How can small businesses use WhatsApp to drive sales with Hippo?

A small business is deprived of many perks that a large corporation enjoys (brand value, resources, well-planned structures, individual teams for various functions, and brand). These things obviously take time to build, but the top of the mountain is worth the climb. What if I told you there is something that can help you boost your growth throughout your whole business cycle? WhatsApp is a revolution in customer engagement. But how can you use WhatsApp and drive sales?

• How to leverage WhatsApp
  • WhatsApp Business
  • WhatsApp API
• Hippo
  • Customer Support
  • Broadcast
  • Surveys
  • Live Campaign
• Conclusion

With over 2.2 billion users and over 50% of them using WhatsApp daily, it is imperative for any business to be present on WhatsApp and communicate with customers. Many businesses across the globe provide customer support and are able to serve customers better. But being on WhatsApp and using WhatsApp are two different things. Understanding the difference and using WhatsApp exhaustively can make your business rarefied, and give you a competitive advantage like nothing else can.

But how do you leverage WhatsApp?

WhatsApp Business

The first thing that comes to mind is getting WhatsApp Business. Although an amazing option for someone just starting out, WhatsApp business has its fair share of problems when considered by a team.

• Only partially GDPR-compliant: The biggest weakness of the WhatsApp Business app is the data protection issues that can arise when using it. For example, the app automatically reads all saved contacts (and their phone numbers) that it stores. You can avoid this by using the WhatsApp API.
• Five devices: Another disadvantage of the app is that it can only be installed on one smartphone and up to four other devices. These devices must then be linked to the same number and, if necessary, shared between employees.
• Only one employee account: Even though five devices are usually enough for small businesses, all employees work from the same account. This means that neither you nor your customers can track which answers come from which employee, which can seem like a lack of transparency in your customer service.
• No options for professional service: Compared to the Business API, which enables advanced sales and service functions, the WhatsApp Business app is clearly inferior. We’ll show you which advantages the WhatsApp Business API brings to the table in the next section.

If you are not a sole proprietor and have a team, WhatsApp business is not for you. API is an appropriate option.

WhatsApp API

WhatsApp launched WhatsApp API to assist medium-sized and large businesses who wished to use WhatsApp for mass customer communication. But you need an API business solution provider for it and if you opt for a basic provider, you might face issues like:

Businesses can send messages to customers only after a customer initiates a message. These messages are called session messages and can be sent by businesses to customers only for 24 hours after the customer sends a message.

• After 24 hours, the session expires, and businesses can only send ‘template messages to their users. Template messages must be pre-approved by WhatsApp
• The number cannot be used on any other WhatsApp apps, including the WhatsApp 
• WhatsApp apps cannot be used with the same number if using WhatsApp Business APIs

Opting for Hippo solves all the above problems.

Hippo

With Hippo you have no restrictions on the number of devices that can be used, you don’t have to wait for a template to be verified from WhatsApp, and you can even reach out to potential customers who don’t know you.

There are multiple ways in which Hippo can provide you with a little boost.

Customer support:

Of course, the first and foremost thing you use WhatsApp for is to provide conversational support to your customers. Ordinary methods of customer support like telecalling are history. People now prefer chats over other methods of support, and bots are becoming more popular day by day due to their efficiency for businesses and ease of use for customers.

Hippo provides multiple solutions for you to provide customer support: live chats, phone calls, and video calls, in addition to chatbots. Adding WhatsApp to the equation makes Hippo complete. solution. The ways you can use WhatsApp to provide support with Hippo are:

WhatsApp widget: Adding a widget to your platform (website and app) will help your customers reach out to you with a single click whenever they have a query. Clicking on the widget will open their WhatsApp, and they can fill out the form or send a message for you to cater to them.

Chatbots: You can cater to your customers 24*7 even if you don’t have a large team, by automating the support. Even customers prefer chatbots over talking to a human. Hippo enables you to customize your bot as per your needs, and the AI will handle the rest.

Live-chats: Even though chatbots are becoming popular among customers and Millenials or Gen Z prioritize bots over humans, there are situations that need the human touch. That’s why Hippo allows your agents to take over any chat handled by bots to solve complex problems and add a personal touch to the conversation.

With Hippo, you will have every chat stored in the database so that when they return back you have the context of previous chats and don’t have to ask for their details every time.

Broadcast:

WhatsApp Broadcast is Hippo’s most popular feature. It not only helps you notify your customers about upcoming sales, offers but also enables you to reach out to your potential customers. You can do outbound marketing and invite potential customers to your platform. It’s very easy and can be done in minutes: create a message, upload a CSV, and send. It even reaches prospects who don’t have your phone number saved on their device.

Surveys:

You can collect valuable insights into your customers and gain data in real time with Hippo Survey. Using WhatsApp for surveys will ensure that your customers actually see the message and that you get more responses.

• Marketing and product surveys
• Net Promoter Score Survey
• Customer satisfaction/feedback surveys

Live Campaigns:

Live campaigns, or trigger-based customer journeys, are messages or notifications that are delivered to a customer when they perform a defined action (the trigger). 

Abandoned cart emails are among the most well-known live campaigns. When a customer adds items to his cart and exits the app or website without checking out and making the purchase, an event is triggered, and he receives an email or SMS that tells him about the items he left in the cart along with an invitation to complete the purchase. It works beautifully when added with a voucher and a FOMO effect, as shown below.

These campaigns generally use channels like email, SMS, and push notifications. With Hippo, you can use WhatsApp to remind people about the items in their cart along with the link to complete the purchase. You can create any combination of triggers like behavioral, time-based, location-based, and campaigns to build an engaging experience for your customers. The most popular live campaigns are:

• Welcome Journey
• Incomplete signup journey
• Recurring broadcast (e.g. daily, weekly, monthly)
• Abandoned Cart Journey
• Loyal/Champion customers’ journey
• Merchant-specific Broadcasts
• City-specific Broadcasts
• Special offer broadcasts
• Seasonal promotional broadcasts
• Thank-you Journey

Also read: Redefine Customer Journeys

Conclusion:

The best part of WhatsApp is that you can use various types of multimedia supported by WhatsApp, including images, videos, and pdfs that can be sent as marketing collateral or invoices. Adding multimedia to your campaigns increases engagement drastically. A research study by BuzzSumo states that images can increase your engagement by 2.3 times. which ultimately leads to:

• Increased productivity
• Increased brand recognition
• Improved brand loyalty.

To learn more about Hippo, book a free demo today.