Who does not like receiving a Whatsapp message? We have family groups and friend groups, groups for baby showers, groups for birthdays, sport teams and work teams, to name a few.

The end objective of customer care is always trying to make things simpler, better, faster. The sooner you are able to deliver a faster response the more likely you will be to retain happy customers. Providing quality customer care requires brands to embrace the latest digital communication channels. Although social media remains a popular channel, the increasing role of Whatapp, in customer care, cannot be avoided. Ranked the number one app in 107 countries and used by 1 billion people every day, Whatsapp is the method of choice for easy rapid social communication.

But what about businesses using Whats App for customer care?

Following their announcement on 1 August 2018 of the launching of their Business API, means that if Whats App was not part of your customer care strategy before, now it definitely should be. The Whats App Business API is ideal for medium to large businesses and it is an extension of their previous launched “Whats App Business App”, which was more suited to small business owners.

Given the time frame since the launch, adopting Whatsapp as a customer care channel if you are a large business means that you gain first mover advantage and there are plenty of reasons why your customers will be grateful that you did.

Safe and Secure

Whatsapp is fully encrypted which means that the conversations cannot be leaked or hacked into which ensures privacy for the customer.

Personal

Whatsapp is a highly personal channel and customers will be willing to engage with brands on Whatsapp if it means that their query/ issue is resolved quickly. It is certainly convenient for a customer not to have to explain the issue several times, be transferred to various departments or have the hassle of checking their social media accounts for responses. The Whatsapp platform is a personal one-on-one channel, and for customers the expectations will be that their issue will be resolved quickly.

Timely

The challenge in customer care is to resolve the customer’s issue in a timely manner. Whatsapp allows just that. The customer controls the pace of response.  Sending a message to someone’s phone means that the progress of the query can move along as quickly as the customer is comfortable with. There are no long phone queues, late e-mail responses and the hassle of having to go in in person.

Rich Media

Whatsapp easily supports the sharing of photos, video and voice recordings, links and PDF’s making its easy to resolve queries and issues in one channel.

In this article we just touch on the possibilities of this channel for effective customer care.

As with any new customer care channel, using Whatsapp requires a strategy. Decide on the team who will manage this, define their remit and responsibilities and ensure you are geared to deliver through this channel.

Do you want to learn more about how you could be using Whatsapp? Get in touch with FMI today. Contact Mel at Melody.chinamasa@fmi.ie today.