team. Employees can use WhatsApp to reach out to customers and multi-task better.

Profitability: As customer service is streamlined, operation costs are also reduced. It has been found that direct messaging is a great way to provide better customer care.

WhatsApp Business vs WhatsApp Business API  

WhatsApp offers two solutions to run your business on WhatsApp. One is the WhatsApp Business app and the other is WhatsApp Business API.

If you are a micro-business that has just started using WhatsApp as a messaging channel to take orders, address customer queries, and where your customer base is small, you can work without any kind of automation, and one person can handle all the queries.  If you are just starting out and plan to use WhatsApp primarily as a channel to easily connect with customers, then WhatsApp Business app is right for you.

However, if you are a small business, medium-scale business, or enterprise, looking for proactive notifications, promotional messaging, providing automation through chatbots, want to sell and provide support to a large customer base, then you should opt for WhatsApp Business APIs.

Features	WhatsApp Business	WhatsApp Business API
What is it?	An app made for micro-businesses to message their customers.	It is made for small, medium-sized, and enterprise businesses to message their customers.
Who is it best suited for?	This is best suited for businesses that are just starting up, have a low number of customer interactions, and can be handled by 1 person.	This is best suited for companies with large numbers of customer interactions that require more than 1 person to handle those interactions.
Type of interaction	Many customers to one agent	Many customers to many agents
Set up	Available on App Store or Play Store	Available through an official Facebook Business Service Provider (BSP) like Freshworks.
Types of messaging	Normal text, emoji-based messaging with attachments	Apart from normal text, emojis, and attachments, it supports 2  types of messages - “Session” and “Template” messages.
Chatbots
Integrations
Multi-agent support
Notifications such as appointment reminders / shipping information
Pricing	Free	WhatsApp and the BSP have a pricing structure. Learn more about the pricing.

Why choose WhatsApp Business API over WhatsApp Business app?

The free pricing tag attached to the WhatsApp Business app makes it the ideal choice for a lot of businesses. However, instead of just focusing on pricing you should consider your business goals, expansion plans, and value you get from the app. As the WhatsApp business app doesn’t support chatbots, message templates, doesn't integrate with other tools, it will make your life much harder when you try to scale things up, and its limitations will eventually force you to shift to WhatsApp Business API. So, instead of waiting for the WhatsApp Business app to underdeliver your business goal, it’s better to start with WhatsApp Business API from day one.

Interesting features of WhatsApp for Business

Quick replies feature: This feature was built to help businesses reply to frequently asked questions like “When are you open”, or about items in stock. The business tools section allows you to set up quick replies. You can start off with setting up 5-10 quick replies and go from there.

Broadcast lists: Contacting multiple customers at once using one WhatsApp Account is a great addition to WhatsApp for Business. However, use this sparingly as broadcasts too often risk alienating customers.

Catalogs and collections: Created to drive ecommerce, the catalogs and collections features allow customers to browse easily and even be redirected to the website.

Add to cart feature: WhatsApp for Business does allow you to redirect customers to your website, but you can also integrate an ‘add to cart’ feature within the catalog for seamless check out experience.

Automatic away messages: While WhatsApp for Business was designed to increase availability, it’s also possible to be away outside of business hours, on specific holidays or even if there is a high volume of inbound messages. WhatsApp Business allows you to set up automatic away messages accordingly.

Brands that demonstrate how to expertly use Whatsapp for Business

Brands across industries are using WhatsApp to grow their business. Here are some use cases wherein brands have leveraged the features within WhatsApp Business.

Vodafone: A well-known brand, Vodafone is a leading technology communications company worldwide. It has been found that Vodafone reaches 200,000 per month via their WhatsApp business profile. The AI chatbot resolves a large number of customer issues and passes it on to the team only if it is an issue that they are not equipped to solve.

Estee Lauder: Before Estee Lauder, not many beauty brands were using WhatsApp for Business. In 2020, during the peak time of the COVID-19 pandemic, they leveraged the power of this messaging app to offer skincare consultations to customers and also offer advice via an AI-powered bot.

Banking: Have you heard of WhatsApp banking? Well, it is gaining popularity and it is a great way to reach customers where they are. Various banks, mainly in Europe, the Middle East and Asia are using WhatsApp Business. ICICI Bank in India and HBL Bank in Pakistan both use the messaging app to answer customer queries and even to conduct basic transactions.

Absolut Vodka: Absolut is a well-known Swedish brand and they are widely known for the inventive marketing campaigns. In Argentina, they used WhatsApp to publicize an in-person product launch. Customers were encouraged to message a chatbot named Sven and convince them why they needed tickets for the event. This resulted in over 1000 messages in a span of 3 days.

Le Monde: This French newspaper leveraged the power of the WhatsApp status feature to reach out to customers in French-speaking countries in Africa. About 20% of the brand’s following consumers this type of content. It increased their following significantly.