Chatbots have advanced significantly in recent years in a world that is increasingly going digital. These tiny robots have been improving their interactions with us and our support experiences over time.
They have advanced business technology and enabled employers to reduce staffing costs in the customer service industry.
Additionally, many people now prefer messaging to emails or phone calls, and in an age where WhatsApp has more than 2 billion users across 180 countries, it is more important than ever to communicate with clients via their preferred messaging platform.
Integrating WhatsApp with chatbots can increase the effectiveness of your customer service, but using WhatsApp to build chatbots greatly increases the advantages. The only drawback is that WhatsApp itself does not directly support chatbot development.
We'll go over the advantages of using a WhatsApp Business chatbot in this guide, as well as how to set one up (without writing any code).
Key Takeaway:
- WhatsApp chatbot is software that can respond to messages on WhatsApp automatically.
- WhatsApp bot can be used for conversational marketing, sales, and promotions, as well as to assist you in managing client support requests.
- With WhatsApp Chatbot, you can enhance the experience for customers, boost productivity within teams, automate frequently asked queries and product recommendations, also lower the rate of cart abandonment.
- The only way you can use WhatsApp Chatbot is through WhatsApp API. It can only be obtained by using the services of a Business Solution Provider (BSP).
- When creating a WhatsApp Chatbot for business, you must design a flow of dialogue, give your chatbot human touch, limit your expectations, and continually enhance your bot.
What Is WhatsApp Bot?
A WhatsApp chatbot is software that can respond to messages on WhatsApp automatically.
WhatsApp bots can have multiple conversations with different people simultaneously and are available 24/7. They are frequently used to offer information about a business, its goods and services, and to automatically respond to questions.
With very little human supervision, a WhatsApp bot can be used for conversational marketing, sales, and promotions, as well as to assist you in managing client support requests.
Additionally, you can assist your customers in making purchases and instantly respond to their inquiries. By automatically responding to frequently asked questions or confirming appointments, purchases, and deliveries in real-time, you can interact with a large number of customers more effectively while also improving customer satisfaction and saving yourself a ton of time and money.
You can personalize your customers' user experience by modifying the script that runs the WhatsApp bot.
Why You Should Use WhatsApp Chatbot
With today's digital consumers, WhatsApp has become a popular messaging platform. In fact, 67% of customers say they prefer to communicate with businesses through messaging apps. Businesses can easily help their customers wherever they are by deploying chatbots on platforms like WhatsApp.
Here are some reasons why you should use WhatsApp bots for your business:
1. Enhance the experience for customers
Your response time will significantly improve. Although a customer won't always receive an immediate response to their question, they will always receive one.
When a customer asks a question that the bot is unable to answer, the bot can let them know when a human agent will respond, even after business hours.
Today's consumers value the ability to help themselves more than ever. Instead of calling customer service when we had a problem as we once did, the majority of us now try to resolve issues on our own first. You can do this by using a help center or getting helped by a chatbot.
2. Boost productivity within teams
Customer service teams are under more pressure than ever because of the rise in customer expectations. More than ever, they must respond almost immediately, address problems quickly, and use multiple communication channels.
Agents save a ton of time by having a WhatsApp chatbot on their team. They are no longer responsible for answering frequently asked questions that the bot can handle.
Messages that are urgent are automatically identified and routed to the appropriate agent. As a result, the customer service representative is left to focus on what they do best: assisting customers.
3. Automate frequently asked queries
The number of questions about order confirmation, tracking, cancellation, and refund has skyrocketed as more people switch to online booking and shopping. If not automated, these queries can consume a lot of the agent's time. Therefore, it is crucial for businesses to automate these FAQs in order to lighten the load on the agent side and enable them to concentrate on selling.
Without bots, "Quick Replies" can be used to handle some of these inquiries, but once more, an agent must manually send these messages.
Additionally, "Quick Replies" can’t respond to requests like sending order details or tracking information; these must be handled manually.
So, the FAQs, order tracking data, and cancellation requests can all be handled automatically with the aid of a WhatsApp chatbot. This automation can operate around the clock and offers quick responses.
4. Automate product recommendations
Companies don't really need any elaborate systems for selling and cross-selling to customers. Businesses simply need to ask them for their choices, present suggestions, and assist them with checkout since the user is already there interacting with the WhatsApp bot.
The catalog feature in the WhatsApp business app makes this possible. The drawback of this catalog feature is that it requires manual delivery of the catalogs to the customers; it is not possible to automate this process.
However, the entire cross-selling flow can be automated and won't need any assistance from humans thanks to the WhatsApp chatbot. A chatbot can prompt the user's interests, display the desired products, assist with color and size selection, and then assist with checkout.
5. Lower the rate of cart abandonment
Across all industries, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.57%. Emails are one way to address this, but only 13.9% of emails are opened. The open rates for SMS messages can reach 98%, and WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app, can achieve even higher open rates and significantly lower cart abandonment rates.
WhatsApp bots can keep track of the items put in the shopping cart and entice users to pay by offering discounts.
How to Build WhatsApp Bot With WhatsApp API?
There is no way for a regular WhatsApp to have a chatbot enabled.
In other words, you must first request WhatsApp Business API, a beta service, or request to use their API through a third party (WhatsApp Business Solution Provider). If you register through OneTalk by TapTalk.io, we can help you accelerate the request and approval process.
The application also needs the name of your business, the website's URL, and the representative of your business's name and contact information.
The WhatsApp API can be used after your application has been examined and approved.
The procedures for requesting the WhatsApp API and setting up your specific WhatsApp Business number are listed below.
- Register with WhatsApp's business API. Following your registration, you'll get an email outlining the next steps you need to take to have your application approved.
- Next, you must enter information like your name, phone number, and Facebook Business Manager ID.
- Once you've decided to use TapTalk.io as your business service provider, you must confirm it by going to "business settings" and approving the request from TapTalk.io.
- Finally, for your WhatsApp business account, you must enter basic information like profile icon and name. An SMS or voice call will be used for the authentication of your WhatsApp number. Once this is finished, you are ready to use TapTalk.io’s WhatsApp integration.
Also read: WhatsApp Chatbot Advantages for Banking and Finances
How to Build Chatbot WhatsApp on OneTalk?
Let’s learn how to set up your own chatbot for WhatsApp with TapTalk.io.
Step 1: Create a Custom Chatbot
- From the Dashboard page, select Integration > Chatbots and then press the Create Chatbot button to start creating a new chatbot.
- From the dropdown in the Chatbot Type field, select Custom Chatbot.
- The field labeled "Chatbot URL" will appear; this is the webhook endpoint where messages sent to your chatbot engine can be received.
- Your newly created chatbot will appear on the Chatbots page after you click the Save Changes button.
- Click the View button to see the details of the chatbot.
Step 2: Link the Chatbot to WhatsApp
- Select the channel where the chatbot will be connected in the Channels section on the Dashboard page to connect a chatbot to your WhatsApp.
- Choose your preferred channel, then click the Set Chatbot button in the Chatbot section.
- Click the Save Changes button after selecting our previously created chatbot from the Chatbot Path dropdown.
- Congratulations! Your chatbot and channel have been successfully connected.
Also read: All You Need to Know About WhatsApp Business Verification Process
Guidelines for Creating Effective WhatsApp Business Chatbots
Now that everything is set up, you need to make your bot successful. Here are some pointers to help you start well.
1. Design a flow of dialogue for your WhatsApp chatbot.
As a business, you should plan the conversation flow once your WhatsApp Business Platform account has been set up. This refers to the flow of conversations with the chatbot:
- What questions you'll answer
- How you will welcome or greet clients
- Whether you'll use emojis or a more casual tone is up to you
When preparing a conversational flow, you should hold an internal meeting to outline all of the conversation's components.
Planning for every possible use case and potential customer question is essential to avoid the failure of the chatbot.
2. Give your WhatsApp chatbot a human touch.
Connecting with users and gaining their loyalty can be achieved by giving your WhatsApp chatbot a human brand personality. And as far as we can tell, it is one of the best practices for creating chatbots.
A strong sense of brand identity can significantly increase revenue and consumer engagement.
Some queries, however, need human input. You can specify conditions and scenarios in the WhatsApp chatbot builder so that the chatbot can provide options for human assistance when necessary.
3. Limit expectations
Meeting customer expectations is crucial because they are constantly rising. Alternatively, be sure to make the chatbot's limitations clear.
Customers anticipate your availability at all times, especially if you're serving a global client base. As they are designed to adapt to these constantly changing requirements and rising standards, automated chatbot responses can assist you in establishing response time expectations.
4. Continually enhance your chatbot
Our guide to the best practices for chatbot building does not end with getting your bot up and running. To enhance and get the most out of the tool, you should also test and monitor metrics.
Consider various use cases. Check to see if the chatbot reacts the same way that your customer service team would. It's time to activate it after you've tested it out on unusual cases and at odd times and are completely satisfied with the results.
It's also advised that you spend some time exploring the analytics to determine how it's doing.
Utilize user data to ascertain how users engage with your WhatsApp chatbot before making the necessary modifications.
Become committed to understanding its constraints so that you can set it up in the most advantageous ways.
You can identify overall performance levels and address future conversation flow adjustments by keeping this in mind.
Start to Create Your Chatbot With OneTalk by TapTalk.io
WhatsApp connects billions of users every day and is now giving businesses limitless opportunities to reach and interact with its enormous audience. Using WhatsApp chatbots, businesses can now quickly and efficiently engage with customers on the platform they prefer thanks to WhatsApp for Business.
Before beginning WhatsApp chatbot development, you should be aware of the platform's numerous restrictions. Building the bot from scratch can be difficult and time-consuming.
However, with OneTalk by Taptalk, we can assist you in creating a no-code WhatsApp chatbot that you can modify in under 5 minutes to suit your messaging and business needs.
OneTalk still has a ton of useful features, like the ability to configure different auto-replies and Q&A paths for different customer responses, that can aid your customer support team.
Seeing the various advantages of chatbots, let's increase customer satisfaction with OneTalk. Click here to chat with our agents and see more exciting features for your business!
