How to Improve WhatsApp Customer Experience and Engagement

Want to improve WhatsApp customer experience and boost customer engagement on WhatsApp? Put yourself in the customer’s shoes! Think about the last time you had a conversation with a business over WhatsApp. Did you easily accomplish your goal or did it end in frustration, possibly leading you to look for a different service? These are questions you should think about when communicating with your customers over WhatsApp to understand their perspective.

The Importance of WhatsApp Customer Experience

A WhatsApp customer experience is often the first engagement a prospect or customer has with your business, so it’s crucial to make it a positive one. This will encourage them to complete a purchase and do repeat business.

Customer engagement on WhatsApp can play a key role in every stage of the customer journey. Here’s a quick overview of what the process looks like.

Respond.io’s conversation-led growth framework is based on three stages, Capture, Convert and Retain. Capture is how you kick off customer engagement on WhatsApp. After that, convert prospects into paying customers with timely replies and retain them by sending relevant promotions and providing continuous value.

The three stages of Conversation-Led Growth for WhatsApp Customer experience - capture, convert, retain — Use this framework to guide your strategy for customer engagement on WhatsApp

The moment a prospect begins a conversation is your chance to make an impression that starts the customer relationship. Respond.io COO Iaroslav Kudritskiy shares insights on how conversations over WhatsApp shape the customer experience and how to deliver an amazing one.

Let’s dive right in with real examples from the customer perspective as to what makes or breaks an interaction.

Poor vs Outstanding WhatsApp Customer Experiences

We all interact with businesses over WhatsApp. It’s often the most convenient way to inquire about a product or service or book an appointment. Ideally, a customer engagement on WhatsApp will provide the right answers and help you accomplish what you wanted to do.

How a Poor Experiences Drive Customers Away

Of course, this doesn’t always happen. Iaroslav Kudritskiy shares a major reason why businesses fail to close deals on WhatsApp: “They’re actually becoming the blocker of the person who wants to buy. Because after a person messages you and you don’t answer for 3-4 hours and then you send them this block message, it actually puts them off.”

No one likes to be kept waiting, and if you send them a long impersonal paragraph that doesn’t directly answer their question, their opinion of your business will drop further. With so many options out there, you can’t afford to offer a less than satisfying experience.

Another type of response from businesses that turns prospects off is long forms. At a recent event, Ashley Ong, founder of martech consultancy Superanium, shared a personal example. When looking to make a dental appointment, her first choice sent her a link to a form.

She looked for other options and found a nearby clinic where she could click directly to chat on WhatsApp and made an appointment right away. That’s how important it is to be accessible to your customers.

What an Outstanding WhatsApp Customer Experience Looks Like

As in the example above, being able to make an appointment or get an answer to an inquiry without waiting or unnecessary effort is often what closes a deal. Prospects who message you over WhatsApp often know what they want.

All you need to do is provide that to them, and you’re already ahead of your competitors. A positive experience not only helps you close deals faster, but also leads to securing repeat customers.

screenshot of a WhatsApp conversation illustrating a positive customer engagement on WhatsApp — Here’s an example of a positive WhatsApp customer experience - a quick response and a great answer

Iaroslav Kudritsky gives this example of a conversation with his hairdresser. He schedules appointments ahead of time and the hairdresser sends him reminders before the appointment.

One time, he wanted to reschedule, and the hairdresser quickly suggested three times that might work. He chose a time and it was settled in less than five minutes. Short, personalized conversations can make all the difference to a customer’s experience.

2 Keys to Improve Every Customer Engagement on WhatsApp

All businesses want to ensure prospects and customers have meaningful interactions that keep them coming back, but this can be a challenge for growing companies with high volumes of messages.

Use Automation to Answer Fast

Salespeople may struggle to reply in a timely manner simply because they’re overwhelmed. In addition, newer salespeople may not be aware of all the answers. When used properly, tools like automation and AI can be a benefit.

However, Iaroslav notes, “All these things are just tools. Features are not going to help you solve the problem. Automation is not going help you solve the problem. Those are not answers to the problem. What you really need to do over WhatsApp is answer fast with great answers.”

With automation, you can reply instantly so customers aren’t kept waiting, but remember to put yourself in the customer’s shoes when setting responses. Using WhatsApp with a conversation management platform like respond.io allows you to give customers a menu of FAQs to choose from.

Give Great Answers to Ensure an Outstanding WhatsApp Customer Experience

Make sure to provide an option to speak to a salesperson to avoid frustration if the question a prospect has isn’t listed. With simple inquiries answered, agents will have more time to reply personally to unique questions.

Using AI offers the opportunity to answer a wider range of questions. AI agents may be able to complete a sale without human intervention, but as with FAQs, access to a human if necessary is key.

Iaroslav recommends equipping your AI with your business knowledge and letting salespeople use it as a tool: "The beauty of AI is it can hold the entire knowledge of your business and deliver it only as the conversation requires."

Newer sales agents can use AI to help compose answers on policies they have not yet been trained on. That way, they can give expert replies to prospects and customers faster.

Stand Out From Competitors with Your WhatsApp Customer Experience

When you put prospects and customers first in every conversation, they’ll get what they’re looking for and you’ll close the deal. It’s a simple concept, but as we all know, it’s not often what you get when contacting a business.

Growing businesses can benefit from using a conversation management platform like respond.io to create that positive experience more efficiently.

As Iaroslav says, “Don’t forget the end goal. It’s about creating amazing customer experiences over WhatsApp. If you’re able to create that amazing experience, you will get all the customers from your competitors. As long as you can create that experience and your competitors can’t, you’re going to be in a winning position.”