5 Questions to ask yourself before you implement #Whatsapp for your brand

Seeing all the excitement and noise around Whatsapp for Business pushed me to write this article & thought it would be of great help for the Marketing community to do it the Right way with the Right partner.

Here are the 5 questions you should ask yourself before you finalise your #Whatsapp Partner:

1) Are you doing it just because your competitor is doing it or your boss is asking you to do it?

With my interactions with a lot of brands have realised that a lot of them want to just go live and send a message on Whatsapp but haven't really thought of how it will make life easy for their customer. Doing it Fast might not be so important as compared to doing it Right.

2) Is implementing Whatsapp helping you improve your Customer Experience?

Like a lot of travel brands like Easemytrip, Makemytrip & Goibibo have started sending flight tickets over Whatsapp which has made it more convenient for me as a user. Not a big change since emails were convenient too.

But what really makes a difference and some of the above brands have done it, is where I can check the flight status and even do a check in to my fight via Whatsapp which is a real gamechanger & that's the right approach for all brands to take before they decide to jump on to Whatsapp as a communication channel. This experience will improve the stickiness of the user to brand and help the brand improve their repeat purchase.

Click here to find some really interesting use cases on Whatsapp

3) Is implementing Whatsapp helping you reduce cost in some way or the other?

After all its one of the most expensive channels but its surely worth it if its reducing cost or improving customer experience which is worth the spends.

But what if I said it will reduce a call being triggered to your call centre which would ideally cost around 10cents (Rs.5-7). Here are some interesting examples:

a) Imagine if you a user could block his lost Credit Card simply by sending out a whats app message to his Bank.

b) Imagine if an online retail brand could process refund request basis your conversation on Whatsapp.

This is exactly when the cost of Whatsapp looks nominal and thats how brands should look at implementing it.

4) Are you partnering with an official partner of Facebook business for Whatsapp?

The standard answer you might get from a lot of them is yes but you can validate it on Facebook business partner page. Especially where a lot of them seem to claim they are partners even when its via some tie-ups.

Here is the Facebook partner page

5) "Help Me" or "Jobs to be done" - Are you making this happen for your customers?

"Help Me" & "Job to be done" are 2 very important concepts to keep in mind when you implement Whatsapp for your brand. If you are doing either of them for your customer then you will look at Whatsapp not as a cost centre but as a big opportunity.

Think of it - Why do you prefer using the "Home Loan Calculator" and not talk to a telesales person selling you a loan. Its is cause the calculator actually is Helping you and the person on call is selling.

This is exactly what Whatsapp can do for your brand and help the customer in their journey with you as a brand then doing a hard sell always.

If you are interested to get started with Whatsapp the Right way - MakeItHappenHere