20 Jan
How Can Whatsapp Chatbots Improve Customer Engagement
WhatsApp, one of the most popular messaging channels globally, hits 1 million new users every day. It’s available in over 40 languages on iPhone and up to 60 on Android. Undoubtedly, with its vast reach, user-friendly interface, and secured end-to-end encryption, businesses of every size can leverage the platform to effectively engage with their customers all over the world. Consequently, WhatsApp chatbots have rapidly gained traction.
A WhatsApp chatbot is a quick and easy medium to communicate with customers about product availability, send order confirmations and delivery updates, solve urgent customer issues, and answer booking and billing-related queries. Moreover, smart AI-driven bots can understand the context of the conversation and provide meaningful answers. Hence, they not only help enhance customer engagement but also build brand loyalty.
Let’s delve further into the benefits of WhatsApp chatbots for business.
Benefits of using a WhatsApp Chatbot
- Customers benefit from round-the-clock support and personalized conversations, which adds to their overall experience with the brand. Moreover, they needn’t download a separate app and can chat with the business on an already available tool whose interface they are accustomed to. End-to-end encryption ensures customer chats remain confidential and secure.
- It offers an interactive way for businesses to build brand awareness at scale, send customers important notifications, like travel confirmation, credit card alerts, etc., provide seamless customer support, and increase customer retention.
- WhatsApp chatbots open a whole new world of potential leads for marketers, helps offer attractive discounts, and enable the execution of visually-appealing, creative marketing campaigns targeted at a wider audience. With a 98% open rate, a WhatsApp text provides the highest probability of converting your lead.
- Sales executives can use chatbots to effectively carry out a host of functions, such as helping customers locate products, direct them to payment gateways, attracting customers 24X7 with flash sales, and allowing businesses to up-sell using personalized product recommendations targeted at specific audiences. Consequently, it enables businesses to keep customers engaged and shorten their sales cycle.
- WhatsApp chatbots can deal with frequently-asked questions, enabling organizations to provide customer support at scale and handover queries to human agents when needed. Additionally, when freed from the pressure of handling thousands of routine questions, customer support personnel can focus on more productive and high-value tasks. Chatbots can also pinpoint the nearest stores and service centers, share the ticket status, and collect customer feedback.
5 Real WhatsApp Chatbot Examples
1. Adidas
Adidas has been using WhatsApp to directly chat with customers since 2015.
Recently, it launched its “Rent-a-Pred,” also called the “100% Unfair Predator” campaign on WhatsApp to help recreational football teams rent a professional athlete in case a player backs out at the last moment. The players simply needed to WhatsApp the “Rent-a-Pred” chatbot, give a few basic details like the name of the team, location, and time of the match, and that’s it.
The team was informed on the morning of the match whether they would receive 100% unfair support from some of the best professional players in London, including football star Kaka, who dressed up in the Adidas Predator20 Mutator footwear.
The campaign was promoted on various social media channels and successfully generated buzz around the brand.
We know our audience use it to share fixture info, team selection — and team-mates messaging to find last-minute replacements,” said Coveney. “WhatsApp was perfect for the more functional elements of the ‘Rent-a-Pred’ hotline as it allowed consumers to share private information one-to-one with us for review, before being allocated a Predator player near them.
2. BMW
BMW’s chatbot allows customers to communicate with the brand and request their vehicle’s service status and other information via WhatsApp.
Consequently, call requests dropped by about 60%, and the brand’s recommendation rate rose to 90%.
Moreover, in 2017, the company had ventured into the world of WhatsApp chatbots with the introduction of a bot that enabled fans to follow the latest news, results, and statistics of the DTM championship. Moreover, users could acquire information about BMW’s car for the season, the M4 DTM.
3. Absolut Vodka
Absolut Vodka launched a limited edition collection in Argentina called “Absolut Unique.”
To build awareness around the collection and achieve customer engagement, the brand organized an exclusive party. Since only two tickets were offered to the general public, anyone who wanted to secure the invite had to message Absolut’s virtual bouncer, Sven, on WhatsApp and convince him that they deserved the tickets.
In its three-day run, the campaign not only helped the company interact with more than 600 users but also produced over 1000 hilarious user-generated material in the form of videos, images, and voice notes.
4. Openbank, Spain
Openbank Spain is Spain’s first 100% digital bank. Its WhatsApp chatbot not only solves customer queries but also helps customers make peer-to-peer payments. It leverages AI and ML to understand customer buying behavior and suggest products accordingly.
After the bank did a pilot test, 99% of customers found the service beneficial, with 98% saying they will continue to use it.
5. World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) launched a COVID-19 chatbot on WhatsApp to send the latest news and updates about the virus, including symptoms and ways to protect yourself against it. The chatbot helps fight the myths and misinformation around the disease and also provides the latest numbers, news and press releases, and travel advice to help governments protect the health of their citizens.
This service is available in seven languages – Arabic, English, Hindi, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Spanish, and has the potential to reach 2 billion people worldwide.
To sum up!
With 60 billion texts exchanged daily, WhatsApp is one of the most widely used messaging platforms. Undoubtedly, it can help businesses scale their customer engagement to unprecedented levels.
With WhatsApp chatbots, businesses can accomplish the following –
- Send instant, contextual response to customer queries
- With rich media, 24×7 service, and a user-friendly interface, take customer service a notch up their competitors and enhance brand loyalty
- Send personalized and targeted notifications, like booking confirmation, delivery updates, flight status, product recommendations, etc.
How can Acuvate help?
At Acuvate, we help clients build AI-enabled WhatsApp chatbots with our intuitive, low-code bot building solution called BotCore. Our intelligent chatbots can understand the context and simulate highly complex human-like conversations.
Moreover, minimal coding needs allow clients to quickly build and deploy chatbots using channel-specific API elements and multiple languages, like English, French, German, etc. Our chatbot solutions are recognized by leading industry analysts, like Gartner, Forrester, and Clearbox.
To know more about BotCore, please feel free to schedule a personalized consultation with our chatbot experts.
Abhishek is the AI & Automation Practice Head at Acuvate and brings with him 17+ years of strong expertise across the Microsoft stack. He has consulted with clients globally to provide solutions on technologies such as Cognitive Services, Azure, RPA, SharePoint & Office 365. He has worked with clients across multiple industry domains including Retail & FMCG, Government, BFSI, Manufacturing and Telecom.
Abhishek Shanbhag