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New Interactive Features with commerce on WhatsApp
Multi-Product Messages: Multi-Product Messages allow you to, as the name suggests, showcase multiple products and/or services. You can highlight a selection of up to 30 items from your business' inventory. The Multi-Product Messages will also allow you to replace PDF catalogues and numbered lists in WhatsApp Business.
Single Product Messages: Single Product Messages are messages that showcase a single product item from the business's inventory. Great for a personal customer experience when you already know what your customer wishes to buy. Single Product Messages are best for guiding customers to one specific item from a business’ inventory.
Shopping Cart Experience: After viewing products, a customer can add them to their shopping cart and send that cart to a business. For commerce on WhatsApp, a shopping cart is unique to a person/business chat thread in a specific device & has no expiration date. Customers can add up to 99 units of each single catalogue item to a shopping cart, but there is no limit on the number of distinct items that can be added to a cart.
List Messages & Quick Reply Buttons: List Messages include a menu of up to 10 options. This type of message offers a simpler and more consistent way for users to make a selection when interacting with a business.
Reply Buttons include up to 3 options —each option is a button. This type of message offers a quicker way for users to make a selection from a menu when interacting with a business. Reply buttons have the same user experience as interactive templates with buttons.
Leveraging non-transactional notifications for commerce on WhatsApp
The WhatsApp Business Platform was designed as a communication tool for high-quality conversations between customers and businesses. In addition to user privacy, the platform has a number of features to enforce quality messages from businesses. To empower responsible marketers to reach out to their customers, WhatsApp now allows your brand to send non-transactional (promotional) notifications. You can create different segments & power these personalized notifications to your users. Think Product recommendations related to a customer’s previous purchases & helpful informational alerts and reminders.
Why are non-transactional notifications so powerful:
Expected: People have already opted-in to receive this information from the business over WhatsApp, so they are not surprised when they message them.
Relevant: The messages are personalized to the specific person (Ex: based on recent purchases or recent engagement with the business, personalized content in the message itself).
Timely: People receive these messages when they are relevant
Powering end-to-end CX with commerce on WhatsApp
Discovery: The first step is to get your customer to opt-in, this can be done through every online & offline communication channel - website, QR codes, SMS, missed call, social media, etc. Once your customer has opted in, you can begin to engage with them regularly.
Shopping Experience: As WhatsApp becomes a commerce powerhouse, you can now power a seamless end-to-end shopping journey on a single platform. Your customer will not have to leave the chat screen at any step. Send catalogues, provide AI-powered recommendations & collect payments!
Post-purchase support: You can automate the post-purchase support journey to reduce agent load, support costs, and a high CSAT score. The chatbot works perfectly to improve your support metrics! You can have a seamless bot-to-agent transfer experience to resolve complex queries.
Engagement: WhatsApp now allows your brand to send transactional & non-transactional (promotional) notifications. You can create different segments & power these personalized notifications to your users. Eg. You can send product recommendations related to a customer’s previous purchases.
Commerce on WhatsApp enabled by AI
The recommendation engine is built to assist your customers in their buying experience. The recommendation engine aims to provide a seamless and personalized buying experience to every visitor who chats with you on WhatsApp. The engine can understand the intent and context of the user and recommend products that the buyer is most likely to buy. The engine is trained on millions of conversations and only becomes better every day. This provides a great opportunity for your brand to upsell and cross-sell products to existing customers who are ready to buy.
Why will commerce on WhatsApp work?
Distribution: Distribution is the biggest strength of WhatsApp. There are 500million+ users on WhatsApp in India, making it India’s largest messaging platform.
Experience: WhatsApp enables an end-to-end commerce experience. It delivers a delightful experience at every stage in the customer journey.
Vision: WhatsApp’s vision is to make its platform the best way for people and businesses to get things done. Every feature launch in the WhatsApp Business API will revolve around making the Commerce experience better for businesses.
Industry & Size agnostic: The commerce experience on WhatsApp is not just limited to Retail, D2C & eCommerce. Any company that is selling products and services can make WhatsApp their #1 revenue-generating channel, provided they are complying with their commerce policies.
Integrations: The flexibility of the WhatsApp Business API is what makes it accessible to millions of brands today. You can integrate your existing tools with WhatsApp to provide a seamless & personalized shopping experience to your customers.
Closing Notes
Commerce on WhatsApp has emerged as a clear winner in the Conversational Commerce race in India. If you’re selling products and services to consumers in India, commerce on WhatsApp can add significant value to your revenue.
The ability of commerce on WhatsApp to provide an end-to-end shopping experience on a single chat screen makes it a go-to platform for your business.
CM.com is an official WhatsApp Business API provider, powering SMEs and large enterprises to grow their business on WhatsApp. We have the experience and expertise to bring the capabilities of commerce on WhatsApp to your business. Sounds exciting? Get in touch with our in-house solution consultants to understand how you can sky-rocket your revenue with commerce on WhatsApp.
