If you don’t know what WhatsApp Business is, we are going to help you out and show you how to use it. Business owners, WhatsApp has the perfect tool for you to communicate with your customers. It is a platform that can be key to boost your business.
What is WhatsApp Business?
WhatsApp Business is the business-oriented version of the popular messaging service that was officially launched in 2018. It is clear that a company does not have the same needs as an ordinary person, so this app has small changes intended to be used by company or business profiles.
We are talking about an application completely independent of the WhatsApp you use every day to chat with your family and friends. Thus, it is best to use the company’s phone number to register into the app.
At the moment, the application is free for small and medium-sized companies, while larger companies (such as airlines, banks or e-commerce) must pay an unknown fee to access functions and tools more suited to their needs.
As WhatsApp explains on its website, there can be two types of accounts in this business version.
The first is the Official Business Account, with a green verification badge on the profile informing users that it is an authentic and recognized brand by WhatsApp. The second type of WhatsApp Business account is Business Account, i.e. a default status for any business that creates a profile.
In addition to contacting your customers, who can ask you any questions about the schedule or availability of items, WhatsApp Business stands out for allowing you to sell your products online. All you have to do is add the complete catalog and information about the items in it. By clicking on the cart, users will see the catalog and will be able to buy directly what interests them the most.
You will receive a message with all the order information so that you can proceed with the shipment. This way, WhatsApp Business acts as an e-commerce site where you can sell your products.
In short, WhatsApp Business is a very complete tool that lets you communicate with your customers from your company profile. To use all its features 100%, you must first know how to use the app, and we are going to learn that in the following section.
How to use WhatsApp Business?
Just like the main WhatsApp app, Business has a very simple operation that you will master after a few minutes of use. Below, we explain the procedure you need to follow to download the app, register your business profile, and set up the account to start chatting with customers.
Download the application
Obviously, the first thing you must do to use WhatsApp Business is to download its application on your smartphone. It is a free app that you can easily download and install from Play Store. By the way, users do not have to download this version to contact businesses.
Create your company’s profile and add your information
Open Whatsapp Business on your mobile phone to start the registration. The first thing you will need to do is enter the phone number associated with the account which, as we mentioned before, is recommended to be the business’s home number.
The next step is to select a category for your business: hotel, clothing and accessories, beauty, cosmetics, and personal care… Use the search engine above to enter the term best related to your business and speed up the search.
Then it’s time to add the most important profile information, as you will have to specify the name of the business, its address and enter a brief description. In addition, you can also set a profile picture At the end of this step, you will have your profile ready to go.
Take advantage of the tools at your disposal
Once you have created your profile, it’s time to discover all the tools that WhatsApp Business puts at your disposal to improve communication with your customers. You can enter the “Business Tools” section to set up an absence message, a welcome message, quick replies, tags to organize chats, and, of course, to modify the company profile with new information.
Chat with customers
You already have everything ready to chat with your company’s customers through WhatsApp Business. Therefore, the only thing you need to do is to broadcast the business phone number so users can contact you.
Add the catalog to allow purchases
Finally, if you want to sell your products through WhatsApp Business, you must perform a series of steps to make it possible. Go to Business Tools > Catalog and add one by one the products that will be part of the catalog with the “Add item” button. You can add images, enter their name and, optionally, specify their price.
How to keep your WhatsApp Business app updated?
If you have been attentive so far, we can say that you already know everything about how this app can help you. We always recommend you keep your application up to date. Just follow these steps:
- Enter Google Play Store.
- Find WhatsApp Business and click on the “Update” button that will appear on the right.
- Download the latest version.
- Go to the WhatsApp Business home page on the Play Store and click on the three dots button in the upper right corner.
- In the options menu, check the “Automatically update” box, this way future updates of the application will be downloaded and installed automatically.
