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Introduction
Much like how meals are incomplete without desserts, a customer’s experience with any eCommerce brand falls apart without an excellent post-purchase experience. This is why over 50% of online shoppers switch brands instantly when dissatisfied with a company’s post-purchase journey.
One of the many ways to retain customer trust in your business is to understand their pain points, receive feedback, and repair trust with real conversations. And the best medium for holding conversation today is WhatsApp. This article discusses the various ways you can offer a great purchase customer experience using WhatsApp.
The Rise of Whatsapp for eCommerce Communications and Messaging
The steady rise of WhatsApp in the eCommerce world is attributed to its business versions having unprecedented personalization levels to engage customers. Here is a brief account of WhatsApp Business accounts and they help eCommerce businesses:
1) WhatsApp Business App
In 2018, WhatsApp launched its Business app for small and medium-sized businesses to accelerate sales and customer support outcomes with messaging. The app’s interface propelled one-to-one communication with customers at all intervals of customers' purchase journeys.
In its core feature, the app allows business owners to establish their business profiles and showcase product catalogs to sell from the platform. The app is equipped with quick replies and labels that allow clients to automate messaging and categorize or sort customers based on interaction.
2) WhatsApp Business API
The WhatsApp Business API was developed by Facebook again in 2018 for large businesses to direct communications with multiple customers. Lacking a front-end interface, the API is designed to integrate with business solutions and third-party applications. It works as a multi-functional dashboard handling more tasks than its app counterpart.
With the API version, you can create ad campaigns and divert marketing campaigns from Facebook or Instagram to WhatsApp. You can offer personalized product recommendations, as well as build a shopping experience in the chats. You can also trigger multiple automated alerts and notifications, such as sending returns updates and invoices.
Top 5 Benefits of Using WhatsApp for Post-Purchase Customer Experience
Now that we understand the basic use of WhatsApp Business, let’s take a quick look at the specific benefits they offer:
1) Provides Multi-Language Support
Whatsapp is a treasure trove for businesses with a multi-lingual customer base. It supports nearly 60 global languages on Android devices and 40 on iPhones, from standard American and British English to Filipino and Hindi.
2) Engages Customers with Promotional Marketing
One of the primary reasons for the rising popularity of WhatsApp is that businesses can interact with customers directly. This gives them a chance to build relationships and drop promotional marketing in the customer’s chat.
With personal messaging, customers are more likely to see them than emails. Alternately, they can create statuses with store promotions and seasonal sales announcements, offering different touchpoints for customer interaction.
3) Reaches Customers Easily
WhatsApp has over 2 billion users from across the globe and is second only to Facebook and YouTube. Moreover, it beats Facebook when it comes to customer trust in the platform’s privacy considerations. This means brands have a chance to reach 2 billion people within the age group of 16-45 from one channel.
Given that an estimated 175 million people converse on WhatsApp regularly, companies have a high possibility to interact with customers daily.
It is also easier for people to reach brands having a WhatsApp presence, and more so if they have opted for it. Brands can share their WhatsApp QR code on websites, emails, or return slips, such that customers can reach them easily.
4) Offers Automated Customer Service
Self-service customer care has become an untold norm in the eCommerce industry. A big part of an excellent customer experience depends on how quickly and conveniently their queries are answered or issues resolved.
Keeping in line with customer expectations, WhatsApp offers businesses automated messaging with chatbots with the help of AI.
Brands can seamlessly integrate the WhatsApp chatbot with self-service resources for prompt replies to queries. Having a self-service portal would allow them to reduce customer wait times, raising customer satisfaction.
5) Features a Multi-Media Rich Platform
WhatsApp is a multi-media platform giving eCommerce retailers the ability to creatively use audio, images, video, GIFs, emojis, and stickers. Using these features, brands can create visually appealing content, share video instructions and audio clips whilst providing information.
Multi-media resources are a great addition to product marketing, such as product videos and pictures. Moreover, using emojis and GIFs establishes a conversational tone to marketing content as personalized communication.
Top 10 Ways to Use WhatsApp for a Great Post-Purchase Customer Experience
1) Extend Real-Time Order and Delivery Notifications
The first principle of post-purchase customer engagement is extending timely updates on dispatch, shipping, estimated arrival times, and delivery. WhatsApp’s proactive messaging makes it easier for brands to quickly update order status as and when it crosses different milestones.
More importantly, it allows customers to respond in case of queries instead of passively reading the notification on auto-generated emails or sms. The convenience of two-way messaging has made WhatsApp an important notification channel adopted by many eCommerce brands.
2) Ring Multiple Alerts
The customer journey during the post-purchase presents the ripe stage for re-engaging customers with brands. This is why eCommerce retailers try to create continuity in the customer journey by evoking brand awareness with alerts.
You can trigger customized alerts that suit a customer’s purchase intent and purchase history and nudge them toward taking action, all on WhatsApp.
It is easy to custom-create alert templates for any purpose. For example, reminding customers to check their carts or sending promotional content such as discounts on the next purchase. These actions can be automated for bulk messaging as and when required.
3) Establish Personalized Customer Communication
Seasoned marketers believe personalization is the cornerstone of post-purchase, and WhatsApp is revolutionizing personalized messaging.
Retailers can target individual buyer personas with carefully crafted messages, promotional content, and contextualized branding. Moreover, they can do so in the shopper’s preferred language, promoting a personalized mode of communication.
4) Repeat Purchase with Product Recommendations and Brand Offers
Eight out of ten customers consider their post-purchase experience as a deciding factor in repeating purchases with a brand. This is why the post-purchase state is the best time to devise strategies to retain customers. And a standard way of doing so is through product recommendations.
WhatsApp adds versatility in displaying product catalogs directly to customers' chats. You can direct product bundles or kits to shoppers who show an interest in burying them, thus bringing in the element of personalization.
Moreover, WhatsApp’s two-ways messaging makes it convenient for customers to enquire about a product or an alternative and for chatbots to reply promptly. This makes WhatsApp an excellent medium for upselling and cross-selling.
5) Frictionless Customer Service
Having multiple engagements and a crunch of time, online consumers tend to lean towards faster, automated, and proactive customer service. Nowadays, customers prefer drafting simple text messages as the primary medium of interaction with customer service representatives.
Adhering to this, eCommerce retailers can leverage WhatsApp Business API solutions to gratify customers with excellent and on-time support. WhatsApp API easily integrates with CRM software. This makes it easier for support agents to resolve issues received on WhatsApp within minutes.
In addition, they can automate standard query resolutions with chatbots that handle multiple conversations simultaneously and canned messages.
6) Collect Social Proof and Customer Feedback
Every post-purchase journey tells a story, sometimes reminiscent of an excellent customer experience, other times a retelling of painful events. In any case, it is the utmost duty of every retailer to hear them out and try to resolve it. And what better way to do that than using conversational commerce like WhatsApp?
With its AI-powered chatbot systems, brand owners can send, collect and analyze customer feedback surveys, comments, and complaints. First, WhatsApp
7) Extend Loyalty Programs
Loyalty programs are marketing tactics that nurtures, value, and reward high-spending or repeat consumers to retain their brand engagement. Generally, brands give discounts, special offers, customized shopping or returns experiences, rewards, and gifts to members of the program.
Garnering loyalty at the post-purchase stage works well in retaining customers since this experience shapes their purchase decision in the future. Converting customers through a curated loyalty program over WhastApp has the bonus of one-to-one chat and dialogue.
8) Streamline Return and Exchange Order Communication
The most critical pain point of any customer journey is product returns. With nine out of ten customers leaving a brand for bad returns experience, optimizing returns and exchange communication becomes a priority.
Fortunately, WhatsApp has multitudes of business use cases in optimizing returns communication.
First, using its multi-media-rich interface, you can accept returns requests that require quality verification.
Second, you can assign tickets to a support agent to manually handle urgent or disputed requests.
Third, you can easily offer display-associated products within the chat and nudge customers towards exchanges instead. You can also provide discount codes or gifts to settle customer dissatisfaction.
Fourth, you can notify customers about their return shipment, pickup date and time, and refund information. You can also manage pickup exceptions by directly communicating with customers.
9) Create Online Communities
WhatsApp is an excellent platform to build close-bonded and proactive online communities, given its strong privacy protection ethos and customers’ trust. Communities are a strong base of customers loyal to a brand.
Engaging with them in meaningful communication can earn more customer referrals while extending the existing customers’ lifetime value. WhatsApp’s broadcasting feature allows retailers to maintain and converse with 256 people at once, facilitating conversations with more than one community at the same time.
10) Showcase How-to-use Guide and Demos
Demos and How-to-Use guides are fundamental for many D2C or B2B eCommerce businesses as essential customer support. WhatsApp’s technology makes it feasible to embed product demos as videos and offer how-to-use guides as PDFs.
It also allows you to send audio instructions for quick query solutions. For small businesses, establishing a personal conversation channel can help boost their brand awareness and image. It would also help them collect data to understand areas that need improvement.
What makes WhatsApp so popular for eCommerce Marketing and Sales?
Since its launch in 2009, WhatsApp has quickly escalated as one of the most sought-after messaging apps in the world. Now, its business version has become a dietary need for many eCommerce companies seeking to change their marketing efforts.
Below are some of the reasons why you can consider investing in WhatsApp marketing:
1) Customer Trust in Privacy Safeguards
Given the changing security norms and emerging privacy concerns, WhatsApp offers an encrypted messaging service. Moreover, it requires authentication of business credentials before any eCommerce signs up with WhatsApp Business. This adds another layer of customer trust in the brand.
Customers become less willing to disregard a brand and their communication, given the long-standing privacy settings on WhatsApp. It gives the brand credibility in safeguarding a shopper’s information from third parties.
2) API capabilities
WhatsApp API unlocks interactive messaging that is automated but controlled under brand supervision. This means you can integrate a WhatsApp chatbot into your website and have dedicated personnel take up personal messaging with interested clients.
Moreover, you can run marketing campaigns, and notification opt-ins, devise canned messages, and quick replies, and extend order and delivery updates.
3) Generates Leads and Sales
WhatsApp Business API allows you to include engaging call-to-action (CTA) buttons in messages while promoting products and services. You can take various actions to generate leads and sales. Typical solutions include interactive messaging with customers, solving product queries before purchase, sending payment links, and cross-sell.
4) High Chances of Customer Interaction
While the average open rate for email marketing staggers around 22%, WhatsApp has an incredible open rate success with 80-99%, all within 10 mins. This means customers who opt-in to receive brand notifications can benefit greatly from WhatsApp marketing and customer service.
5) Dynamic Pricing Structure
WhatsApp has a dynamic pricing structure that allows you to pay in proportion to your growth and your locale. For example, the 1000 messages each month is free.
Conclusion
It seems that the future of eCommerce is tied to WhatsApp messaging and commerce. Given its ceaseless efforts in supporting brand growth in all stages of customer journeys, including post-purchase, brands can rely on WhatsApp to drive sales and customer engagement. Therefore, businesses can consider opening a WhatsApp Business account and providing exceptional customer service.
FAQs
1) Is WhatsApp Business API better than using the app?
WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp API have different uses. For small-scale businesses, the former option is best suited to develop online communities, display simple catalogs and generate sales leads.
The latter option is suitable for marketing campaigns, automated notifications, and recommending products for medium and large-scale businesses.
2) How to use Whatsapp for marketing purposes?
You can first create your brand persona and design communication to engage with users who opt-in to receive your messages. You can run product ads, display catalogs, send reminders for back-in-stock inventory, and recommend similar products based on purchase history.