How WhatsApp Business helps you connect with clients

WhatsApp Business in a nutshell

This article will help you understand how to use the business world's most exciting tool for communicating with your customers.

WhatsApp Business is the perfect way to keep in touch with your customers. It's a fast, reliable, and secure way to stay connected with your clients. You can use it to send messages, make calls, and even video call your customers, and best of all WhatsApp Business is available for free on Android and iOS devices.

Can WhatsApp be used for business purposes?

In short - absolutley! WhatsApp Business is a powerful communication tool that allows companies to interact with their customers in a variety of ways.

WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world, with a global audience of over 1.5 billion users. It's no surprise, then, that many businesses are finding ways to use WhatsApp to connect with their customers.

WhatsApp Business is a separate app designed specifically for small businesses. It includes all the features of the regular WhatsApp app, plus some extras designed to help businesses communicate with their customers more effectively.

There are alternative messaging apps, but WhatsApp’s popularity makes it a good choice if you’re contacting your customer base directly, as many will be using WhatsApp already to communicate with global brands such as PayPal.

Why use WhatsApp Business instead of the normal WhatsApp Messenger app?

WhatsApp Business has been specifically designed with the needs of small business owners in mind. As a business owner, you can use the Whatsapp Business app for communication, marketing, sales and more.

The WhatsApp Business app is GDPR compliant, as long as you are using it for business-to-business purposes, and WhatsApp conversations offer end to end encryption. That means better security and privacy for your clients.

Using WhatsApp Business as a customer service channel and marketing channel can help to build up brand loyalty. More and more people are using messaging apps rather than phone calls, and with so many WhatsApp users out there, it’s likely that your clients will enjoy communicating via WhatsApp messages.

1. Quick replies

Stay on top of incoming messages and speed up the time that it takes to answer questions. With quick replies, you can save the answers to commonly asked questions as templates and set up shortcuts.

This means you don’t have to type out the same response to repeated questions, which as any small business owner knows, can be time consuming!

The benefit for your clients? Quicker responses and less time waiting.

2. Short Links

Using WhatsApp Business, you can share a short link with your customer that allows them to instantly start a secure chat with your WhatsApp account. You can even pre-write their introduction message – give it a try using this link!

3. Automatic greeting messages

WhatsApp Business allows you to automate messages when potential customers get in touch. You can use this to send a welcome message or templated messages personalised to your business and share important information.

4. Automatic away messages

Manage expectations when clients get in touch outside of your business hours with an automatic away message. This is a great way to continue customer communications even if you’re unable to directly reply.

5. Business profile

Set up a WhatsApp Business profile and share your business address, business description, contact information, contact details, social media accounts and website URLs with clients.

A branded business profile not only looks professional, it’s an important part of your WhatsApp marketing strategy, helping your clients find you and your services online.

6. Contact labels

For a business app, WhatsApp’s organisation tools are key. Labels can help you to manage conversations and keep track of lots of different projects and clients. Organise and categorise users and messages into buckets to help you stay on top of urgent or high-priority messages. You can choose to use pre-programmed labels such as New Customer, New Order, Pending Payment or Paid, or create new labels to suit your needs.

7. Message statistics

With WhatsApp Business Statistics, you can understand your customers' engagement and experience. Find out how many messages are sent, delivered, read, and received from within your WhatsApp Business Settings. See more about this feature here.

8. Catalogs

WhatsApp Business users can showcase products and services in a catalog. Each item can have a title, price, description, website link and product code, with a maximum of 500 items in the catalog.

9. Facebook shops integration

Facebook Shops is a tool that allows business owners to create customised shopping experiences for their businesses and integrate them seamlessly across the Facebook family of apps, including Facebook Messenger.

10. Interactive Messages and Reply Buttons

An advanced feature. Developers using the WhatsApp Business API can make use of interactive messages to present users with a set of predefined options when replying to messages, creating a simple and consistent way to interact with your business. Developers can build their own WhatsApp Business chatbot that can offer branching options of messages, and even point users to existing products in your Catalog – all without leaving WhatsApp

11. WhatsApp Pay

Sadly not yet launched in the UK, this feature will eventually allow your WhatsApp Business account to securely accept payments without even leaving the chat screen.

How do I engage clients on WhatsApp?

Split out work and personal communications

Keeping your WhatsApp business account separate from your private account can help you to stay on top of messages and quick replies to your work enquiries.

Even better, you can keep your personal number private – so you can really switch off out of office hours.

Use specific business messaging tools

The business tools listed above including automated messages, business profiles and WhatsApp statistics can form a valuable part of your marketing efforts.

WhatsApp Web

With WhatsApp web (or desktop) you can sync your laptop to your WhatsApp Business account and answer messages from the comfort of a full sized keyboard.

Easily use WhatsApp Business with a Virtual Number

You can’t use the same phone number for WhatsApp Messenger and WhatsApp Business – but that’s where YourBusinessNumber can help.

If you have only one phone number, you’ll need to purchase a second virtual phone number to use WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Messenger (for personal use) on the same device.

Whether you're an Estate Agent, a plumber or a beauty therapist, a virtual number for WhatsApp Business can help you communicate with clients easily.

You can use your virtual number to set up a WhatsApp Business account, without using your personal phone number.

Estate Agents Case Study

Missed phone calls, slow processes and forgotten details can be a thing of the past for estate agents when they use WhatsApp Business. Agencies can use company messaging templates and automated messages to keep the content of their business account chats ‘on brand’ and professional in tone.

Agencies can own a range of phone numbers that can be reassigned as agents join or leave the business. This ensures longer lasting connections with potential buyers and sellers, improving customer retention and loyalty.

Find out how Winkworth has used YourBusinessNumber and the WhatsApp Business app to boost their team’s productivity.

Winkworth Estate Agents Case Study