Channelling customer expectations through WhatsApp

Source: Vsoft, 16/04/2020

WhatsApp provides the ability to infuse brand personality into B2C
communication, enabling businesses to engage with their customers
on a more personal level. This channel has more potential than
email or SMS to increase trust and brand loyalty because it’s
accessible, popular and relevant to the South African consumer.

WhatsApp has become the most popular mobile messenger app in the
world with more than two billion monthly active users in more than
180 countries. South Africans make up around 38 million of those
two billion users which makes the platform one of the most
accessible and ubiquitous in the country. According to Digital
2020: South Africa, a report developed by HootSuite, 62% of the
South African population is on the internet, 94% of those are
engaged on social media, and most of them use WhatsApp. .



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If you compare these numbers to email, it rapidly shows how
relevant WhatsApp has become a method of communication for the
business. Many people in South Africa don’t have access to or are
not active on, email, which makes WhatsApp a far more accessible
and relevant choice.

What do customers want?


The 2019 South African Digital Customer Experience Report analysed
South African consumer behaviour to find out what people want when
it comes to service, experiences and brands. The upshot was that
they wanted seamless self-service channels, better information,
and someone to help them when they got stuck. Customers want on-
demand support that’s relevant to their needs and don`t expect
them to wait for hours, listen to bad music or get transferred
around the call centre.

Incorporating WhatsApp into the business via the contact centre is
the perfect way to do this.

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Thanks to the metrics built into the contact centre technology,
all WhatsApp messages and handling times are recorded. There is
full visibility into how the company and contact centre agents are
performing across all channels.

If agents are currently replying to customer queries via phones or
the WhatsApp web application, these interactions are completely
isolated from the rest of the contact centre. Agents, therefore,
have no context into customer queries, there is no visibility into
interactions, and agent performance is left unchecked. Without any
form of measurement across all contact channels, this is bound to
result in a bad customer experience and gives no opportunity for
business growth, identifying problems or monitoring changes over
time.

Available to serve


While businesses can use WhatsApp to provide instant responses to
customer queries, chatbot functionality can also be added to the
channel, opening up additional self-service opportunities.

There is an ever-growing number of business use cases for
introducing self-service options via WhatsApp. People think about
chatbots in isolation, but they can be leveraged through a channel
like WhatsApp to field repetitive customer queries, such as
opening times or product availability.

This provides a win-win situation for everyone â€` customers are
able to quickly get the answers they need when they need them,
while contact centres are improving their CX, reducing the cost of
service, and freeing up their agents to handle more complex
queries.

It is also important for any business onboarding WhatsApp to
select the most relevant use case that will provide the most
significant business benefit and then focus on doing that
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Rather than trying to do too much via the channel and diluting the
customer experience, it’s vital to utilise it in a way that makes
sense for the channel and ultimately makes it easier for the
customer.

Relevant customer engagement


While WhatsApp can be used to send updates on applications,
deliveries or other important information through notifications,
it also provides an opportunity for enhanced real-time engagement
and on-the-spot resolution.

WhatsApp’s ubiquity means that any customer-facing organisation
can leverage it to provide richer customer engagements â€` from
sending boarding passes and sharing verification codes to
accepting contract information, the channel can be used to help
customers instantly and effectively.

Up until now, businesses have been able to use WhatsApp to
communicate with customers, but only in an ad hoc way, and without
proper measurement and reporting. Once it is being managed in the
same way as other customer contact channels, you will be able to
identify more ways to use WhatsApp to improve the performance of
your business.

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Ultimately WhatsApp plays a significant role in creating customer
communications that are relevant, accessible and targeted. If
incorporated into your entire customer communications strategy,
this messenger app allows for deeper control over customer
engagement, taking you one step closer to providing the type of
on-demand support that customers want and need.



www.vsoftsytems.co.za