Whatsapp: the new way of reaching customers

The time has long gone when companies contacted their customers by post or phone call.

Now, with social media and the internet, contact is much more fluid and is, moreover, two-way. This way, a well-known app like Whatsapp can be a sensational tool for boosting our customer care.

How can Whatsapp improve customer satisfaction?

Whatsapp began by being a method of communication between users who, at the start, already knew each other or were in each other’s contact list. In recent years, it has evolved to become an excellent tool for all types of businesses.

Today, Whatsapp has the highest rate of penetration among potential customers, 70% more mobile phone users, according to PwC. In addition, Spaniards are the Europeans who most use this popular instant messaging service, behind countries such as Italy (62% penetration share), seventh country in the world and second in Europe, the Netherlands, (61% share), and Germany (57% penetration share), according to the Telco Trends 2015 report by PwC, named above, which discerns, however, that operators have not been able to take advantage of this immense business. Not in vain were 30 billion whatsapps sent a day in 2014, which is an average of four Whatsapps for every person on the planet.

Thanks to the new functions that have been added to this instant messaging app, such as “Whatsapp Alerts”, it is also possible to send all types of campaigns and messages to a large number of people or to people selected previously. Also, this new feature allows you to get immediate replies, have simultaneous conversations, save chat usage data by users, and much more.

Another great addition is “Whatsapp Marketing”, a tool that allows the mass sending of messages, photos and files to your list of contacts and so get direct communication that is also extensive and effective with customers. Thanks to this, we achieve brand positioning as we show that we can offer them useful and quality information and we gain their trust.

According to the “Web Surfers” study conducted by AIMC, in Spain, 80% of people go online every day on their mobile devices and almost all of them do so to use messaging services. For this reason, Whatsapp has become an excellent opportunity for companies to reach their customers better.

The web version of Whatsapp also allows agents to work on different campaigns and answer customer queries. These are coded in the customer CRM, which allows queries to be measured and monitored through reports.

Besides this, giving companies official accounts and preventing any type of identity fraud, as occurs with other platforms such as Twitter, has become one of the fundamental aims of this app in recent months.

Whatsapp draws

The app can also be used to hold draws among a company’s customers. Many companies have already done this with successful results, such as Bifrutas, which ran a draw on Whatsapp in which 38,000 customers took part and which also drove an increase in sales.

In the same vein, for three months, Cacaolat used Whatsapp in its “Looking for Pepi” campaign and managed to reach no fewer than 380,000 users. People could look for the character on billboards across Spain and send the photo to take part in the brand’s products competition.

The omnichannel key

The use of Whatsapp offers companies the possibility of boosting omnichannel sales. The customer will see that besides the telephone, email, and even physical service in offices or customer care points, companies are offering other speedy, modern and direct tools for customer care, such as Whatsapp, through which customers can contact them any time of day and get a personalised and effective reply.

This communication via Whatsapp will mean that the customer sees the company as another contact and places more trust in it to commit to its products, ask questions and make suggestions and even comment on what they thought of a product or service they’ve already bought or contracted. In the end, we have to be very clear that a customer is not one who buys once, but one who comes back for more, and even one who recommends us to their network of contacts, which may be, precisely, their contacts in their Whatsapp groups.

In short, Whatsapp is much more than an app with which to talk to our friends and send each other photos. It is a powerful customer care and marketing tool that, if used well, can offer huge benefits to companies as well as improve their reputation and set them apart from the competition. Don’t forget to use it as an ally of your company.