Welcome to the first chapter in our blog series – WhatsApp Business API for E-Commerce! In this chapter, we are going to go over how fundamental WhatsApp Business API really is for E-Commerce and discuss its various use-cases. Read on!
Launched in 2009, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform in the world. With more than 2 billion users, and almost half a billion of them just in India, WhatsApp users are not just plentiful, but also incredibly active – sending over 65 billion messages on a daily basis as per the report by Oberlo.
So if you are not using WhatsApp as a channel to communicate with your customers, your business is seriously missing out!
If you didn’t already know, the basic WhatsApp Business App allows you to securely and safely message your customers via the platform for free. The WhatsApp Business App trend has become popular with small sized enterprises and provides features to easily connect with customers, highlight products and services, and answer customer queries. While the WhatsApp Business App offers quite a few features to set in motion the marketing strategies for a WhatsApp integrated ecommerce store, it does have its limitations. And the need of the hour was to find a powerful WhatsApp Business API for E-commerce.
What is WhatsApp Business API?
As any business expands, it requires more advanced and robust tools to support their sales, marketing and support. Here is where WhatsApp Business API for E-commerce, or rather Interakt, comes into play. WhatsApp Business API for E-commerce is a whole new avenue that fast-growing businesses are leading the way in. This holds true especially for E-Commerce Businesses, owing to the limited physical customer interaction, it becomes absolutely essential for such businesses to make customer experience as easy, instant and interactive as possible.
Keen to learn more about which tool would be right for your Whatsapp for integrated ecommerce store? We’ve got you covered – Here is everything you need to know about using WhatsApp Business Account.
How to use WhatsApp Business API for e-commerce?
1. Run Ads that Click to WhatsApp on social media:
Brands can drive more conversions through conversations. With the help of WhatsApp Business API, you can also set up icebreakers to get the conversation started and take orders on the chat or equip the interested buyer with more information about the product. Interakt, a Jio Haptik product, built on the official WhatsApp Business Platform also offers a dedicated dashboard to track your ROAS and other campaign metrics
2. Send promotional messages:
They have a way of converting visitors to paying customers in a few minutes, now combine it with the power of WhatsApp and you have a powerful sales strategy.
3. Set up auto-replies for FAQs:
Answer customer common product-related queries and complaints to avoid losing a sales opportunity.
4. Recover abandoned carts:
Use automated WhatsApp notification campaigns on WhatsApp to boost your sales number and retarget dropped out customers and abandoned carts.
What are the advantages of WhatsApp Business API for e-commerce?
1. Easy Access to Conversational Commerce
For any industry, staying ahead of the most recent trends is the only way to survive and excel in our ever-changing world. A consistent focal point for a WhatsApp integrated ecommerce store is how it can interact with customers and provide support virtually. It goes without saying that conversational commerce is becoming an integral part of the customer journey and is the future for the E-Commerce industry. In fact, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Facebook study conducted among Indian consumers, conversational commerce is most popular in categories like fashion and food delivery services, where purchase decisions are often made impulsively.
However, competition is fierce in the E-Commerce world. WhatsApp integrated ecommerce stores find it hard to keep up with well-established whatsapp integrated ecommerce store that have customer support systems backed by advanced, state-of-art CRM systems and chat bots. But worry not! There is a way to creatively offload customer support requests, without offloading your customers or support itself – WhatsApp Business API!
You can do this with the help of a Shared Team Inbox and by scaling notifications. By integrating your business with WhatsApp Business API, you get to connect with your customers through a channel they are already comfortable and familiar with. With a shared inbox on WhatsApp:
• You get to add multiple team members on your WhatsApp Business number and assign chats accordingly
• Every member of your team can respond to and track messages from your customers
• You can easily define and add relevant tags to your customers. Example – Add a tag “Payment Pending” to a customer that has not completed the payment for their purchase. This way, you can send WhatsApp notifications to all your customers under this tag at once with ease.
• You can easily jot down information using the Notes feature and give your teammates context about users and chats. This way, if at any time another teammate is responding to a particular customer, they will be able to view the notes created which will help them understand the customer case better.
Here is a sneak peek at Interakt’s Shared Team Inbox:
2. More Conversations
One of the most important parts of the E-Commerce journey is gaining traction with new customers. WhatsApp Business API for E-commerce completely automates this process and allows your business to get customer data with a simple click-to-chat link. To assist your customers with the buying process, you can include a chat widget which will direct them to a WhatsApp Chat with you. Your customers also get the option of opting in for notifications via WhatsApp from your brand. This way you can send potential customers notifications and updates via a channel that they use regularly and frequently.
Head to our website to see for yourself how we have used the chat-widget feature!
3. Using Notifications to combat abandoned shopping carts:
One of the biggest issues that E-Commerce marketers face is shopping cart abandonment. More often than not, people use their phones to browse through websites/apps for online shopping. We’re all aware of the scroll culture and have been living in it for some time now. There is just too much content available online for consumption which is why your customers are bound to get distracted and forget items in the cart! This makes it clear that mobile-driven conversation strategies are needed in order to tackle this issue. With WhatsApp notifications, you can gently remind your customers regarding a purchase that wasn’t completed.
Once your customer has opted-in for receiving messages from WhatsApp, you can notify your customers and ask them if they require any help with the order they were trying to place. Offering assistance with an order is a great way to encourage your customers to revisit their cart and complete their purchase.
If you are using the WhatsApp chat on Shopify for your online store, an automatic WhatsApp notification can be sent to customers via Interakt whenever they have abandoned their shopping carts on your Shopify store. What makes it even easier is that you can keep a pre-approved WhatsApp template ready so you won’t have to type out the message every time you want to notify your customers. There’s more – with the help of variables, you can customize each message for a customer to add a personal, individualized touch!
Here is an example of a template you can use to remind your customers of their shopping cart:
<Header> Hey {{1}}, thanks for visiting our store!
<Body> We noticed that you had trouble completing your recent purchase.
Don’t worry – we have temporarily reserved the items in your cart for you!
Let us know if you have any questions – we’re more than happy to help!
<Button> Need Assistance
Here’s how your customer will receive it:
4. Easily Handle FAQs
If you are an E-Commerce business, one of your major goals is surely to provide your customer a seamless shopping experience. Right from the time your customer opens your website until the final payment for the purchase is made, customers always have questions before they make the decision of completing the purchase.
These frequently asked questions can range from product or company information, refund policies, delivery or payment related queries and more. Many-a-times, the FAQs you have listed on your website may not answer your customers’ queries and hence, there is a high possibility that the purchase doesn’t get completed if your customer isn’t answered to their satisfaction.
With Interakt, you can eliminate the cumbersome process of your customers reaching out to you via email and delaying their purchase.
With WhatsApp Business API for E-commerce, comes the Quick Replies feature that is a great way to handle all customer FAQs via automation and increase your conversion rate as customers are offered an immediate solution. You can immediately access the quick replies tool right from your chat-box on Interakt for plentiful replies. Whether it is sending welcome messages or asking your customers their order number, you can pre-set these and save time!
5. Exceptional Post-Purchase Experience
Once a customer has placed an order, you can provide them with a great post-purchase experience on WhatsApp with a powerful tool like Interakt. You can level up this experience with:
• Order Status Notifications – WhatsApp Business API for E-commerce provides an interactive way to communicate with your customers whether it is sending order confirmation, payment updates or back-in-stock alerts. These WhatsApp notification best messages help to boost your conversations with your customers and increase interaction. There is no need to spam your customers with emails and SMSs that have lower open rates, instead you can give them access to all this information on their favorite messaging app!
• Delivery Tracking – Allow your customers to know exactly where their package is so they never have to switch between apps to track delivery.
• Collect Feedback – Once your customers have received their delivery, you can collect feedback via WhatsApp Business API and leverage this data to better understand your customers for future interactions
6. Personalized Customer Support
WhatsApp Business API for E-commerce is becoming an indispensable tool for businesses in this space as it facilitates a one-on-one interaction between them and their customers. This powerful tool gives access to a re-imagined customer service experience. That’s right – earn some brownie points, win over your customer’s trust and build a loyal user base.
Moreover, personalization is one of the key determinants of marketing success and WhatsApp Business API gives you the opportunity to add a more personal and ‘human’ touch to your customer support. With Interakt, you get access to a bunch of smart cards within your WhatsApp inbox that help you get a better understanding of your customers every time you are interacting with them:
• The Personal Details card automatically captures the name, email address, phone number and any other contact information you may require.
• Like mentioned above, with the help of Tags, you can organize your contacts and define your customers with relevant information that all your team members can view.
• The Notes card comes extremely handy when you want to add context to a customer query or record relevant information about a customer. This is only for you and your team members to view – so you don’t have to worry about constantly communicating with your team via email or phone before you assign a chat to them!
• With the Conversation History Card, you and your team members get an overview of all the previous chats with any customer. This easy-to-access conversation thread enables a quick reference when resolving a customer query.
Check out what it looks like:
Get access today!
There is no better time than now to be where your customers are and integrate your business with the most widely used app in the world with a scalable customer support system. And, there’s no better way to get on board than with Interakt – with a less than 5 min sign up process. A smooth onboarding process, access to automated notifications, contacts management, shared team inbox and most importantly – an amazing customer support throughout your journey with us get to know your WhatsApp Business API pricing with Interakt. Watch out for our next article in this series!
