As the most popular instant-messaging app in the world, WhatsApp has a user base of around 1.2 billion people. Last year in September, the Facebook-owned app came up with a new application called Whatsapp Business, which was targeted specifically at businesses. In its pilot stage, it saw the participation of a few popular Indian companies like BookMyShow. Now, months after beta testing, WhatsApp has finally introduced the official Android app for WhatsApp Business in select countries (currently available in Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, Britain and the US), and will be rolling out the app to other countries in the coming weeks.
What is WhatsApp Business and how does it work?
WhatsApp Business is designed to act as a platform between small enterprises and their customers, so as to help the owners of these businesses engage a larger audience easily by using tools that quickly sort, automate and respond to messages.
The business owners are required to provide detailed information about their enterprise to create a business profile, including business description, contact details, address, website and other relevant information. Once this information is verified by WhatsApp, a confirmatory badge, in the form of a green tick, is awarded to the said enterprise, similar to verified Twitter or YouTube accounts. This will assure the customers that they are dealing with secure and genuine enterprises. These companies can then use WhatsApp to interact with their customers by means of a fast and efficient automated messaging system. It allows them to send templates, automated greeting messages, and responses to frequently asked questions, and away messages in response to customer contact outside of business hours, helping them connect to more customers in lesser time.
The app also provides lots of useful metrics for the companies, such as the frequency and reach of their messages and the time and scope of delivery, which helps them assess and broaden their customer base.
Customers can reach out to these businesses through calls or messages. Businesses themselves can only contact people who have provided their phone number and agreed to be contacted by the business over WhatsApp. The businesses can notify people about ongoing deals and discounts through their custom greeting messages.
For people who use business and personal numbers, both WhatsApp Messenger and WhatsApp Business can be used on the same device, registered with different numbers. Like Messenger, Business is also available on WhatsApp Web, WhatsApp’s desktop client.
Why was it introduced and how does it help WhatsApp?
WhatsApp was founded by Jan Koum and Brian Acton in 2009, bought by Facebook in 2014 for approximately 19.3 billion dollars. Since its inception, WhatsApp has never featured advertisements as it believes that it degrades the user experience, and the nominal fee of 1 dollar a year that was introduced in 2013 was scrapped in 2016. With a user base of over a billion which is rising steadily, WhatsApp had no source of revenue till now. Instead of charging customers for its messaging service, it decided to launch a separate chargeable platform for enterprises for generating revenue.
As of now, WhatsApp Business is free to download and use, but it will monetize its services in the near future, either through advertisements or through subscription fees.