WhatsApp for whom?
Businesses, institutions and governments strive for personal contact.
In this article, we go further into the world of communication: the success of every process. Communication nowadays can be done in many different ways. In the development of websites and webshops, the first is often a chatbot. The chatbot is a trained communication model that gives automated answers. In addition, there is a possibility for WhatsApp. For companies, WhatsApp Business is often used. These options lack a personal approach from a team perspective. That is why we also cover the RippleCom Team Inbox.
Chatbots have become increasingly popular as a channel for customer service in recent years. These virtual assistants are programmed with artificial intelligence. Chatbots can answer customer questions 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via a company’s website or its own app. Chatbots offer companies scalable customer service at relatively low costs. Chatbots are widely used for organisations where frequently asked questions and comments can be handled. Chatbots also have disadvantages. Due to the little human warmth and the ‘standard’ remarks, they often offend humans. How can a programmed application know anything? The implementation by companies using chatbots is therefore often completely wrong. Letting people know there is a chatbot is perhaps even more negative than the quality of the chatbot itself. Furthermore, chatbots often have limited context and often slow and rigid conversation. Especially in the European market—and the Dutch one completely—a chatbot is often an irritation to the customer rather than a professional extension.
Many customers prefer more personal channels such as WhatsApp. WhatsApp is a well-known and user-friendly messaging platform for one-on-one conversations between customer, resident and company or government. Having the feeling of communicating with a human is better, even if the answers are then not correct or as desired. WhatsApp has a number of advantages, certainly its familiarity and ease of use. Furthermore, WhatsApp gives a certain feeling of human intimacy and its use is usually a natural conversation. Employees can communicate personally, empathetically, and in context. That helps in the customer experience and involvement of customers with an organisation or a citizen with the government.
The disadvantage of WhatsApp is that it remains limited in use for professional customer service. That has to do with the 1-on-1 character of WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business. These—free—WhatsApp solutions lack possibilities for task distribution such as picking up and transferring a conversation just as you can with telephony. It is not possible to easily collaborate with each other on a conversation and only scale up colleagues when necessary. In the WhatsApp solutions it is not possible to generate reports about conversations. And easily handling and archiving conversations is not user-friendly for business traffic.
The RippleCom WhatsApp Team Inbox combines the personal tone of WhatsApp with professional team functions. The low-threshold—cheap—entry and quickly set up channel offers possibilities to collaborate on conversations. Where customers communicate 1-on-1 with an organisation/company/government (department), with RippleCom it is possible to handle conversations with multiple employees (1-on-many). ‘Transferring’ conversations we call assigning to an employee. Conversations can be followed to check follow-up. Multiple employees handle WhatsApp conversations together from one shared inbox. Conversations are centrally stored. With smart notifications, conversations are followed up and handled in time with the goal of ensuring customer satisfaction and engagement. Furthermore, extensive reporting is possible and transcripts can be downloaded for quality and training purposes.
In further extensions, it is possible to add intelligent automation and efficiency. Take for example the addition of an AI assistant that knows how to handle all product data and information in the most efficient, customer-friendly way possible and handle conversations. Questions can be automatically routed, standard answers made available, and tasks assigned to employees if the automation can’t figure it out. This way, organisations benefit from the advantages of WhatsApp without the shortcomings of a single individual number. That is a possible extension, where these can be adjusted as desired. We advise to start ‘small’, and develop effective team inbox communication with your team.
In comparison between chatbots and RippleCom, the RippleCom WhatsApp Team Inbox scores on the following points:
By deploying the RippleCom WhatsApp Team Inbox, organisations offer a personal, smart customer service on the channel that customers actually want to use.
The service without the limitations of WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business alone and without the rigidity and learning curve of a chatbot. With RippleCom, you choose the best of both worlds.
