A chatbot is a software application that allows businesses to communicate with their customers via text or text-to-speech. A WhatsApp chatbot is an application program that helps businesses respond to customers' queries through WhatsApp. You can create WhatsApp chatbot using tools such as BotUp to connect with customers in real-time and increase business accessibility easily. Let's dive into the many benefits of this feature.

WhatsApp is the most popular messaging platform, with over 1.5 billion users and a market share of over 40%. It is used in over 180 countries and was bought by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion. WhatsApp announced its business version in 2018. Its popularity makes it the best platform to market products and services and gain brand popularity.

WhatsApp Business is a platform that helps businesses gain an online presence and seamlessly connects with their customers through the WhatsApp bot. What's more, it can be integrated into CRM and ERP platforms to ease the management of customer relationship operations.

Why WhatsApp bots, you ask? In 2018, Forbes reported that people spent 85 billion hours on WhatsApp within three months.

This figure is incredibly large, especially when people spent 31 billion hours on Facebook within the same period. Any marketer or salesperson will tell you that you will get more out of your engagement with a potential client if you meet and assist them where they are. You can easily achieve this with the WhatsApp bot.

With AI, marketers can do more with a WhatsApp bot, such as automated responses to common questions, providing updates and offers, and engaging with customers more personally.

Forbes Council contributor and customer experience expert Astrid Pocklington opines, ""A smarter #chatbot can function and act more like a person, potentially even developing a personality. Companies using them create a more authentic presence, creating a better #CX.""

A smarter #chatbot can function and act more like a person, potentially even developing a personality. Companies using them create a more authentic presence, creating a better #CX. #AI | Via @screenrant https://t.co/C6g4vLr3Yi

— Astrid Pocklington (@AstridPock) November 19, 2020

If you are interested in creating a chatbot, you need to use a chatbot builder. Here are more reasons why you need to join this bandwagon.

Advantages of Using Whatsapp Chatbot

1. They Are Highly Accessible

WhatsApp is the most popular messaging application, so it is most likely that your customers already have the platform on their smartphones. It, therefore, enables customers to receive assistance on their preferred platform that they use daily. Being a popular messaging medium means many customers already know how to use it and are familiar with its layout and functioning.

It, therefore, makes communication easy and without the need for training and complicated setups. WhatsApp availability on most people's phones means customers do not need to download a different application to use WhatsApp bots, which are also available and highly accessible for use by small, home-run businesses and large enterprises.

2. It's Available 24/7

You don't have to worry about providing customer service outside of your normal business hours, as chatbots can do it all for you automatically.

Kannan and Bernoff, in a Harvard Business Review article, agree, ""Bots are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and often answer customers' questions more quickly than human agents can.""

They can handle frequently asked queries intelligently, so businesses don't have to ensure customer service is available. This saves on the cash used to hire and train staff on customer service. The availability of round-the-clock customer service translates to higher client satisfaction rates.

3. Enhanced Customer Service

WhatsApp bots can help businesses with customer relationship operations such as sending reminders and notifications to customers, presenting and assisting the customers in exploring the business product catalog, giving real-time responses to customer queries and complaints, sending updates on the status of tickets and their resolution as well as gathering of feedback and commentaries from customers.

This reduces the number of times customers have to wait in a queue to talk to customer care representatives and makes it so they don't have to select many different buttons to reach the correct department to respond to their queries. Complex queries that the chatbot can't handle are automatically handed over to the customer care representative using chatbot-to-human handover, which is now a requirement - WhatsApp recently announced that companies must ensure that a WhatsApp bot can hand off customers to a human colleague.

4. High Engagement

Bots on WhatsApp have a high response rate as they encourage engagement with customers on various levels. With messages being sent back and forth, it is an interactive visual medium that facilitates engagement through active interaction. Receiving instant responses means that customers can have a two-way conversation with the business. These back and forth responses also indicate that customers can get instant resolution to their queries.

5. Improves Marketing Campaigns and Advertising Opportunities

Most businesses use WhatsApp bots to promote new arrivals of products, new services, upcoming events, and discounted offers to their customers globally since WhatsApp is an already established marketing platform widely available to most people. The bot has an option of various formatting styles and allows for the inclusion of multimedia, enabling the marketing team to be more creative in their campaigns. By integrating it into CRM, businesses can analyze customers' data and offer personalized recommendations on products and services.

WhatsApp integration can help automate repetitive marketing tasks, like emailing and social media posting, which frees the marketing and sales team for more strategic work. Additionally, WhatsApp bots can use broadcast lists to send notifications, which can help in the marketing campaign. Finally, WhatsApp bots can also allow clients to sign up for company newsletters and promotions.

6. Building a Strong Brand Identity by Helping Build Brand Awareness and Loyalty

This is achieved when a business gives its bot a brand personality. This means giving the bot a human persona, relatable to customers and one that will leave an impression and build loyalty. A strong, established brand identity works towards improving customer engagement, thereby driving up sales.

7. Whatsapp Bots Create a Personalized Experience

WhatsApp bots powered by artificial intelligence can improve customer interactions by making them more personalized.

Customizing the script when setting up a bot platform is important to ensure that the bot's messages will resonate with customers. Creating a richer customer experience will eventually increase customer engagement and retention.

8. Generates Leads

The ability to generate leads is essential for any marketer. Having high-quality leads saves salespeople and marketers time and money, as they can focus their resources on more productive tasks. Having a bot that can provide credible data is useful when trying to contact leads.

This is achieved by an unlimited number of responses to customers. The bot shoots out relevant questions once the audience has been engaged. The customers' response and level of engagement will determine the potential leads. The data on potential leads will enable the sales team to target their sales and navigate the leads down the marketing funnel.

9. They Are Secure

WhatsApp bots are end-to-end encrypted and have two-factor authentication plus business verification. This protects customers' data and identity, making most customers comfortable with the platform. The two-factor authentication feature enables users to create a custom pin that they use for authentication every time they log into their WhatsApp account.

WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption secures communication by ensuring third parties cannot access information transferred from one device to another. Data from the sender's device is encrypted, and only the recipient device can decrypt it. This gives customers the confidence to share sensitive personal information.

10. Help Customers Make Decisions Related to Sales

WhatsApp bots are the best platform for real-time responses, product location, and direct customers to payment gateways, which navigate customers down the sales funnel and make purchases.

If a customer is unable to find what they were looking for, the bot can make suggestions of nearby stores or service centers and even give a pin location for ease. Sharing a ticket status helps a customer make informed decisions. For example, a traveling agency's WhatsApp business bot can share the check-in details and travel itinerary with their clients, helping them plan their time.

11. Expands a Company's Availability

WhatsApp bots make it possible for businesses to reach out to their customers on its most popular messaging platform. With over 1.5 billion users in 180 countries, WhatsApp provides an opportunity for businesses to expand their reach with relatively little investment.

A company can increase its availability by creating a business profile on a chatbot. The profile should include the company's address, website URL, and a detailed description of the company. The company's address can be linked to Google Maps to help customers get directions for physical visits. Having a business profile gives the company a familiar face and identity, increasing user loyalty.

12. Allows Businesses to Collect Information and Feedback

Bots integrated with WhatsApp can be used to collect surveys and feedback from customers. The data collected from these bots are mostly accurate, actionable, and can be used in lead generation. This is because WhatsApp bots exhaustively interact with customers through qualifying questions and eventually develop a list of only potential leads.

13. Saves Cost

WhatsApp chatbots being available 24/7 eliminates the necessity for a full-time customer care representative.

According to a study carried out by Juniper Research, ""the operational cost savings from using chatbots in banking will reach $7.3 billion globally by 2023, up from an estimated $209 million in 2019. This represents time saved for banks in 2023 of 862 million hours, equivalent to nearly half a million working years.""

Bots can be developed to handle more complex queries to reduce the rate of chatbot-to-human handovers, which many customers find delayed and frustrating. WhatsApp chatbots are a welcome solution that costs way less to create and maintain than a team of customer care representatives, especially when considering the extra cost of medical covers and other allowances depending on company policy.

14. Whatsapp Integrates Easily With Many Technological Tools

This integration makes it easy for developers to keep creating bots that stay up-to-date with new, emerging technology needs. With this kind of integration, developers can use these technological tools to create advanced WhatsApp bots to handle complex customer queries. Creating advanced bots eliminates the need for customer care representatives who need to take chatbot-to-human handovers.

15. Easy to Use

The bot is developed on an already existing platform, WhatsApp, which eliminates the need for customers to download and install a separate application to access and use the bot. Customers with WhatsApp only need to chat with the business bot as they would with any other contact; since users are already accustomed to the WhatsApp messaging platform, no training is required to interact with the bot. WhatsApp's global availability enables businesses to develop a customer-centric bot that caters to an international audience.

Conclusion

If you want to be successful in business, you need to have a strategy for quickly connecting with your customers and steering potential leads down the marketing funnel to make sales. WhatsApp bots offer businesses an easy and effective way to develop long-term relationships with their customers and create loyalty to their brands. Use tools like BotUp to build strong WhatsApp bots for your business to get started.