How Whatsapp business can boost your small enterprise

With an increasing need to reach out, engage and keep direct communication with customers and consumer base, messaging apps are becoming quite a very important concept in the ever-evolving business terrain especially in strategy and marketing. One of such messaging applications is the ‘Whatsapp Business’, an app that allows you to create a seamless customer service experience that can help small businesses to boast high engagement rates.

Same as the original version of WhatsApp, the business app allows you to interact with customers in the form of a chat. But unlike the usual chat, small business owners have some tools at their disposal to help them organise, automate and speed up the communication process.

WhatsApp Business allows you to build a public profile for your business with basic information such as an address, a website and other helpful information.

Different chats can be labelled for an organisation, such as new customers, returning customers or orders completed. Small business owners are also able to save messages so as to create quick responses to inquiries, questions and for information purposes. Here are some major ways that Whatsapp Business can help small businesses grow:

Real-time Customer Service & Support

With WhatsApp, a small-time entrepreneur and a handful of staff can answer questions from customers very quickly and effectively. And because of the apps supports of rich media, audio, video and text will help provide that personal customer service experience.

Small businesses provide a host of services; from carpentry to computer repairs, book sales store to road-side technical services, you can create videos for your customers like how to troubleshoot a computer hardware on their own without professional assistance or carry out a task without qualms. The videos can also come in form of tutorials or guidance, these will help your business growth as customers can count on your expertise to deliver whenever they need the services you offer.

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Optimising the ‘status’ feature

With the new Status feature, small business owners can create special offers, flash sales, promotional codes that customers can share to redeem, etc. Using the instant photo and location feature, Status can let everyone in your group know about you are offering. This could be a 50 per cent price cut, free services, bonus deals, giveaways, etc.

The instant interaction ability of the Status function in Whatsapp means you can provide special access to your events and sending a live feed while at it. For instance, You could be watching a live match at the stadium and you want to show your customers how your services If you have a special guest chef in your restaurant, a musician in your music store or a renowned architect in your firm, you can share this news with your audience.

By joining forces with nearby businesses and partnering with influencers, you are increasing the number of groups which you belong whether they are in the same sector with you or not. So, with the ‘Status’ feature, even if members of other groups aren’t interested in your product or services, they might mention you in discussions on WhatsApp or other social media platforms.

Group creation and targeting

By creating target groups using Whatsapp, you can reach contacts and customers that are related to specific topics, services, goods, etc.

When your small business specialises in a particular product or service, with creating or targeting groups in WhatsApp that are interested in related topics, you can increase your customer base. And if you have created video contents, members can share with other interested parties that are outside the group, and this can lead to more users making use of the content, joining the group and eventually even becoming customers.

Feedbacks

Instead of calling customers for feedbacks, a Whatsapp Business user can create FAQs for a group that will deliver answers that are relevant to your business – this is marketing research at its best, and for free.

With the feedback advantage, you can respond to their queries and make improvements on the services and products that you offer. But efforts must be made to make your questionnaires creative and entertaining, this way, customer interaction is enhanced in a way that is not intrusive. And with peoples’ valued inputs, special giveaways, rewards, special offers and coupons will help build customer engagements, foster brand loyalty and build long customer relationships.

Exploring Personalisation

As your WhatsApp group grows, the interactions with your customers on a one-on-one communication basis can be personalised. This is one of the strengths of small businesses as the direct communication with customers can be harnessed optimally as customers can send a message if they need a particular product, service, need support or have a question. Hence your accessibility becomes a top advantage as potential clients and customers can easily reach you anytime via calls or messages.