With over 2.24 billion people using WhatsApp each month, the Meta-owned platform is one of the most popular messenger apps. In fact, it is one of those apps that is part of people’s lives– from communicating with friends, family, and work to placing orders or getting customer support from brands.
Even though WhatsApp is primarily used for messaging, it can be used for enhancing marketing, enabling commerce and making payments.
To uncover how 360dialog’s WhatsApp Business API can help businesses optimise their ads and marketing, YourStory hosted a fireside chat with Pratik Malhotra, Head of Business Development at 360dialog, on “What’s up with WhatsApp: A look at its impact on marketing, commerce, and payments” at the Mumbai edition of TechSparks 2023.
Not just a messaging platform
Malhotra is leading 360dialog’s India Business with a mission to help businesses with connect with customers, at scale, with WhatsApp. The company is bridging the gap between media campaigns and WhatsApp communication to let brands sell more effectively.
As the leader of a leading WhatsApp Business API partner, Malhotra started the fireside chat by saying, “We want to take WhatsApp from beyond [BKC (Bandra Kurla Complex)] and cyber hubs of India to the [Chandni Chowks], Tier II and Tier III cities of India.”
The USP of 360dialog is to scale at a cheap price point. “Whatever we do, we do everything at scale. And, to top it off, we are one of the cheapest WhatsApp API providers in the space,” he said.
Malhotra added that the company is also introducing WhatsApp ads and measurement solutions.
Even in the current scenario, WhatsApp has multiple use cases beyond just being a messaging platform – from taking restaurant orders to businesses selling products through it.
“So, WhatsApp payment is just the next step waiting to happen. Be it fintech, retail or ecommerce, WhatsApp payments will play a major role in becoming the place where transactions take place,” Malhotra said.
Serving various business purposes
During the fireside chat, Malhotra mentioned three main business uses of WhatsApp. He began with customer support, stating that leveraging this feature can help businesses easily accept support requests over the platform, which can increase the customer satisfaction score.
Businesses can also use the platform for marketing – mainly marketing automation, which includes customer engagement and lead generation among others.
The third business use case he spoke about is commerce. “WhatsApp is introducing catalogues to the WhatsApp API and now the whole ordering process is happening on WhatsApp itself,” he said.
This feature lets customers directly place orders through the messaging platform, and allows businesses to send delivery and shipping notifications. Ecommerce companies can also use WhatsApp to seek customer reviews.
Malhotra added that WhatsApp commerce is highly dependent on WhatsApp marketing. “WhatsApp commerce cannot be successful without implementing WhatsApp marketing as marketing will bring the traffic and commerce is where the conversion happens,” he said.
Brands can also use WhatsApp API to automate their customer communication and scale businesses.
“We have seen traders in India hire at least 10-20 people team who manually respond to customers on WhatsApp. Instead, they can use 360dialog’s WhatsApp API solution to scale businesses and automate the process to save time and money.”
New conversation-based pricing model
Effective June 1, 2023, WhatsApp Business Platform will charge businesses for using the platform as per 24-hour conversation, with different rates by conversation category.
Based on the new policy, user-initiated conversations will be called service conversations while business-initiated conversations will be split into three categories: utility, authentication, and marketing.
This upcoming conversation-based pricing model is set to change how businesses use WhatsApp.
“The new conversation-based pricing model will make conversations more qualitative in nature, by helping clear spam,” said Malhotra, adding that businesses presently use chatbots to perform everything from customer support and lead generation to commerce.
The new pricing model will make businesses think differently and split each task based on domain expertise. “As a result, marketing professionals will focus on WhatsApp marketing use cases while service pros will focus on streamlining customer support on the platform,” he said.
Businesses, mainly independent software vendors, can connect to 360dialog’s API and start offering WhatsApp API solutions to customers. They can use the company’s built-in platform to seamlessly onboard customers and go live within a few days, without worrying about data privacy.
Malhotra concluded by talking about rising data privacy concerns. “Most concerns are addressed and taken care of by Meta itself. On this platform, end-to-end data encryption is real. We are a fully GDPR-compliant business and data privacy is our top priority.”
