A Viber Group is a great way to simultaneously keep multiple people updated about your products or services, promote discussion and allow you to build relationships quickly. If you want to find out how to create Viber Groups, stick around and we’ll show you!

What is Viber Group?

When Viber introduced Viber Groups in 2012 as a feature of its messaging app, Groups functioned like private chatrooms for multiple people. Initially, Viber Groups’ users primarily consisted of friends and families, but businesses caught on quickly.

Businesses learned to use Viber Groups as a communication channel with their customers. Since Viber Group messages could be read by all participants, it was an efficient way to update customers or answer their questions simultaneously.

This effective method of messaging customers makes Viber Group a useful tool to have in today’s fast-paced world. Let’s take a look at all the advantages of Viber Groups.

Benefits of Viber Group

Viber Group has all the benefits you get from instant messaging, but with multiple people instead of just an individual. Instant messages are more likely to capture your audience’s attention as people read them 600% more often than email.

And because instant messages tend to be more conversational than email, it becomes easier to build trust and relationships with recipients. Casual conversations also encourage quicker feedback or responses.

Unlike phone calls, instant messages don’t require all parties to be present for a conversation. Instant messages are also searchable, which is useful when locating an old message. And if needed, you can still send voice messages or make calls in Viber Groups.

As Viber Groups have no restrictions when it comes to content, you can create a group for any purpose. Viber Groups can also be created and accessed on both mobile and desktop app, making it convenient for anybody to use.

While Viber Groups are suitable for long-term use, they are also great for temporary activities where members don’t need to stay in touch after the purpose of the group is over.

For example, you can create groups to update your students or customers about a baking or yoga class, different sessions of a seminar and so on. But before you use Viber Groups for your business, there are some things that you need to know.

Limitations of Viber Groups

Because Viber Groups are only accessible using the Viber app, you won’t be able to use Viber Chatbots and third-party messaging platforms to chat on them.

Viber Groups also don’t show previously sent messages to newly added members, meaning you’ll need to update them if they’re unaware of the conversation.

There’s no support for member insights or message statistics, so you can’t track the performance of your messages if you need that information.

Lastly, Viber Groups have a maximum of 250 members, which makes them unsuitable for businesses that need to communicate with large numbers of customers. Instead, you can use Viber Communities or Channels if you have a large audience to connect with.

Viber Group, Community and Channel Differences

If you need to accommodate more users and want stricter controls over the conversation, you’ll need to look beyond Viber Groups. Viber Communities are like Groups but larger, with more moderation tools and visible chat histories.

On the other hand, Viber Channels are similar to Communities, except that communication is one-way. Only admins can send messages in Channels. This makes Channels more suitable for announcements than conversations.

Viber Groups work best for businesses with smaller audiences that don’t require all the bells and whistles that come with Communities or Channels. Next, let’s explore how Viber Groups can improve the way your business communicates with its customers.

Why Use Viber Groups

Viber Groups are an efficient way of communicating with your customers if Viber is popular in your region or the majority of your customers are already on the channel. This allows you to reach out to customers where they spend most of their time.

Broadcasts and groups allow you to mass message customers, with one main difference. Broadcasts are only meant for one-way conversations, while groups allow members to participate in discussions.

This is great for community bonding among members because they can interact and chat with one another. This especially benefits companies in social-oriented verticals like fitness or education.

Viber Groups enable you to answer commonly asked questions with a single message since everyone in the group can read your replies. For example, you can alert customers about new products and answer any questions they might have in the same group.

Viber Groups are free to use along with the Viber app itself. There are also no costs for messaging either as you’ll be sending messages from a personal Viber account instead of a business account.

This is helpful to know, especially when you’re a business that’s just starting out and don’t have a big budget to spend on messaging customers! Now you know the benefits of using a Viber Group, let’s learn how to create one.

How to Create Viber Group

Creating a Viber Group is a process that will be familiar to you if you’ve created groups on other chat apps in the past.

1. Tap the speech bubble icon.

2. Select New Group or Community.

3. Select the people to invite to your Group.

4. Tap the next arrow.

5. Name your group.

6. Tap the check mark.

You can begin chatting with the group members in your newly created group.

How to Invite People to Viber Groups

Now that we’ve created our group, it’s time to populate it with members. Here’s what you need to do to invite your contacts.

1. Tap the menu button.

2. Select Add participants.

3. Select the contacts you want to add to the group or select Share group link to get a URL for sharing.

4. Tap the check mark.

The contacts you select will be added to the Viber Group. If you used the Share group link option instead, send the generated link to people you would like to invite to your group.

How to Manage Viber Groups

Admins are the only ones with the privileges to manage a Viber Group, so they can add or remove members from the group, clear chat content and delete the group itself. As it can be difficult to manage a group alone, appoint admins to help you out.

Adding Admins

Appointing a group member as an admin is a quick and easy process, but choose wisely when providing this level of access.

1. Tap on the group name.

2. Select the contact you wish to make an admin.

3. Select Add as admin.

It’s that simple; the next step will cover removing any appointed admins in your Viber Group.

Removing Admins

It’s wise to remove any ex-colleagues from a group to prevent unintended usage of the admin role.

1. Tap on the group name.

2. Select the admin you wish to remove.

3. Select Remove as admin.

Lastly, we’ll cover how to clear chat content or delete a group.

Clear Chat Content or Leave and Delete the Group

If your Viber Group was created for a temporary occasion that has concluded, follow these steps to delete the group or its contents.

1. Tap on the group name.

2. Tap Clear chat content to erase the chat history of the group or Leave and delete to leave and delete the chat group.

3. Tap Clear or Leave and Delete in the pop-up menu to confirm your decision.

Now you have the information required to run a Viber Group, let’s wrap things up.

Conclusion

Viber Groups are a great way to build customer relationships and stay in touch with them, provided that you or your agents reply to messages in a timely manner.

However, if you’re dealing with a larger group of customers, consider using Viber Communities, which has chatbot support. With a chatbot, you can use a central messaging inbox like respond.io to handle your conversations.

When your Viber chatbot is connected to respond.io, you’ll gain features like automatically routing and assigning contacts, sending automated messages, internal collaborations with multiple agents and more.

Check out our blog post on Viber Communities for more details. Once you’re ready to connect your chatbot to respond.io, sign up for a free trial!

Further Reading

Finally, if you found this post helpful, here are some other articles you might be interested in.

• Ultimate Guide to Viber for Business
• Viber Sales: A Comprehensive Guide to Sales With Viber
• Viber Support: Using Viber As a Customer Support Channel