Whatsapp and its Business version Whatsapp API

This option is great for individual professionals or small businesses, but it's not intended for large corporations or multi-person customer support teams. To solve this and be able to offer a better service, some time ago Facebook, as the current owner, launched WhatsApp Business API .

Bearing in mind that WhatsApp is the most widely used instant messaging service in half the world, the possibility of using it as a customer service channel is very logical and positive. Users are used to using WhatsApp and thanks to this API, companies will be able to serve us in a more comfortable way .

What is WhatsApp Business?

WhatsApp Business is the company version of WhatsApp. There are some differences with respect to the conventional app that we all use, such as creating a product file or selecting a series of "statuses" for customers to contact. WhatsApp Business is practically identical but with new features making it easy to handle at any level. It is free, has no additional cost and has specific characteristics that are, mainly, the following:

• Company profile with useful information for customers.
• Quick and personalized responses according to the message
• Tags to organize contacts and customers
• Automated messages with which we can not worry
• Data statistics, customers, messages
• Direct links to contact you by WhatsApp
• Catalog to show your products from the application

And the API?

API stands for Application Programming Interface and it contains all the requirements, instructions and possibilities to integrate WhatsApp into other tools or automate certain tasks. It is designed for medium and large companies with the aim of promoting communication with customers throughout the world through WhatsApp in an easy and simple way.

It is basically a series of rules that programmers must use to integrate WhatsApp into any type of tool they are developing. Either for customer service as I mentioned or for another type of use such as mass notifications, chatbots, etc, etc...

Thanks to this function, companies can integrate WhatsApp at different levels within their customer service systems. Thanks to this, the service will no longer be "tied" to a mobile phone. With the proper development, they will be able to use a single WhatsApp phone number so that several people can attend conversations, collect orders through the messaging service, incidents and a long list of possibilities.

What can be done with the WhatsApp Business API

Throughout the article I have already commented on some of the possibilities of this API, but many more things can really be achieved thanks to it.

newsletter

For example, it can be used to distribute important information to a group of users. Something like a "newsletter" but this time brought to WhatsApp, with a very high opening rate thanks to the fact that practically all users have active notifications on their devices and that it is not usual to leave conversations unread.

Integrate service within your CRM

As I was saying, in the customer service section it can also be very useful. For example, companies can Integrate the service into your CRM . Thanks to this, they can centralize customer service and have several people attend them at the same time. Agents will be able to send messages from the tool from which they usually work on their computers, but the user will receive them directly on their mobile.

chatbots

It is also possible to automate certain messages and not just mass notifications as a newsletter. For example, developers can use the API to create a tool that allows them to create chatbots . Thanks to this they can automate communication with customers and in many cases free up customer service agents thanks to it.

For example, they can create an automatic chat that answers some common questions such as schedules, other forms of contact, communicating the status of the company's services. You can also go further and integrate these chatbots with internal databases and any type of customer data. Thanks to this, the user could obtain, for example, a list with all the purchases he has made, contract renewal dates, or if the company works with a balance, know how much he has in his account as a customer, etc, etc...

Advantage

Alert systems for natural disasters, mass sending of offers, personalized and automated chats for purchases… The The possibilities offered by the WhatsApp Business API are enormous and the limit is really set by the company's imagination and budget to carry out the necessary development.

How to request the WhatsApp Business API

To request the WhatsApp Business API we can choose two paths, one of them is enroll us directly and the other is to take hold of a solution provider that gives us access to the API . However, the probability of success in the first case will depend on whether our brand has a good relationship with Facebook or is a globally recognized company.

In that case, we can try sign up directly . To do this, what we must do is go to the WhatsApp Business API official website and click on the Start button. Automatically, we will be shown a page in which we will be asked for various information about our company, such as the name of the company, url of the website, name, surname, telephone number and contact email address, and it will also ask us if we want to use the API to send WhatsApp messages on behalf of the company or the company of one of our clients. Once this information has been filled in, we click Submit and continue the application process by filling in all the information requested.

In the event that our brand has no relationship with Facebook or is not a big reputable company, then the best solution is to use a solution provider that can facilitate access to the WhatsApp Business API more easily. In addition, the process will be much faster if possible.

In this case, the first thing we will have to do is send some basic information about our company (name, website, industry or type of activity, country where you want to offer the WhatsApp service, use that we are going to give it, forecast volume of daily messages, etc.) and wait for the provider to confirm the approval Of the brand.

Activate phone number

If everything goes well and the company is approved, then we will have to provide the necessary information to activate phone number that we are going to use with the service. It is possible to use one of our telephone numbers or register a new one. Of course, in any case we must register said number in the WhatsApp Business app before anything else in order to continue with the activation process, for which we also need to provide other types of information to the provider through which we are carrying out the process as it is the identification of the Business Manager of clients on Facebook, telephone number of the WhatsApp Business account, name associated with said number, etc.

After our number is activated, all communications will be housed in a virtual server , to which we can connect through a control panel or system provided by the provider itself to access all messages. This is something a business will need to do if they prefer to try and apply for the WhatsApp Business API on their own, which for many may be a major impediment.

The fact of using a server, also known as docker, for the use of the API, implies that if at any time we want to use more than one phone number with WhatsApp Business we will have to have a different server for each one of them. Therefore, we will also have a separate system or control panel for each of the telephone numbers.

Create our templates

Now the only thing that will remain after having the phone number activated is create our templates for sending messages through the WhatsApp Business API. To do this, we must take into account the rules established by Mark Zuckerberg's own company in terms of the form and content of these messages. So much so, that we must receive the approval of WhatsApp to be able to put our messages to use.