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Have you ever wished you could automate your company comms? With WhatsApp Business Chatbots, you can. Chatbots are an excellent choice for businesses who want to automate responses to frequently asked questions, provide immediate welcome or away messages, or even recover customers who have dropped out at some point in the sales funnel.
Let’s take a look at what Chatbots actually do, why you might want to consider using one for your business communications, and how to set up a Chatbot using the WhatsApp Business API. We’ll also discuss the best alternatives to WhatsApp Chatbots, automation that you can set up using the WhatsApp Business app, and how a second virtual phone number can help you get started straight away on WhatsApp Business.
What is a chatbot?
A WhatsApp Chatbot or Live Chat is an AI-powered piece of software that uses pre-programmed data to engage interactively with your customers. A Chatbot can convincingly replicate human conversation styles, offering a range of responses depending on the input the contact provides during the chat.
WhatsApp Business Chatbots are designed for companies that want to harness the power of conversational commerce through a safe, secure platform. Chatbots can save your team valuable time and effort, significantly reducing their workload without compromising on the speed, efficiency and accuracy that your customers expect from your brand.
What are the benefits of a WhatsApp Business Chatbot?
There are many advantages for companies using WhatsApp Business Chatbots in their marketing and sales strategies. These include the ability to:
Automate a wide range of message types
You can use WhatsApp Business Chatbots for many different purposes in your company’s strategy. Use Chatbots to send welcome or away messages, confirm or cancel orders, update customers on delivery, and recover customers who have abandoned their carts or applications before completion.
Speed up your response times
With a WhatsApp Business Chatbot, your customers will get an instant response, no matter what time of the day or night they message you. For a customer, there’s nothing worse than being left on read or wondering whether a company has actually received your message. An instant automated reply reassures them that they have come through to the right team and that their enquiry is being dealt with efficiently.
Create a better customer service experience
With an automated Chatbot, your customer can get a personalised, intelligent reply to their message 24/7, without any effort required from your team. If they have a common query, a Chatbot may be able to give them the information that they’re after, even if they send their message out of office hours. A quick, personalised reply from a Chatbot fosters connection and trust with your customer.
Maintain a consistent brand tone of voice
Nothing sours a customer’s opinion of a brand like poor wording, bad grammar, or inaccurate information. With a Chatbot, you don’t have to worry about any of that. Thanks to pre-written and pre-planned messages, your customer can expect a much more consistent tone of voice in every interaction they have with your brand.
Never miss a message
When business is busy, it can be difficult to keep on top of all the messages you have coming in. Luckily, WhatsApp Business Chatbots can help take the strain off your team by automatically providing important updates and information to your customers, leaving only the most complex or unusual queries for them to deal with.
Leverage an impressive engagement rate on WhatsApp
WhatsApp has an incredible 92% open rate for messages sent via the platform, with around 80% opened within five minutes of being sent. That figure becomes even more impressive when you compare it to email and SMS, which only reach roughly a 21% open rate. With these numbers in mind, implementing a WhatsApp Chatbot could be one of the best things you do for your business communications strategy.
How should I use a WhatsApp Business Chatbot?
There are a few different ways that you can use a WhatsApp Business Chatbot to improve your customer service on WhatsApp. You could use Chatbots to:
Send welcome messages and away messages
Extend a warm welcome and make a great first impression from the very first contact. Greet your customers immediately when they first get in touch with your team, and manage their expectations about when they should expect a response. A good welcome message should confirm that the customer’s message has correctly made it through to your team, help them understand what your business offers, and provide a list of actions that they can perform for more information or help. Don’t forget you can do this with WhatsApp Business out of the box using automatic greetings – no need for any third party chatbot tools!
Recover abandoned carts, applications and enquiries
Automated cart recovery is an easy way to boost your sales and encourage customers to complete actions such as submitting applications or enquiries, or booking a service. This automation kicks in when a customer adds items to their cart or partly fills in a form on your website, but doesn’t complete the transaction, submission or booking. A friendly, casual message can be all that’s needed to nudge your customer in the right direction, and increase your sales numbers.
Share live delivery updates on orders
In today’s fast paced world, visibility is key – and this is especially true when it comes to online orders. A staggering 97% of customers now expect to be able to track their purchases from the warehouse to their front door, relying on up-to-date tracking status, notifications and regular updates. Chatbots can help to automate this process and reduce your team’s workload, while meeting your customers’ expectations of delivery visibility.
Answer frequently asked questions instantly
WhatsApp Business Chatbots are ideal for answering your customer’s common queries without your team having to lift a finger. Whether your customers frequently ask about opening hours, return policies, delivery times or any other topic, you can create an accurate, concise response that gives them all the information they need, while reducing message volumes for your team.
Can I set up a WhatsApp Business Chatbot on the app, or do I need the API?
WhatsApp Business is a free-to-download app that is designed for small to medium businesses to use for professional interactions. WhatsApp Business includes a wide range of great tools that businesses can use, such as a business profile and catalogue, chat categorisation and more.
WhatsApp Business does include some automation options, such as automatic greeting and away messages, but it is not currently possible to set up a Chatbot on the WhatsApp Business app.
The WhatsApp Business API is a paid-for solution that is designed for medium to large businesses, and can be integrated with CRM, analytics and third-party apps. The WhatsApp Business API can be used to set up a WhatsApp Chatbot in order to provide a conversational customer service experience.
Read more about the differences between the WhatsApp Business app or the API here.
How to set up a WhatsApp Business Chatbot
If you’re using the WhatsApp Business API, there are several different providers to choose from when it comes to setting up a WhatsApp Business Chatbot.
Sleekflow
Sleekflow offers a flow builder to automate customer interactions along the sales journey, from marketing and sales through to support.
Find out more about Sleekflow.
AiSensy
AiSensy provides dynamic drag and drop Chatbots (without any need to code) for integration with the WhatsApp Business API.
CueDesk
CueDesk offers intuitive self-service Chatbots that are quick and easy to build, designed to be integrated with a range of platforms including WhatsApp Business.
No matter which provider you choose, you’ll want to robustly test your WhatsApp Chatbot using a range of customer service test cases before you set it live.
Note: YourBusinessNumber is not affiliated with any of these services and has not reviewed them.
What alternatives are there to a WhatsApp Business Chatbot?
While the WhatsApp Business app doesn’t provide an AI-powered Chatbot, it does include powerful functionality to allow you to automate some of your messages.
Automatic Greeting Messages can be used to reply to your customers when they first get in contact with your brand. You can access the feature from the Business Tools tab on the WhatsApp Business app, and you can turn it on or off, or edit the message at any time. You can also specify which recipients will receive your greeting messages and which ones won’t.
Automatic Away Messages can be used to let contacts know when you’re busy or away from your phone, or when they message you outside of your working hours. Like Greeting Messages, Away Messages can be accessed using the Business Tools tab. You can specify exactly when you’d like to send Away Messages, and which recipients you’d like to send them to.
Read more about setting up an automatic WhatsApp Greeting or Welcome Message here.
Get started on WhatsApp Business with YourBusinessNumber
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Author:
George Lineker
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