Using Whatsapp for Customer Service

Using WhatsApp for customer service

Contents INTRODUCTION

1 / PERSONAL MESSAGING: WHY CARE?

2 / THE PRACTICAL STUFF (+ TIPS & TRICKS) The WhatsApp rulebook

3 / STORIES OF 5 EARLY ADOPTERS WhatsApp as a survey medium

4 / WHAT’S UP NEXT

CONCLUSION

INDEX

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

We’re humbled by the extraordinary ways

all of you have used WhatsApp. Whether it’s sharing vital information during natural disasters or health emergencies, finding a date,

growing a small business, buying an engagement ring, or seeking a better life. We’re honored to be a small part of what people are doing to make their lives and the lives of those around them

better.

- From ‘One Billion’, a blog piece written by the WhatsApp team after welcoming their billionth monthly active user, 1st February 2016

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

INTRODUCTION / Why I love conversational commerce Let’s get it over with: you should know that I sell Casengo, software for better customer service (including a WhatsApp integration). You could indeed interpret everything I write as if I were trying to sell the Casengo application to you. But there are better ways to sell software than writing a book. I just want to share some of the lessons I learnt in the more than 15 years I’ve been active in the customer service field. This book is my two cents worth of wisdom about the influence of personal messaging apps on the way businesses treat their customers. I’ll also be talking about the role of artificial intelligence – and of China – in the messaging landscape. Quite the adventure! All of these topics have something to do with a magical idea that is coming up frequently these days: conversational commerce. I love conversational commerce. I started thinking about it around the time I was preparing to found Casengo in 2011. Turns out I wasn’t the only one[1]. Three years later, conversational commerce had turned out into a trendy but slightly intangible term, well described by Chris Messina, Developer Experience Lead at Uber:

Conversational commerce is about delivering convenience, personalization, and decision support while people are on the go, with only partial attention to spare[2].

1 Are You Ready for Conversational Commerce?’, February 2014, BIA Kelsey 2 2016 will be the year of conversational commerce’, January 2016, Medium

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Convenience, personalization, decision support on the go – that’s conversational commerce right there. If it comes into full bloom, I’m quite certain it will make our lives in the Global Village better. But it can only succeed if both the seller and the buyer are on the same page, on the same wavelength, communicating clearly with mutual respect. Customers love brands, but brands need customers. They should take the time to get to know the members of their audience, and offer support tailored just for them. It’s the marketplace of the old days; it’s commerce just as authentic as the Friday market where everyone knows the bald fishmonger and his son by name, and where the cupcake girl is always in for some chitchat on the weather (followed by an order of 12 cupcakes, because it’ll make her smile).

Keep the conversation going If you want to use WhatsApp as a professional business tool, it’s vital you’re interested in your customer. The whole conversational commerce thing rests on this assumption. Customer is king. You help him where you can, and you use personal messaging to do so. For the first time in history, there’s a potential direct line between every company world-wide and every consumer with a smartphone, anywhere. WhatsApp acts like an umbilical cord between a business and a big chunk of its customer base. If you provide your customers and prospects with enough nourishment, the bond between us all in the Global Village will not disappear after one transaction - instead, it will get stronger, and the world will thrive. With apps like WhatsApp, you are in your customer’s pocket. You live in his smartphone. You’re in his comfort zone, and he in yours. It’s crucial, then, that your customer doesn’t grow bored or annoyed with you. He’s the king of the castle, and will throw anyone out who treats him like a living dollar bill. Be willing to invest some of your precious time in him – and him alone. That means: use WhatsApp as the one-onone channel it is, not as a social media channel. This doesn’t mean you have to be in constant touch with your customers. Leave those poor people alone! But when you talk to a customer (be it on the phone, via email, or through live chat or WhatsApp), be at your very, very best.

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‘I love you, little Bing!’ AI might scare you. Or you might find it too science fictional. Or perhaps the idea of robots and digital bots thrills you. Either way, we’ll need it. Conversational commerce is only scalable if we accept AI to become part of our lives. ‘It’s no longer a question of if bots are coming, but how,’ Ted Livingston, CEO at chat app Kik. ‘For the first time ever,’ he added, ‘bots will let you instantly interact with the world around you. Yes, they’re here. As we speak, Google, Facebook and Apple are fighting for the best AI experts out there. In March 2016, Alphago (made by Google) beat a human Go champion at Go, a very complex game. Not complex enough for AlphaGo… And let’s not forget about Microsoft. Those guys allegedly developed a chatbot that 10 million people have declared their love to her. That’s human beings telling a robot called XiaoIce (Little Bing) that they have feelings for her. A very successful Turing Test indeed! I hear Little Bing comes close to Scarlett in that intriguing AI movie, “Her”. Bizarre, for sure. Once AI becomes very good, very human-like, we won’t know whether we’re chatting with a bot or with a human being – and neither will we care. As long as the voice on the other side feels human to us, and is interesting (or fun, or convenient), we’ll love chatting to brands. The power of conversation is a thousand times stronger than Facebook likes or Twitter followers. Facebook and Twitter are nice to have around, but personal messaging is a must-have. Build a true relationship with consumers, and watch them turn from perfect strangers into perfect customers, coming back for more again and again and again – even if you increase your prices. As long as you explain why, they’ll stick around.

Sharing = caring Here’s bit about me. The first serious company I co-founded, together with my brother Thijs, was Livecom[5], in 2003. It was a sort of Zendesk avant la lettre (Zendesk was launched 4 long years later): an application that allows large organizations to respond to customers more efficiently. Even back then, I felt it’s not the medium that matters, but the customer and his message. 3 ‘The Future of Chat Isn’t AI’, March 2016, Medium 4 Intriguing movie from 2013, rated 8.0 on IMDB, with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson’s voice. Must see! (Too bad about the ending.)

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

I sold Livecom successfully in February 2016, which now allows me to focus on the company I founded in 2012: Casengo. Casengo started off as a Livecom spin-off. It’s a simpler product, aimed at small and medium-size businesses that appreciate the importance of excellent customer service. By blending the best of email and live chat, we promise our users – especially companies without a 24/7 customer service team – more happy customers. And we deliver. In April 2014, Casengo raised 2 million dollars[6]. However, we didn’t hit the mark until January 2015, when – during an old-fashioned hackathon[7] with lots of pizza and even more beer – we were the first multichannel support platform ever to integrate WhatsApp. We made this integration available to some of our users in March 2015, well before the big boys did. When I saw them follow suit, I realized that conversational commerce was finally happening.

The messaging landscape with c-commerce at its best Good conversations are meaningful messages back and forth. It sounds so simple. And yet it kept Mark Zuckerberg up at night. Messaging is the next frontier, he said back in 2014, during his first public Q&A session[8] at Facebook HQ. That’s exactly why he’d forced his users to install his Messenger app a few months earlier. ‘Mobile messaging,’ he famously told his eager audience, ‘is one of the few things that people actually do more than social networking.’ So he quickly forced his users to install the mobile Messenger app, and bought WhatsApp, just to be sure. A year later, people were (and still are) using messaging apps more often than social networks[9]. And the smartest companies are, too. They bravely threw a line into the sea of customers, and reeled them in, one after the other. A senior editor at WIRED saw it and wrote:

The company that controls the [world’s] messaging [landscape] will control the future of the way we interact with people and, quite possibly, with businesses[10]. Mobile messaging – the game is on. Do you want to watch, or play? 5 This was before Microsoft’s live.com got popular. I almost bought the URL once. Almost. It still hurts. 6 ‘Casengo Raises $2M To Accelerate One-Inbox Approach To Customer Service’, April 2014, TechCrunch 7 Check out the result of our hackathon on YouTube! 8 Videos of all of Zuckerberg’s public Q&As can be found on Facebook’s Facebook Page. 9 ‘Messaging apps are now bigger than social networks’, January 2014, Business Insider 10 ‘Why Facebook has entrusted its future to the CEO of PayPal’, October 2014 WIRED

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

01 / A direct line to your customers We live in a global village populated by mobile consumers. People like you and me: always online, never satisfied for long. That’s what I realized thinking about why WhatsApp wasn’t a hit right away. After all, it was launched in 2009 - before the smartphone revolution. A time when the majority of people owned something like a plastic black or blue Nokia that they used to text or call people. At the time, we were still deep into social networking. But as the number of smartphone users grew thanks to the introduction of the iPhone, a proper mobile app market was created. We started thinking in apps, not websites. Slowly, we changed. We started bringing our smartphone everywhere like a favourite pet, even to the cinema or the restaurant. We used it to look for answers whenever a question popped up. We started rating and reviewing, booking and buying online. The longer we did this, the wiser, pickier and impatient we got. Mankind took an evolutionary step forwards.

For the first time ever, the web let you access information from anywhere in the world. For the first time ever, mobile made connected computing constantly available[11]. I’m writing this in April 2016. The mobile generation is thriving. We know what we want, demanding quick answers from both our friends and the brands we adore (or despise). The internet, with its social media, review sites

11 ‘The Future of Chat Ain’t AI’, March 2016, Medium

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

and e-commerce options, has turned into an extension of our consciousness[12]. We are now discovering conversational commerce, and artificial intelligence will play a big part. We’re waking up to a global but very connected village. And this behaviour forces companies to treat us like rich, respectable kings.

One small app for man… WhatsApp is going to be the primary customer service app. That was clear[13] even before Facebook bought WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars. As I write this, WhatsApp has over 1 billion monthly active users. One thousand million people using the same app? That’s close to creepy. And the user base is growing fast: according to GlobalWebIndex[14](GWI), WhatsApp has been growing furiously ever since Facebook acquired it in 2014. Since then, an extra 1 in 8 internet users use WhatsApp[15]. WhatsApp was built specifically for the smartphone. It was launched in February 2009, a month after Jan Koum, WhatsApp’s founding father, bought his first iPhone. And as this Ukrainian university drop-out, one of Yahoo’s infrastructure engineers, was checking out the new App Store, he realized he wanted to build an app. A wave of new apps was coming; it would wash over the world like a benign tsunami. This was the chance to build an app that would allow its users around the world to connect with their peers. An app like that would make the world shrink comfortably into a global village. With hardly any users, WhatsApp started off slow. At first, it was a bit of a boring app that allowed you to update and share your status: “Hey there, what’s up?” But then, in June 2009, Apple introduced its push notification system. All of a sudden, each status update on WhatsApp appeared live on the screen and demanded being looked at by its receiver. WhatsApp had turned into one of the few safe and ad-free messaging apps around, and Koum knew it. As he said to Forbes[16]: ‘Being able to reach somebody half way across the world instantly, on a device that is always with you, [is] powerful.’

12 Just as Marshall McLuhan predicted in 1962. 13 ‘WhatsApp: best for customer service?’, February 2014, The Guardian 14 GWI is the world’s largest market research study on the digital consumer. Some argue that its figures on the Chinese market (WeChat in particular) are questionable. I have no idea whether that’s true, but to be sure I’ll only quote GWI on markets excluding China. 15 GWI PROFILE Q4 2015 on WhatsApp, GlobalWebIndex

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Soon after the push notifications added a crucial layer to personal messaging, WhatsApp started growing faster than any other social utility[17. A famous note by co-founder Brian Acton reminded everyone at WhatsApp what the app was all about:

No Ads! No Games! No Gimmicks!

… one giant app for businesses. Of the time we spend on our smartphone, we spend almost 90% on apps. And one of the most popular of those apps, accessed at least daily by 4 in 5 users, is WhatsApp. Which makes it very interesting to smart companies like yours and mine. No, ads are not allowed. But isn’t building a relationship with your customers worth millions more than any flimsy ad? TNS NIPO, a renowned Dutch research institute, recently published the results of a national WhatsApp study[18]: in the Netherlands, WhatsApp is popular mainly amongst articulate citydwellers with more money to spend than average. And it turns out that these consumers love using WhatsApp to reach out to brands. ‘People who are using WhatsApp already, welcome customer service through WhatsApp,’ researcher Job van der Berg explains. ‘However, people who don’t use WhatsApp anyway – mainly low-skilled and older consumers – say they wouldn’t appreciate customer support through WhatsApp at all.’ The previously mentioned global GWI study shows similar findings: almost 75% WhatsApp users world-wide live in a city. Most users are between 16 and 34 years old, and 1 in 5 have a good income. How’s that for a potential target audience?

16 ‘Exclusive: The Rags-To-Riches Tale Of How Jan Koum Built WhatsApp Into Facebook’s New $19 Billion Baby’, February 2014, Forbes 17 ‘Inside The Facebook-WhatsApp Megadeal: The Courtship, The Secret Meetings, The $19 Billion Poker Game’, March 2014, Forbes 18 ‘WhatsApp: voor de mondige stedeling’, October 2015, Clou

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

4 business-ways to use WhatsApp In the past, any self-respecting company would avoid the sacred WhatsApp arena. Friends only, no commercial rubbish. Companies who dare to spam WhatsApp users are blocked. But there are other ways to reach customers through WhatsApp than bothering them with spam[19}: 1

Add a WhatsApp share button to your website or in your app. This allows your happy customers (aka fans) to easily share your content and ‘recommend’ it to friends.

2

Compile a ‘Broadcast List’ and push messages to multiple people at once. But be careful: only those who actually saved your contact number will receive your messages. As this has nothing to do with my own business, customer service, I don’t care for this option myself. I actually dislike this option very much. If you decide to go for it, keep your content very relevant and only sent it to people who explicitly said they wanted you to keep them up to date (the “opt-in” principle).

3

Organize a Group Chat, which will let you chat with up to 256 people at once. Again, hard to use for customer service, unless it’s for a very specific, one-time campaign. Also great for in-company chats if your company doesn’t yet use productivity apps like Slack.

4

Offer customer service through WhatsApp. Every time someone saves your company‘s WhatsApp number in his contact list, a direct one-to-one line is established. If you use it wisely, you’ll be rewarded with a high customer satisfaction rate and a higher turnover[20].

As the first three ways haven’t got anything to do with customer service, #4 is the only option I’ll be talking about in this book. 1-to-1 customer service through WhatsApp, that’s gold. 19 I got this from social media expert Jarno Duursma. He wrote a short guide called WhatsApp for businesses, in which he pays as much attention to commercial ways 1, 2 and 3 as to way #4. Though only a quarter of the book is about customer service, I can recommend this book (in Dutch) all the same. 20 That’s why Casengo’s slogan is More happy customers. We aim for a higher customer satisfaction rate (happier customers) and a higher revenue (more customers)!

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Why would you want to use WhatsApp for customer service? Some companies report shorter phone queues and few complaints on Facebook or Twitter. Others say they use WhatsApp to reach new audiences, meaning WhatsApp actually gives them more work rather than less. An independent survey[21], though, recently showed that “social media is among the last places consumers want to go for customer service”[22]. WhatsApp is the better alternative. Unless, of course, you don’t have the capacity to answer quickly. WhatsApp is a quick channel; people are used to get a response as soon as they see 2 blue check marks, indicating the other person has read their message. You can’t let the customer wait 2 working days for a reply on WhatsApp. Half an hour is the limit! If you don’t have enough people or enough time to take care of your WhatsApp customers, then my suggestion is to ignore the WhatsApp trend for now, and hope for better times.

WhatsApp: the benefits Benefit #1

WhatsApp is fast, highly intuitive and free. Businesses who don’t consider this app as a customer contact channel are way behind. Why would you not want to establish a direct line with your customers, using one of their favourite apps? There’s nothing to lose and a lifelong relationship to win – if you know what you’re doing (see chapter 2).

Benefit #2

WhatsApp allows you to be present on a device your customer loves. If you ignore the one spot your customers all hang out, you’re not thinking clearly. Marketing and sales are about being where your customer is at his happiest: amongst friends.

Benefit #3

WhatsApp is private. The fact that WhatsApp is one-to-one allows more room for nuance. It stimulates a very personal approach, quite unlike Twitter and Facebook, where the conversation starts off publically, one-to-many. This makes WhatsApp ideal for customer service. Being personal and private, ‘it extends the consumer relationship beyond complaints and queries’[23]. Conversational commerce at its best!

21 ‘Social Media Customer Service Declines, American Consumers Don’t Know What Good Service Looks Like, New Survey Finds’, March 2016, NICE/BCG 22 ‘Survey Finds Social Media Customer Service Declines’, March 2016, Contact Centres 23 ‘WhatsApp: best for customer service?’, February 2014, The Guardian

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Before you get started... There’s one thing that all of the early adopters in chapter 4 mention when sharing their insights on WhatsApp: ‘Don’t be scared of using WhatsApp. Just go for it, it’s awesome.’ Here’s an overview to help you through the various phases in your WhatsApp trial: thinking, preparing and launching. They’re all just as crucial. If you don’t want your customers to catch you stressed, slow and totally confused, don’t skip any phase. Also, keep improving your behaviour on WhatsApp; it’s all one big exercise in adjusting and reconsidering!

Phase 1: Thinking things through Your stakeholder’s behaviour Using WhatsApp isn’t good for all of us. Before you get ahead of yourself and start implementing, there are a few stakeholders you need to think about.

Customers Are your (potential) customers actually ‘on’ WhatsApp? Chances are very high that they are. But they might also just be the rare exceptions: people in their eighties, for instance. However, don’t be too quick to assume that they don’t use it… Find out for certain first.

Your team Does your team have the capacity to answer the questions from WhatsApp? If your team is already way too busy to answer phone calls or answering emails, then it might be better to postpone your WhatsApp initiative. Unless, of course, you think that adding WhatsApp will decrease the pressure off the phone and email channels. How quickly can you follow up? Because WhatsApp is such a personal channel, customers tend to have high expectations for getting their questions answered quickly. Aim for a quick resolution time: 1 hour max. And once you answer, you must follow up right away. You’re either in or you’re not.

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Competitors What are your competitors doing? Being the first in your field to offer WhatsApp support can be great to trump competition. But if you’re not an early adopter, it won’t trump anybody. You’ll need to start using it to up your game and stay on par.

Your overarching goal Ask yourself (and perhaps a peer - brainstorming is easier with a sparring partner) why you want start with WhatsApp in the first place. Pick one overarching goal and take it from there. What do you want to achieve? Faster service, more happy customers, or perhaps a revenue increase? It’s important to keep this goal in mind whilst making decisions on all the required steps and tactics. Keep reminding yourself throughout the planning stage what you want to accomplish, and what you need to accomplish this. Also: get everyone on the same page before you take-off. Consider the first weeks to be nothing but a trial: test the waters gently, gain experience and learn. As soon as you’re getting more traction, you can consider more specific metrics and adjusting your course accordingly.

Phase 2: A 7-step prep countdown Even though strategizing and thinking things through is important, start getting practical very soon. What will you need to do before you can even think of making your WhatsApp number public to your customers and prospects?

7) Get your team together Assemble a WhatsApp team: decide who’s in charge of your overarching goal, and who will reply to queries quickly and efficiently. These are typically members of your customer service team who know how to handle 1-to-1 channels like email and phone. Some companies assign the WhatsApp channel to their social media team, but that often turns out to be a mistake, as social media is mainly about 1-to-many.

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6) Involve your team Depending on the type of company you run, organize an introductory meeting or an actual brainstorm session. To get everyone on board, explain the benefits of WhatsApp, translate those benefits to fit your company and do not forgot to discuss the overarching goal. Do you want to shorten the phone queue? Or lower the email volumes? Or get your customer satisfaction rates up?

5) Adapt the way you talk For most people, WhatsApp is a relaxed channel, used to interact with friends, family and sometimes colleagues. You will notice that many people will use that same style of communication with you as they do with their friends. Depending on your company culture, you’ll want to respond in a similarly playful fashion (while keeping it professional). If you already have a general style guide for your customer service team to follow, check if you need to make adjustments to fit the WhatsApp channel. This is no place to sound like a useless robot. Consider your rules around emoticons, canned messages, humour, etc. Make sure you’re all on the same page: giving your customers the best experience ever. Check out chapter 2 for loads of tips and tricks!

4) Get a WhatsApp number You’ll obviously need a phone number that your customers can use to reach you through WhatsApp. Two options here:

1

Buy the cheapest prepaid SIM card. Online, or from a local telephone shop. Keep into account that most providers deactivate a SIM card after 6 months of inactivity. Just use that number to have a call every 5.5 months, and you’ll be fine. (Add it to your calendar as a repeat action.)

2

Get a SIM card with an actual subscription. This is the more expensive option that gets you peace of mind: you won’t run the risk of disconnection.

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If you’re offering international support with WhatsApp, you might want to consider getting different local numbers, depending on the type of company. Generally, this is more important in B2C than B2B.

3) Consider voicemail versus call forwarding Although your WhatsApp number is supposed to be used for WhatsApp support only, there is always the odd customer who decides to give you a call on that number. Depending on how you manage your messages (phone, software, web.whatsapp.com), this can be problem. So if you’re not using a dedicated phone, you have two options:

1

Record a voicemail to let people know which other number to reach you on.

2

Install an automatic forward of incoming calls to a different number, for example your support line.

2) Personalize your WhatsApp account First add your company name, your logo, email address, URL etc. Then update your status, which is easier than it sounds. A status update for business purposes should be a helpful description of what your company is doing on WhatsApp. You might want to add the “opening hours” of the WhatsApp channel, for instance. When are you available to respond to queries sent through this channel? Turn the default status (“Hey there, I’m using WhatsApp”) into something much more concrete. A good status update, for instance, could be: ‘Need product advice? Happy to help from MonFri 9:00-17:30 CET!’ If, later on, you have multiple WhatsApp numbers to involve different departments or query types, you might want to present different status updates for each number, making clear which number is meant for which type of questions. If, however, you have multiple WhatsApp numbers simply to cover a bigger volume, keep the status update identical.

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1) Manage your messages like a pro There are three options to manage your incoming and outgoing messages:

1

A smartphone

2

WhatsApp Web (web.whatsapp.com)

3

Specialised software for WhatsApp support

Sometimes it’s perfectly possible to start testing WhatsApp support with just a phone. But depending on your company size, that might not be feasible. There are four major factors to consider when deciding what the best option is for you:

1

How big is your team? If your company needs only one person answering customer questions through WhatsApp, a smartphone or WhatsApp Web will probably do the trick (at least in the beginning). If, however, your WhatsApp team needs to be bigger, operating from a phone and WhatsApp Web quickly turns into a bottleneck. Specialised software helps multiple colleagues collaborate, forward conversations, assign conversations to the right colleague, etc.

2

How many incoming questions do you think you’ll be receiving? If the number of WhatsApp questions remain limited (say maximum 10 a day if you have more than 2 customer service people “on” WhatsApp - this number may vary), you could make do with the phone or WhatsApp Web. But you should get specialized software the minute you get stressed about volume. A large number of incoming questions soon makes WhatsApp an unmanageable channel unless you use professional software.

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4

How many WhatsApp numbers do you manage? Lots of companies chose to have various WhatsApp number for various departments, products, subsidiaries, countries, etc. Whether you need Whether you need software ultimately depends on the size of your WhatsApp team and the volume of incoming WhatsApp queries. So just like pointed out in the two previous paragraphs, let those two factors influence your decision.

5

Do you need more advanced features? Although getting started quickly can be important to prove whether WhatsApp works for you or not, sometimes a more sophisticated approach is needed. If your manager or boss demands solid data and metrics, easier search abilities or centralised data with the rest of your customer data, specialised software will be your only way forward.

How do you know which WhatsApp support tool is the best? Most software providers are ticketing systems that allow you to collaborate effectively as a team. But customer service is more than that. There are a few things you can look for in your customer service tool. After all: the more useful features the tool boasts, the easier it will be to rock ‘n’ roll.

1

Pick a software provider with a helpful support team. Offering customer service through WhatsApp can be risky, mainly because WhatsApp doesn’t support an official API. An alert provider with a flexible and knowledgeable team helps mitigate some of those risks. Contact and compare several tool makers before making any sort of decision. Do you like them? Are they flexible? Do they keep their promises?

2

Don’t consider tools that only focus on WhatsApp. Your tool should allow you to receive customer questions from different sources, like email and live chat. If you can “catch” all of these questions in a single app, your efficiency will skyrocket!

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1

Get to know the tool’s features. Check whether it allows you to send and receive photos, videos or other types of messages. Perhaps you don’t want to send pictures now, but you might want to in the future. Keep your options open! And might you ever be using various WhatsApp numbers? Then get a tool that collects them all within the same system! Also, check how the tool operates: does it have native integrations with your systems of choice, does it work with an open API, and is there another easy way to export your data? Don’t focus too much on reporting or analytics options just yet. WhatsApp is hard to measure. What matters in the end is whether WhatsApp works for your customers and your business. Also: don’t be seduced by the message broadcasting option: Run away as fast as you can if the software provider keeps raving on about their message broadcasting feature. You do not want to use WhatsApp as a newsletter tool! Sure, it’s tempting - but withstand the enemy! You don’t want to risk a ban or a block because WhatsApp thinks you’re a notorious spammer!

2

Check if the tool offers quick responses & automated replies: You can take some workload off your back by using templates and automated replies. Careful though - this sounds more awesome than it is on WhatsApp specifically. As talked about before, WhatsApp is too personal a channel for quick response templates, that usually serve as a good basis for answering frequently asked questions. And automated replies can provide a warm welcome to customers “in queue”, but only if you’ve thought it through perfectly. However, if you use macros excessively, you may be triggering a block by either your customer or WhatsApp itself. Be careful.

3

What about the smartphone? Another thing to consider: some providers require you to keep your “WhatsApp smartphone” (the smartphone with the SIM number used for WhatsApp support) active at all times. It’s up to you to top up the credit in time or the number will stop working. More expensive (but reliable) tools allow you to connect your number once to the system and be done with it.

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Need your manager’s (or your mirror image’s) approval to proceed? Download this clever prep checklist for your team to refer to during the 3 phases preceding your WhatsApp trial. Then go for it - and discover the power of conversational commerce.

Phase 3: 3-2-1 lift-off! Now that you’ve ticked all the boxes of the preparation, you’re ready to get your WhatsApp hands dirty and start receiving questions. Time to get down to action.

3) Let the world know you’re on WhatsApp This is the most important aspect of whether you can gain traction on WhatsApp or not. If nobody knows you’re there, you’re wasting your time. So make sure you spread the word far and wide to both customers and prospects – but start slowly! The most important place to start is adding your WhatsApp number to:

1

your ‘contact’ page on the website;

2

your email signature, especially of your customer support team or account managers (in B2B);

3

the footer of your newsletters;

4

your social media account profiles;

5

a pinned post on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn;

6

your homepage.

Be careful when adding your WhatsApp number to your homepage, though. Don’t just throw it on there if your website gets a lot of daily traffic. It’s smarter to show the number to a select part of your online visitors (say 10%), and gear up only after gathering experience and insightful data. Know what you’re doing!

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Besides these obvious starting points, get creative. You could, for instance, send an email to your customer base to inform them of the new support channel, develop a marketing campaign to position your WhatsApp service as a competitive advantage, use posters and flyers around your physical locations, etc. Also: when sharing your WhatsApp number online, make sure it’s clickable, leading to a vcard. If a mobile visitor of your website clicks on the number, he’ll be able to download your contact info, allowing him to save it to his address book with just one tap.

2) Manage your customers’ expectations Don’t forget to provide context and let your customers know what they can use your WhatsApp support channel for. Managing expectations is super important to prevent disappointment. No, people can probably not call you on the WhatsApp number, and you won’t be available for support 24/7. But this only becomes a problem if you haven’t communicated it clearly. If it’s relevant to your line of business, don’t forget to mention that you won’t send or accept delicate personal information like bank account numbers or medical advice. Unfortunately, a recent report showed that WhatsApp does not do a good job protecting its data from government requests. So don’t share delicate data, and make sure your customer service team knows this!

1) Pick a great customer service tool After you’ve tested WhatsApp and are getting satisfactory results, it’s a smart move to integrate it with your other channels. After all, customer service is at its best when it’s not the medium that counts, but the message and its sender. You’ll find that you’ll need specialized customer service software to get more context, paint a more complete picture and make the WhatsApp channel scalable.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

02 / Customer support via WhatsApp: the basics with tips & tricks!

It’s astonishing how many companies underestimate the importance of “little things” - details like customer support. Isn’t supporting your customers extra hassle? It’s not quite your core business. Spending time on customer service and actually sounding like you care… Right. Your customers have already given you their money, haven’t they? You’re not missing out by not providing great service. Except that you are. You need your customers to come back at some point. A one-time customer is pretty useless in the long run, unless you sold them a rocket ship or something. And yet bad customer service may be just as harmful to your company’s future as no customer service at all. Customers who hate your guts – because of, say, a service conversation gone wrong – will ferociously blacken your brand when talking to friends or online followers. Customers who remain indifferent won’t be quite as bad, because they never got to speak to you in the first place. Whether you’ve got a hangover or the flu, come rain or come shine, be nice on WhatsApp. It’s an extremely direct channel, diving right into your customer’s heart. He’ll hate you or love you. Home is where the heart is, and the heart’s extension, these days, is the smartphone.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

3 lessons to learn before starting a trial Lesson 1

Having A Great WhatsApp Conversation How should you open and close a WhatsApp conversation with a customer? What about tone of voice and empathy? And have you thought through the issue of macros (preprogrammed messages)?

Lesson 2

Dealing With ‘Tough’ Conversations It’s easy to gracefully accept a compliment through WhatsApp, but elegantly handling complaints, spim and endless chit-chat is another matter.

Lesson 3

Rocking the WhatsApp channel Start upselling. Yes, you can! Also, you’ll get the most of this channel if you add it to your array of communication channels. But first promise to use WhatsApp to gather feedback from your customers, the key to turning your brand into something much better and more loved than before.

Read on to find out how. And don’t forget to prep your WhatsApp team properly! Just as live chat, email, social media and the good old phone, WhatsApp comes with its own set of rules. Rules that you make because these will determine what your brand feels like to your customers. Your team must adopt a consistent way of communicating through WhatsApp. Be sure to download the “style guide” version of this chapter[24], add your specifics to it, and make your WhatsApp support team understand what it’s all about: being in touch with your customers in an absurdly intensive way. WhatsApp can be a great channel, but it’s not peanuts.

24 You can download this worksheet slash style guide here.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Lesson 1 Having a great WhatsApp conversation The primary reason to use WhatsApp is to strengthen the bond between you and your customers, right? So your task is to make them love you. That’s quite easy to achieve: stick to your word and sound human. It’s not only what you say, but it’s also how you say it. You are a being of flesh and blood, just like the person you’re chatting with – so sound it.

Sound human 1

Keep your tone of voice bright and helpful Unless you’re responding to a complaint, you should type as if you were smiling. Use positive words, think in solutions and be flexible. Be profuse in your apologies and words of thanks, showing you work for a customer-friendly company with empathic employees, happy to be of service.

2

Mirror the other person’s style Not sure whether emoticons are allowed? Quite a good rule to go by is to take your customer’s behaviour as an example. But as always: use your common sense. So if your conversation partner cracks jokes, be careful: stay clear from jokes that are even slightly related to gender, nationality, ethnic, political or religious background. And skip football, too! After all: you don’t actually know for sure what kind of person you are dealing with.

3

Avoid canned responses (preprogrammed messages) There you have it: I’m not a fan of replies void of personality. Empty messages and WhatsApp: not such a great combination. Canned responses save time, but you risk sounding robotic if you use them constantly. Also: to the guys at WhatsApp, canned responses are red flags. If you send the exact same message regularly - or worse: continuously - you might get marked by WhatsApp as a commercial

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

account, and will risk a ban[25]. If you do decide to preprogram messages, think them through! 4

Correct typos but don’t sweat it Made a typing error? Don’t make a big deal out of it. Errors aren’t as bad as they seem – as long as you correct them. Little mistakes might even inspire sympathy. Having said that: you might refresh your team’s spelling abilities… You’re just human, sure, but you don’t want to come across as an incapable human misrepresenting your business.

5

Be relevant The consequence of WhatsApp’s power to ban its users without notice is that companies must do their very best not to annoy either their customers or WhatsApp itself. You must invest in your customers, only sharing relevant content with them. Relevant content, in this case, is content that people actually want to read – nothing resembling spam. The direct line between you and your customer is paper-thin; sever it once, and you’ll have to build that trust all over again.

Join the conversation There are 2 types of conversations. Whilst proactive conversations are the ones you strike up (which doesn’t happen often in pure customer service), reactive ones exist only on the customer’s initiative. Proactive conversations are the ones you’ll probably have the least often. We’re ignoring the ‘broadcast list’ option here, which has nothing to do with customer service; it verges on marketing and advertising. However, sometimes it’s okay to strike up a conversation from a customer service viewpoint.

25 You can read more on being banned in ‘How not to get blocked by WhatsApp’, coming up right after this chapter.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Say you want to send a WhatsApp message to Alex, a customer you’ve never reached out to before – at least not through WhatsApp. He filled out his mobile number during checkout. An elegant way to engage in conversation is to share some interesting content you’d usually share by email. Try something like this: Hi Alex, this is Floris from Casengo. I just wanted to let you know that our developers finished the functionality you told us in a survey you were waiting for. Want to try it out? You want Alex to be happily surprised, not annoyed or feeling hunt down like prey. He’ll block you if he doesn’t like what you just said. But if he responds, you’re in – and the game is on. After a bit, you can gently try something like this:

If you’d like to get in touch with us through WhatsApp again, please save our number in your phone right now. Makes it easier to find our number next time.

You must nudge your customer to save your number if you want the conversation between you and him to be everlasting. WhatsApp does not appreciate companies sending unsolicited messages to its users. You must seduce your contact to save your number as soon as there’s a mutual understanding. However, you probably won’t be the initiator of the conversation - not if you use WhatsApp for anything but inbound, reactive customer service. In that case, the first WhatsApp message will come not from you, but from a (potential) customer with a question, complaint or some other type of comment (hopefully not spim[26]).

26 Spimmers are every company’s nightmare. They’re most active on live chat and WhatsApp because these channels are 1-to-1. They abuse you verbally or turn out to be pranksters. Go gentle on soft spimmers: the nosy parkers that want to know whether you’re human or a robot.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

We’re talking about reactive conversations here, where you respond nicely and quickly to a customer question (definitely within 60 minutes, but preferably within 5 minutes or less), and introduce yourself. You’ll never get a second chance for your first impression!

Welcoming your prospects and customers A simple canned response can be of great help when reacting to questions quickly and professionally. Tell the people reaching out to you through WhatsApp whom they’re chatting with and when they can expect a response to their specific question. So manage their expectations. What can your prospects and customers expect in terms of timeframe and benefits?

Hi, welcome to and thanks for your question. It’s busy right now but I’ll try to get back to you within 5 minutes.

or

Hey, thanks for reaching out! You can expect an answer as soon as possible. (Typically that’s within 5-10 minutes.)

or Hi, what can we do for you? Within 10 minutes, an awesome team member should be available to help!

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Be super careful with canned responses and macros Bigger volumes to respond to? Then canned responses, also known as preprogrammed messages, are a must. You’ve probably also heard of macros: they’re shortcuts to a set of actions, sometimes containing canned responses (for instance, to deal with spim). Canned responses seem useful in busy times, but they are to be handled with care as they might set off the alarm bells at WhatsApp HQ. You should consider getting software enriched with a human behaviour algorithm. This algorithm adds human characteristics to canned responses, preventing you from being banned or blocked by WhatsApp. Experience taught us that companies which send a message like ‘Welcome! Thanks for your question!’ as a response to every single question, hundreds of times a day, eventually find themselves blocked. Instead, add empty fields to your preprogammed messages, forcing your team to complete the message with personal, relevant information. Your canned response goes from being general and boring to genuine and personal. ‘Welcome! Thanks for your question! As I understand, you …’

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Examples of canned responses First customer message

A standard question, such as:

Hi, I still haven’t received my order. Could you track it for me?

Preprogrammed company reply Hi, welcome to and thanks for your question. I’m and happy to help you out today! So you .

Hi, sorry to hear that... Let’s get to the bottom of this.

A complaint, such as:

Hey, why don’t you guys respond to my emails? I’m getting sick of this.

Or:

Oh dear, let me get this sorted for you.

That’s not a very decent thing to say. We’re going to block your number now.

Spim, such as:

Your mother is a prostitute and you’re even worse.

Or:

Haha thanks! (then block or stop replying)

Ending the conversation Be sure to end each conversation nicely, picking the right time. This depends on the specific content of the conversation and on the type of customer. Some customers respond every 10 minutes and are suddenly quiet – then you make your move. Others take days to get back to you, which forces you to be patient. Only when you’re quite sure it’s not too early and you won’t offend the customer, you ask him something along the lines of:

Is there anything else I can help you with, [name customer]?

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

No response? Then you might one to continue with something like: I haven’t heard from you for a while now, so I’ll close this conversation for now. If you have any other questions, just send us a message here and we’ll get back to you!

Lesson 2 Dealing with tough conversations Enjoying a direct line with your customers comes with a drawback: they won’t always come to you with neutral questions. Some customers will moan, some will s hout, some won’t stop talking. And yet you’ve got to deal with them – through WhatsApp. Needless to say, the friendly factor should always prevail. You must remain friendly however wrong or unreasonable you think the customer is. Here’s how to deal with complainers, spimmers and chatterboxes.

Complaints Strange as it sounds, customers who complain are potential brand ambassadors. Yes, really. Deep down, a customer who takes the trouble to complain, wants to stay your customer. He just needs a little love. I believe – and this also goes for channels other than WhatsApp – that if you listen well enough to a customer with a complaint, and solve his deeper problem (feeling betrayed, unheard, unloved), you will turn his mood around completely. Actually I believe every complaining customer is a potential ambassador. Since there is a change of mood around a brand of product you can also change it again. In fact in that case you can even move him further towards a real ambassador! Use the LAST approach: Listen, Acknowledge, Solve, Thank.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

1

Listen Let your unhappy customer vent for a bit. Don’t interrupt him and send him encouraging messages (‘I see’, ‘Oh dear’, ‘Oh no’) to show you are indeed listening. Remember: he can’t see you. By hearing your customer out, you can find out what he’s truly upset about. And don’t take any of it personal: it’s about your brand, not you.

2

Acknowledge Say you are sorry. If not for the specific complaint, then at least for the situation. Show you are sorry for the fact your customer is unhappy. If your company did indeed make a mistake, admit it. There’s nothing wrong with that. By acknowledging the problem, you show that you hear your customer. You understand the problem and will do everything within your powers to fix things between you.

3

Solve Nothing quite as human as making mistakes, but fix them. If you’ve got a perfect solution right away: go for it. If not, ask your customer what he’d like you to do about the issue. Perhaps they’re happy with a discount, or something you haven’t thought of. If you can’t solve the problem right away, communicate clearly about the steps you’d like to take. If you make promises, keep them. Follow up through WhatsApp and grasp this opportunity to strengthen the bond!

4

Thank Thank, thank, thank. Just like “sorry”, you can’t say this word enough (whenever you mean it). You want the customer to feel you care.

And all of LAST through your customer’s favourite communication method! Complaints are opportunities to turn angry customers into fans, which is easy on WhatsApp, as long as you make them feel that the conversation you two are having, is worth the trouble, because you seem to care.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Spim Spim simply is “spam” on instant messaging platforms. It’s a lot less of a problem than actual spam. Most spim falls into the category of harmless and understandable: it’s actual prospects or customers checking if your WhatsApp number really takes them right into your customer service offices. It’s messages like: “Does this work?” and “Hello”. Most companies I talked to didn’t find spim horribly annoying. It’s usually a temporary thing: most curiosity fades three or four weeks into the launch of the new WhatsApp customer service channel. After that, the spim that remains is hardly a problem: you can block numbers easily so the spimmer won’t be able to cause trouble again, at least not using the same number. You could always try to react to the spimmer (as this guy talking on Ted actually did), which can cause a laugh or a frown (if the spimmer turns out to be a competitor). But from a business point of view: leave it. There’s not enough spim going around yet to cause great trouble.

Long-winded laments Let’s face it: people who can’t stop talking are a nuisance, on WhatsApp or on any other channel. They waste your team’s time asking a thousand little questions because they’re either bored or lazy. Sure, a WhatsApp conversation should never end, but conversations that last days aren’t ideal. At some point, you’ve got to start dropping hints. First try: asking them if you could talk to them through phone, in order to help them better? (That’s something you should always do, by the way, as soon as delicate information is needed to establish the customer’s identity.) If they decline that offer, sticking to WhatsApp for another two or three days instead, try gently but firmly guiding them to the website’s FAQ (which should be very good: well-filled knowledge bases drastically decrease the number of customer queries) With the right software… And if none of that has any effect, just go with the flow and help the chatterbox as well as you can. Some customers need more love than others.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Lesson 3 How to rock ‘n’ roll Even though the WhatsApp channel is too personal for hard, cold sales, you can use it to sell more, simply by keeping the conversation going with meaningful messages. It’s hard for me to give examples you can use right away, because upselling through WhatsApp is greatly influenced by what it is you sell. It will require some brainstorming, preferably with a bottle of wine and some cheese crackers. This step is all about you and your business.

Questions to get in the mood The best way to use WhatsApp is related to what you sell and who your customers are. When brainstorming with (part of) your team, get into a “WhatsApp state of mind”, let the ideas flow, and try to come up with a way to find the most customer-friendly way tailored to your specific company. You could wonder what you are doing right now without WhatsApp that you could do with WhatsApp instead. 1

What could you do through WhatsApp that you’re doing through email now? Perhaps you can confirm each new order with a WhatsApp message instead (or on top of) an email. You can update your customer’s order status or send news about an item on his wishlist that was out of stock but has arrived now. Or say you sell mattresses: you could WhatsApp your customers after 6 months to remind them to turn their mattress soon. The sky is the limit!

2

What could you do through WhatsApp that you’re doing through phone now? Some follow-ups are better sent through a less pushy, more “silent” channel, because it gives your customer the freedom to decide what to do next: ignore or respond to your message (without anyone listening in). Say you sell vitamin pills: you could WhatsApp your customers when they might be running out of pills: “Hey, are you out of vitamin B12 yet? Just thought I’d let you know I can get you two bottles with 40% discount if you respond within 24 hours. Just drop me a line.” If you do this on the phone, cold-calling style, conversion rates will be lower, as will the chance of irritating your customer (because they’re having lunch).

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

1

Could you get chatting with check-out drop-outs? If you use professional software that allows you to see who’s abandoning their online shopping cart, after filling out their mobile number (but before actually paying), you might want to send them a WhatsApp message along the lines of: “Hi, just noticed you’re interested in but didn’t quite make the purchase. Anything I can do to help?” If you send a short, informal but valuable message, you will get a response. Take it from there.

2

Could you get the conversation going with positive reviewers? Just thanking people who took the trouble to post a positive review on your own site or on a third-party review site might open up the door for more. Only start talking sales-pitchy if it feels natural. Do not force anything on your happy customer – you want him to stay happy.

Use WhatsApp for customer feedback Here’s another trick for advanced users only: use WhatsApp to gather customer feedback. Input from actual customers, for instance, can be great to improve your website. You can conduct an entire survey – albeit a really short one – via WhatsApp, as part of the conversation. Only ask for feedback if it feels natural. If the customer just said he’s got to catch his train (which will be the sort of personal information you’ll spontaneously get during WhatsApp conversations), don’t bother him with a survey. If the stars are aligned, though, go for it - even after a negative conversation! As long as you phrase the question delicately, you’ll find your customer will often be happy to help. Check out pages 52 onwards for various ideas on WhatsApp surveys, for instance to find out your Net Promoter Score (NPS), your customer effort score (CES), or a combination of both. Input from customers doesn’t always require asking for feedback: the actual conversation will tell you what’s wrong. If you get the same question over and over again, add it to your online FAQ list. If the same product seems to cause problems, check it out and fix it. And if you were looking for a way to upsell: the clues lie in this kind of conversations. What’s this customer interested in? What would make him buy more, or visit you more frequently?

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Integrate WhatsApp with your email channel Even though live chat and WhatsApp are much more appreciated by customers than email and phone, the majority of them still send old-fashioned emails or dial your number as if their existence depend on it. To boost customer satisfaction overall and to increase your team’s productivity it’s wise to integrate WhatsApp with your email channel. Promote WhatsApp in your outbound email, and if your customer uses WhatsApp and you’ve got his number, follow up inbound email through WhatsApp. If you consider using professional software, check whether the software supplier has both products: WhatsApp and email management.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Extra / The WhatsApp rulebook

If you use WhatsApp for customer service purposes only, you shouldn’t be too worried about WhatsApp blocking or banning your number. After all, all you do is honestly respond to genuine queries. You’re having true conversations with other people, which is something WhatsApp stimulates. But you might find that once the line between you and your customer is established firmly – the minute you finish your first WhatsApp conversation – you might be enticed to let your customers know about upcoming sales, a contest you’re having or new items in your store. And before you know it, you’ve sent the same message to 500 customers and then – nothing. Nobody responds, except what I like calling the WBI, the WhatsApp Bureau of Intelligence[27]. Their message:

Your number is no longer allowed to use our service Signed: WhatsApp If WhatsApp sends you the above message, you’re fucked. They just banned your number, probably because they thought you were spamming. Which – in all honesty – you probably were. Ouch. On its website, WhatsApp states that accounts are blocked ‘if we believe the account activity is in violation of our Terms of Service.’ So what’s in those Terms of Service[28]?

27 I made that up! 28 Find the terms of service on WhatsApp’s website.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Section 3, paragraph C: WhatsApp access You agree not to collect or harvest any personally identifiable information, including phone number, from the Service, nor to use the communication systems provided by the Service for any com mercial solicitation or spam purposes. You agree not to spam, or solicit for commercial purposes, any users of the Service. Basically, the following actions are not allowed[29]: 1

Sending too many messages (more than 1.200 a day, a few days in a row).

2

Being blocked by too many people in a short period of time.

3

Submitting content (in the status, profile picture or messages) that is unlawful, obscene, threatening, harassing, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive, or plain inappropriate.

4

Being annoying to other users, for instance by sending the same message to too many people, or by creating too many groups that contain users who didn’t save your number in their address books.

If the WBI finds out you’re breaking any of these rules (which means that yes, they sometimes read or analyse your messages), WhatsApp reserves the right to refuse service for any reason without prior notice, at their sole discretion. That means you can be banned – usually for a period of 24, 48, 72 or 120 hours, depending on how bad you were – or blocked forever without a warning or explanation. Unless you get in touch with WhatsApp ([email protected]) and beg them on your bare knees to forgive and unban you, your account – and your hard-earned direct lines to so many of your customers – will die a slow death 72 hours after your account was banned. Your contacts (in your case: your customers) will no longer be able to see you in their Favourites list.

29 WhatsApp explains it on its website, and Tech PC Tricks writes about it here.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

To keep your reputation spotless, you should avoid being banned at all costs. It’s hard to say what’s spotted by the WBI and what isn’t. But some of my customers have confirmed this is a good strategy: 1

Use your common sense. It will probably (and hopefully) tell you that you should only communicate with people who actually want to receive messages from you. So don’t spam.

2

Make your conversation safe. You know very well not to send pictures of male or female body parts, but be aware of that fact that your customer must save your number in his smartphone in order for the conversation to be seen as ‘safe’ by WhatsApp. How? As soon as you dispatch the order, send a him a happy life signal through WhatsApp. Not to say something dull like ‘welcome, new customer’, but something very relevant and interesting to that specific customer. ‘Hi! It’s Jack from Top Company. Just wanted to give you a thumbs up: your order has been dispatched!’ If your customer responds, respond at least one more time before you kindly ask him to save your number in his phone. ‘By the way, if save this number in your address book, you can reach out to me whenever you have a question. I’m here for you, 24/7. Don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s a problem with your order, or if you want those cartridges refilled.’ That will give you the green light needed to go ahead with WhatsApp marketing. Keep the conversation going with relevant content: the customer must not get annoyed with you and block you.

3

Don’t spam. Just thought I’d mention it one more time. Don’t send same lines over and over again - even if it’s about a discount you just have to share with your customers. Some campaigns or messages simply aren’t welcome on WhatsApp because only a few people appreciate in-your-face commercial activities on a channel this personal.

4

Messed up before? If you got banned before, read the above guidelines once more, because if you don’t, you might get blocked forever. Sure, you can just get a new phone number and try all over again, but it’s a lot of hassle that’s just not worth it.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

03 / Stories of 5 early adopters

ABN AMRO: ‘Prepare yourself, launch softly and keep your team happy.’

About ABN AMRO

ABN AMRO, a Dutch bank for retail, corporate and private banking headquartered in Amsterdam, offers its clients a full range of products and services as well as in-depth financial and industry expertise. Located in over 20 countries, it allows its clients to reach out through WhatsApp, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, live chat, email and phone.

An NPS score of a whopping +27 – that’s how popular the new WhatsApp service is at ABN AMRO, one of Holland’s biggest banks. ‘+27 is bizarrely high,’ confirms Andius Teijgeler, ABN AMRO’s customer experience director. ‘Like most banks, our general NPS score is -20. That’s about average for a financial institution. People don’t necessarily love a bank. But they love WhatsApp, that’s for sure.’ Andius started looking into WhatsApp in the final months of 2014. Several of his colleagues had suggested he’d look into this simple little messaging app. In the first quarter of 2015, quite a few companies in the Netherlands bravely announced they were starting a trial offering WhatsApp as a customer service channel. ABN AMRO was one of these early adopters: in January 2015, Andius set the WhatsApp train in motion. ‘I felt we were obliged to do so: companies that claim they take customer service

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

seriously, can’t ignore a channel used by so many people. It’s simply not an option not to offer WhatsApp customer service. Only if it turns out that this type of service doesn’t meet the clients’ wishes, would we consider giving up this service.’ In ABN AMRO’s case, it’s not about the number of customer queries received each day. It’s about being there for customers, taking them by the hand when the world of finance gets too complex. ‘Our clients should be able to get in touch with their bank as quickly and easily as possible. WhatsApp is one of our extra services, just like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. And all of these are just as important as the traditional communication channels.’ Based on ABN AMRO’s experience with WhatsApp, Andius has 3 golden tips to share: be prepared before you take off, launch softly and sweetly, and keep your WhatsApp team happy at all times!

Tip #1: Prepare yourself So if you decide to run a so-called “test and learn” pilot, think it through and take it slow. You don’t want to fail this test. What if there’s a crisis at your company, and your WhatsApp channel is suddenly bombarded with an overload of queries? Would you be able to handle them all quickly easily? Make sure you have enough people on your webcare team capable of responding to the WhatsApp channel. ABN AMRO – renowned for its high-quality social service – took a few months to do research. ‘We first gathered information about security, privacy and identification. Then we played around a bit with a WhatsApp tool that would allow us to engage in lots of conversations at the same time. We got a team of people ready to join the WhatsApp team. Only then did we go public about the new service – and that was only on Facebook and Twitter, where our customers are well-disposed towards us already.’

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Tip #2: Launch softly On July 14th, 2015, ABN AMRO posted a status update on Twitter and Facebook about the new WhatsApp service: “Today, we’re enabling the first group of clients to reach our customer service desk 24/7 through WhatsApp. Would you like to ask us a question using WhatsApp? Send us a private message.” Lots of people responded positively, and with this beloved and loving group, ABN AMRO gently started experimenting. After 2 months, ABN AMRO was certain enough to open up the doors: in September, a newsletter to 240.000 clients contained a small post about the WhatsApp number the bank now used for customer support. ‘We sent out a second newsletter to another 240.000 clients in November,’ Andius says. ‘Both times the number of queries went sky-high.’ The bank, however, didn’t encounter any major problems. ‘We just kept on doing what we did: managing both risks and customer expectations. We asked for feedback and listened to what clients and our WhatsApp webcare team experienced.’

Tip #3: Keep your team happy Don’t underestimate the importance of your webcare people. They should be a happy team, helping out customers in need with a big smiley. If they don’t enjoy dealing with WhatsApp questions, your customers will notice and your company will pay. Appearing genuinely interested is extremely important with a channel as personal as WhatsApp. Thankfully WhatsApp is a rewarding channel for customer service representatives, because most people love it (which is why the NPS is so high). If you play it well, both sides will be smiling. Ideally, your WhatsApp team consists only of people who proactively said they wanted to join the team. Whatever you do: don’t force anyone to be on the WhatsApp team. AMRO now has a total of 34 webcare specialists responding to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, live chat – and WhatsApp. They typically respond within 5 minutes. In the first 5 months of the trial, over 5.000 conversations were conducted through WhatsApp – totalling up to 50.000 in- and outbound messages about daily bank affairs, such as changing withdrawal limits, replacing broken or stolen debit cards and applying for a credit card.

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ABN AMRO is one of the few companies that use a stand-alone tool to manage WhatsApp as a customer service channel. It’s Andius’ conviction that a CRM-driven tool isn’t always necessary or even better. ‘CRM isn’t a solution – it’s a tool that should serve a purpose. If information isn’t relevant, why bother? With a channel like WhatsApp, speed is more important than an elaborate customer profile. For us, WhatsApp is about dealing with messages in a way that makes our clients feel heard.’

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Tep Wireless ‘Use good software, reply quickly, and cherish each conversation.’ About Tep Wireless

Tep Wireless, founded in 2011 and based in London, is a hotspot rental company that provides today’s travellers with wireless internet access in most of the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. Tep’s wifi device works just like any other Wifi hotspot, but is yours only and fits in your pocket. Customers can get in touch 24/7 through WhatsApp, live chat, email, phone and SMS.

The idea for Tep Wireless, a pocket wifi rental company, was born in 2009. Dennis Jorgensen and Simone Rigoni were brainstorming about how annoying it was to have expensive (or no) access to the internet whilst travelling. ‘Every single traveller should be able go online without going broke,’ Dennis said. ‘It became our goal to make this happen.’ Two years after that initial chat, their company Tep Wireless was launched. It was an instant hit. ‘Apparently we were right: almost everyone on earth wants to enjoy internet on the go. It’s no wonder they love our pocket wifi devices.’ So far, Tep Wireless rented out its smart little gadget to hundreds of thousands people, aged 18 to 60 years on average. Dennis’ and Simone’s company now has 2 logistics hubs and 40 employees, 10 of whom work from South-East Asia, where the customer service team is based. Tep Wireless takes customer service pretty seriously indeed. Apart from email and phone, (potential) customers can reach Tep through live chat, Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Instagram and Pinterest. In 2015, WhatsApp was added to that list. ‘WhatsApp is one of the best communication channels out there, period, for any type of interaction (business or pleasure),’ Dennis explains. ‘Ultimately, our service is all about making life easier for our customers, so why not maintain the same ethos for our customer service? We want our customers to be able to contact us in any way possible. WhatsApp is a perfect addition to the other channels. Especially since it’s highly personal and has virtually replaced SMS for a lot of people.

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Dennis tried a bunch of alternatives before finding Casengo, Tep’s current software provider. ‘It’s very important to find a tool that your team can use collaboratively to reply to customers quickly and without fail. Only be happy with a solution that allows your customer service team to deal with multiple chats simultaneously. Responding quickly to WhatsApp messages really pays off!’

Tip #1: use good WhatsApp customer service software Tep offers a 24/7 WhatsApp service that is staffed by 2 to 4 customer support agents at the same time. So the company needed a scalable and structural solution to support this setup. With a customer service team of 10 people, it’s just not workable to have a smartphone go from hand to hand.

Tip #2: reply quickly and efficiently If you send the Tep customer service team a question through WhatsApp, you’ll usually get a reply within a minute. Four minutes is the absolute maximum, which is only easily achievable when using good, intuitive software.

Tip #3: cherish each WhatsApp conversation (even just one a day) With about a dozen WhatsApp conversations per day, the volumes aren’t particularly high yet. ‘But it’s not about the numbers. If we’ve done our job, then our customers shouldn’t be contacting us at all.’ If they do, however, have a question, customers should be able to get in touch with a company through whatever channel they want – like WhatsApp. ‘Ultimately, our service is all about making life easier for our customers,’

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Studystore ‘Enjoy the personal connection, mirror your customers and don’t let fear spoil the party.’ About Studystore

Studystore is one of Holland’s largest suppliers of higher education textbooks and other educational material. Through 5 campus stores, hundreds of student societies and an excellent website, Studystore sells, buys and resells books to over 250.000 college students. They can get in touch using phone, email, live chat and WhatsApp.

Studystore is widely known amongst students and alumni in the Netherlands: when they were at school or university, lots of people ordered textbooks from this brand or its parent company Van Dijk (established in 1937). As the Dutch academic year starts in August or September, Studystore is a major e-commerce player in the Netherlands from June until September, when most students order their educational material. Last summer, Studystore launched a new, fully responsive web store, allowing students to order material quickly and easily on their smartphone or tablet. ‘We wanted to enrich the new store with more communication channels,’ Simon Bosschieter, product manager at Studystore, says. ‘Students don’t function without their mobile phone or their laptop. That’s why we started with both live chat and WhatsApp.’ Email, live chat and WhatsApp were all bundled in one software tool: Casengo. ‘That way, our customer service team was able to respond even quicker and more directly to students,’ Simon explains. ‘It was rather scary to start using new software right before the summer peak. But we’re happy we just went for it. We had a great summer revenue, with a more complete customer view than before, and much shorter response times.’

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Tip #1: Enjoy the personal connection ‘Sure, the new WhatsApp, live chat and email tools help us to assist our customers from start to finish much faster. We’d expected that. But something that happily surprised us, is how wonderful it can be to be personally in touch with your customers. We got WhatsApp messages right from the beach! We loved being able to respond to them right away.’

Tip #2 – Mirror your customers ‘For both live chat and WhatsApp, it’s important to get on the same wavelength as your customers. Our customer base is young. We don’t react like college professors when a student asks us: “Yo, where are my books? Should have received them two days ago!” A formal reply would immediately make us lose the true connection with this customer.’

Tip #3: Don’t let fear spoil the party ‘If you start with a new customer communication channel like WhatsApp, it’s easy to be a bit anxious about negative reactions. Our experience is that this is a false fear. Don’t worry too much. Sure, you’ll get unpleasant messages once in a while, but remain open and calm. At the end of the day, customers are happy you are willing to listen!’

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Horizn Studios ‘Use good software, manage expectations and try not to get blocked.’ About Horizn

Horizn Studios develops high quality leather handbags and travel bags that

Studios

combine design, technology and smart services. The Berlin-based design team loves to discover new technologies that make traveling easier. With each product, customers receive free access to the Horizn Travel Assistant Service for 12 months. Through WhatsApp, the Service provides inspiration and advice for stress-free travel experiences.

Offering advice through good old SMS. That seems like a great idea – one-on-one yet very accessible communication – until your customers receive the monthly phone bill… Roaming costs are high; too high for most of today’s globetrotters. They’re used to free apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger and are literally not buying expensive text messaging anymore. Horizn Studios, a young and international design company that produces luxury leather goods and other smart luggage-related stuff, was aware of this issue from the very start. ‘Before launching our Travel Assistant Service, we researched the various ways of B2C communication extensively. We wanted a free communication channel that our customers would enjoy using,’ Hilde Sanderman, Horizn’s Head of Travel Services, says. ‘It would distinguish us from other concierge services, that generally use standard SMS.’ They soon opted for WhatsApp, the ideal channel for their Travel Assistant Service. Fast, trustworthy, free – and very, very popular, Hilde explains. ‘Our customers are mostly between 25 and 45 years old. They live all over the world, but they have one thing in common: they’re on WhatsApp.’ Horizn Studios’ Travel Assistant Service - free for people who buy a Horizn Studios travel item (other people pay a monthly fee of 25 euro) - offers contemporary globetrotters both inspiration and insider tips through WhatsApp. One in five customers actually activates the service to be inspired and advised. ‘They ask us for lots of different things, like booking a restaurant or plane tickets, or be guided through an entire trip.’

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Tip #1: Use good software to make WhatsApp support workable Not all that many companies use WhatsApp for customer support. Hilde knows why: a lot of business owners think it’s only possible to offer WhatsApp support unless they have a dedicated smartphone lying around the office and going from one active support employee to the next. ‘That’s a thing of the past. There are quite a few software solutions available made specifically for WhatsApp support, turning it into a very smart customer service tool.’ Horizn Studios uses Casengo from the very start of its new Travel Assistant Service. ‘We started with a trial, but we soon had 2 fulltime agents on WhatsApp support. It’s been great in almost every way.’ The fact that WhatsApp still protects its API like a newborn baby, means that quite some businesses using WhatsApp have to be careful: the folks at WhatsApp will block or ban them if they appear too commercial. Yes, WhatsApp truly despises commercial activity.

Tip #2: Avoid getting blocked by WhatsApp Horizn Studios, Hildeman says, rarely experiences technical problems with the WhatsApp channel. ‘That’s partly because we use good software, but also because we know how to avoid blocks in the first place. We’re not operating a WhatsApp support system to get people to buy our products. We’re merely helping them out.’ Check out chapter 2 for concrete tips and tricks on dealing with WhatsApp.

Tip #3: Manage customer expectations The Horizn Studios Travel Asssistant can be reached daily from 9am to 9pm. Immediately after sending their message, customers get this automated reply: ‘Great to hear from you, {CUSTOMER}! As your Personal Horizn Studios Travel Assistant I am right by your side to inspire and advise, assist with bookings and provide travel support. I will get back to you soonest. Thanks!’

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

A Horizn Studio travel expert subsequently answers within 5 minutes. ‘The customers appreciate our speed enormously, and our travel experts love sharing their expertise through WhatsApp. So far, we had over 100 WhatsApp conversations in about six months. That’s not an impressive number yet, but we see a clear growth in both WhatsApp conversations and revenue. To us, it’s clear that WhatsApp works.’

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The Dutch Energy Company ‘Be reachable, use it to defuse crises and keep monitoring.’

About

The Dutch Energy Company, the largest independent energy supplier of

Nederlandse Energie

the Netherlands, has been challenging its more traditional competitors

Maatschappij

since 2005, strongly believing that more suppliers stimulate lower energy prices – and better customer service. They can be reached through WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, live chat, phone, email, and an online forum.

Not many people have a strong bond with their energy supplier – and the average Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the energy market clearly reflects that. NPS is a score between -100 and +100 to indicate how happy and loyal customers are to a company, with negative scores standing for red flags indicating that customers are not satisfied. The energy market has an NPS of -20. This means that basically, consumers are pretty indifferent to whichever company provides their household with energy. They don’t really care, and if they do, it’s one green flag less (a ‘like’, if you like). Smart companies respond to their customers’ indifference or sheer dislike by being equally indifferent or dislikeable. Why bother, right? Here’s why: unhappy customers are the least loyal customers around. They’re with you, and all seems well – until all of a sudden, they’re gone, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Increasing the NPS has understandably become a top priority for the Netherlands’ largest independent energy supplier, the Nederlandse Energie Maatschappij (NLE, founded in 2005). With an average NPS of 0 (as in: customers are ‘okay’ with the company) they’re doing much better than most of their competitors (-20). The team at NLE seems to understand that peering at wattage bills is a bit like filling in tax forms: pretty boring. We all want to get it over with quickly, but sometimes we just can’t: energy is a complicated topic. So when we finally have the guts to look up the contact details of our energy supplier to ask a question, we want as fast an answer as possible.

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Tip #1: Be reachable, also through WhatsApp NLE’s vision is crystal clear: offering outstanding customer service, and cheap energy. Because it’s great service that binds customers, not just low prices. And service, according to NLE, is about being easily reachable. If a million people happen to enjoy communicating with their social and business contacts through a great little app, you make sure you own that great little app. (Although Facebook took that literally, there’s no need to feel like you have to buy WhatsApp. Just get your company on it!) Being on WhatsApp nowadays is a must, confirms Caroline Bevaart, branding supervisor at NLE. ‘If you want to offer flawless customer service, you listen to customers in whatever way they want. At this moment, their favourite channels are phone, email, live chat, Facebook, Twitter – and WhatsApp.’ NLE started experimenting with the WhatsApp channel in the summer of 2015. ‘To us, service means being reached easily and quickly. If our customers use WhatsApp, why not help them through WhatsApp? None of our competitors offered this type of service yet. So our Social Hub team started testing WhatsApp carefully. And soon enough it became clear that this service actually cut down the phone queue and made customers very happy indeed.’

Tip #2: Use WhatsApp to defuse crises NLE started off by displaying its WhatsApp phone number only on the customer service contact page. The channel was monitored by the Social Hub, NLE’s webcare team (Facebook, Twitter, live chat, WhatsApp, online forum). ‘That went well enough. But then we changed something about our billing structure and suddenly our regular phone queue quadrupled.’ A customer service crisis was at hand. So many customers started calling NLE with urgent billing questions, that the Social Hub decided to bring WhatsApp to the fore: the message on the voice tape now specifically said that NLE could also be reached through WhatsApp. ‘And boom, our WhatsApp channel exploded! It really helped to make customers aware of this new service we’re offering.’

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Tip #3: Keep monitoring and measuring Though the Social Hub still monitors a small percentage of all incoming WhatsApp messages (mainly as an ‘antenna’ to keep the Hub’s social media experts up to date), the WhatsApp service channel was transferred to the general customer service team at the start of 2016. ‘WhatsApp is such a success partly because it forces us to closely monitor the way we handle it,’ Caroline says. ‘And that is a good thing, really. It keeps us alert.’ Being alert is crucial when it comes to WhatsApp. Because this is one of the few companies not opening up its API to the public (unlike, for instance, Facebook Messenger), WhatsApp determines the rules and we all have to follow suit. The threat of being blocked looms constantly. Anyone who seems remotely commercial gets banned temporarily or indefinitely. If you send too many messages too frequently, WhatsApp throws you out. Identical messages: same story. Sending the same link to too many people: not done. ‘That’s why we spread any identical messages about, for instance, customer surveys, throughout the day,’ Caroline explains, ‘and not to everyone who messages us. We change the links so they’re never the same. We never got blocked by WhatsApp.’ NLE uses WhatsApp each day of the week, and the opening hours are communicated on the WhatsApp status and the website. The company now sends out about 300 WhatsApp messages a day as a reaction to about 800 customer messages a day – all of which are responded to within 15 minutes (but usually within 3 minutes). And the NPS for NLE’s WhatsApp channel? It’s 35 points higher than the average NPS for energy suppliers: +15 instead of -20. WhatsApp is, in sum, a major success. ‘It’s easy to understand why,’ Caroline says. ‘Communicating through WhatsApp is direct, personal and effective. People send us pictures of their meter readings or error messages, allowing us to be more to the point than ever before.’

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Extra / WhatsApp as a survey medium

To know how you’re doing on WhatsApp - and to measure the Net Promoter Score (NPS) of your newly launched channel - it’s important to get feedback. You can do this easily with a simple survey. It doesn’t even deserve to be called a “survey”, really, as it’s just a question or two. It should be as short as possible, and if you mention in the invitation just how short (“Would you please help us out by answering just two short questions?”), response rates will skyrocket. Don’t offer the survey after every single conversation, but only after every resolved issue. So what should you ask your customers? Nothing you already know (or should know). So don’t ask them what they’ve bought, or if they like it (they don’t know yet). You want to find out what annoys and delights your customers the most. Good surveys are about extremes, as these give you actionable points. It makes it easy for you to pinpoint what needs change right now. There are two types of customer satisfaction surveys. 1

Transactional surveys: How happy is your customer with a recent interaction with you?

2

Relationship surveys: How happy is your customer with you as a company overall?

You could try a relationship survey, not gauging your customers’ satisfaction of the WhatsApp interaction, but rather of the overall relationship. However, their judgement will be influenced by the conversation they just had through WhatsApp, which could skew the results and not actually represent their real sentiment.

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

My advice is to use WhatsApp as a transactional survey tool only, using it to figure out just how (un) happy your customers are with your WhatsApp support. So what should you ask? Depends on your goal:

Option 1: NPS If you want to know your Net Promoter Score (NPS), ask something along the lines of: How likely are you to recommend the WhatsApp channel as a way to answer your questions about {company name} to colleagues or friends? (0 = the least likely, 10 = the most likely)

Then, if the score is between 0 to 8, ask: Thank you for responding. According to you, what should we improve first, {contact name}?

Or, if the score is 9 or 10, ask: Hurray! What do you like most about WhatsAppas one of our customer service channels, {contact name}?

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

Option 2: CES If you want to know your customer effort score (CES), ask: How much effort did it personally take you to handle your request? (1 = the lowest effort, 5 = the highest) As soon as your contact replies, write: Thank you for responding, {contact name}. How can we make it easier for you next time?

Option 3: NPS + CES If you are interested in both your NPS and your CES, ask:

How likely are you to recommend the WhatsApp channel as a way to answer your questions about {company name} to colleagues or friends? (0 = the least likely, 10 = the most likely) As soon as your contact replies, write:

Thank you for responding.How much effort did it personally take you to handle your request? (1 = the lowest effort, 5 = the highest)

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As soon as your contact replies, write:

I’ve made a note of it, {contact name}. How can we make it easier for you next time?

Closing the conversation You might have noticed I thanked the customer loads in the above examples. Remember: customer is king! Your company exist thanks to the fact that he believes in you, trusts you and gives you some of his money because of all this. Each form of feedback he gives should be welcomed like a gift! So don’t forget to thank your contact for his time and efforts, and close the conversation nicely, for instance with something like this: Thanks so much for your time, {contact name}. What we learn from one customer will help us to better serve another. You may want to alter this message a little bit each time, especially if you send out lots of surveys. Remember: WhatsApp is watching you...

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04 / What’s up next? The messaging landscape beyond WhatsApp. I was talking to Ed Sander, a Dutch database marketing specialist who lived in China from 2011 to 2013. He was mainly doing volunteer work, like teaching marketing basics to NGOs in China. When he arrived in the country, there was a vigorous shake-out going on amongst various Chinese social media apps, wanting to be China’s number #1 Facebook-clone. After all, Facebook had long been banned, because the Chinese government didn’t like that fact they had absolutely no control over Facebook’s content. Facebook clones were popping up all over the country. But one fine day in July or August 2011, Ed knew the race was over – and social networking had not won it. ‘I started noticing that people all around me were holding their phones all wrong: they were talking to it by holding it close to their mouths instead the usual phone-on-ear pose. As it turned out, these people were all Weixin users, and they were messaging each other.’[30]

Weixin/WeChat: the #1 messaging app in China That’s the China-effect: sheer numbers matter. There are so many Chinese and Indian people connected to the internet these days, that even a small percentage of fans can shoot an app into the Wall of Fame like a rocket into space. Still, Weixin (aka WeChat) hasn’t quite got a billion users like WhatsApp, and less users than Facebook messenger. 30 For the Dutchies: check out this very interesting talk by Ed Sander on YouTube, hosted by Jarno Duursma in Groningen.

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GlobalWebIndex (GWI) published an interesting report[31] about WeChat. Felim McGrath, senior trends analyst at GWI: ‘The China-effect makes WeChat by far the most popular app across Asia, even if it occupies second, third or fourth position in most of the continent’s other markets.’ The very same China-effect will be enormous on the way we’ll communicate in the future. The Chinese way of messaging, in particular, will influence the quality of customer service everywhere immensely. In brick and mortar stores around the world, customers still have a lot to endure: bad-tempered, ignorant or indifferent shop assistants, limited stock, restrictive opening hours. On WeChat, however, customer is king. Brands that don’t treat their customers well (by offering bad customer service, bad products or bad content) are hugely ignored on WeChat. Only if they create relevant and engaging content will they build a good relationship with their customers, using their favourite app. Only happy customers actively return to check out new updates from their favourite brands, like an on-going conversation. WeChat is conversational commerce at its best.

Swiss army knife meets magic wand WeChat was launched in January 2011 by online behemoth Tencent, one year after WhatsApp saw the light. It started off as just another messaging app. But if you want to be the greatest, you must innovate continuously – similar to Zara and H&M, fashion brands that introduce new collections every six to eight weeks. WeChat still introduces an important new feature at least once every quarter. Five months after its launch, WeChat played a killer move: it introduced voice messaging[32] (something Facebook copied only in January 2013, and WhatsApp in August 2013) and took China by storm. Sending voice messages turned out very useful to a people with as complex a language as Mandarin, with about 5.000 different characters used regularly. If it takes you that long to write a text message, wouldn’t you rather talk to your phone walkie-talkie style rather than typing ‘Pinyin’ in phonotype or drawing each character from in strokes on your screen? WeChat is now used to do almost anything. It’s a productivity tool as versatile as a Swiss army knife, and as quick as a magic wand. People love using it, because it makes them do whatever faster than ever before. Imagine WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Groupon, Tinder and

31 GWI PROFILE Q1 2015 on WeChat, GlobalWebIndex

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Instagram put together, plus the following functionalities:

1

generate and scan QR codes;

2

hail a cab, for instance to go straight to the friend you’re chatting with;

3

book a restaurant, order a movie, get train and flight tickets;

4

pay in convenience stores, pay friends, split bills;

5

use public city services (i.e. make appointment for passport renewal);

6

pay utility bills;

7

deposit money in WeChat’s high interest options;

8

pay and charge mobile phones (cheaper than the mobile operators).

Facebook Messenger wants in The Chinese copycat era is ending. China is starting to stand on its own feet, leaving Mark Zuckerberg looking eagerly to the East for inspiration. Now that people can hail an Uber cab without leaving the Facebook Messenger environment[33], Zuck has finally gone conversational – by copying one of WeChat’s features. The tables have turned: West is copying East, and Facebook Messenger is slowly turning into WeChat. ‘Integrations with other apps, payments, brand communication – they’re all coming to Messenger,’ Felim confirms, ‘whilst Zuckerberg keeps WhatsApp as pure a messaging system as possible, which will help Facebook expand in emerging markets.’

32 More about WeChat’s evolution on ChinaChannel. 33 ‘You Can Now Order Ubers (And Soon Lyfts) In Facebook Messenger To Prove You’re On Your Way’, December 2015, TechCrunch

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If we do what Zuck thinks we’ll do, we’ll all be moving onto Facebook Messenger soon, and WhatsApp will find new users in emerging markets.

WeChat for businesses Chances are that as a Western business with no interest in China, you won’t be using WeChat ever at all. Why should you care about WeChat, really? Because China is changing our future, and we will be using something WeChat-like very soon. And yes, perhaps it will be Facebook Messenger, whose future looks promising. My advice is to learn now what WeChat is all about, in order to be one step ahead of your competitors when Facebook Messenger (or another upcoming app) is finally the West’s #1 messaging app. In that future, you’re doing quite the same as what Chinese businesses are doing right now on WeChat. Let’s zoom in. There are two ways in which brands can claim their spot on WeChat[34] (courtesy of Ed Sanders):

Subscription Account

Service Account

•

Available for individuals.

•

Only available for organisations.

•

1 message per day.

•

4 messages per month.

•

In subscription account folder: no push

•

In users chat window: push

notification.

notification.

•

No WeChat payment support.

•

WeChat payment support.

•

Auto-response based on words.

•

Programmable responses.

•

Mainly useful for pushing lots of

•

Useful advanced (WeChat)

content.

functionalities & CRM.

32 ‘WeChat: the difference between Subscription and Service brand accounts’, August 2014, Econsultancy

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1

A subscription account. This type of account empowers companies to reach out to their potential customers by sending out messages like newsletters. Subscription accounts are pretty basic and a little old-fashioned, perfect for group messages. These messages are grouped in a separate folder, making them less visible to WeChat users than service account messages.

2

A service account. This type of account empowers customers to get in touch easily and directly. A service account gets you a mini mobile site within WeChat, plus some interesting ecommerce features like interactive menus and mobile payments. If users have a question they can easily reach out, and their question must be answered with 48 hours – that’s the rule.

WeChat service accounts in particular are a huge step in the evolution of customer service. Customers can do so many things with WeChat. This includes buying stuff quickly and easily from special mobile WeChat shops that are connected to WeChat Payment and whose customer support team can be reached just as quickly and easily. Communicating with customers directly, as if you live in their pocket, will make conversational commerce the norm instead of something strange and scary.

Living in your customers’ pockets WeChat was built for mobile, and is indeed mainly used by the mobile-first generation. These are mainly young people who never owned a pc or a laptop, because they didn’t have that kind of money. They now, however, own a smartphone – and it never leaves their aura. They use it all the time – and not for browsing the world wide web, but the worldwide living room, with the worldwide marketplace right there, too. Unlike WhatsApp, WeChat’s API is as open as possible: the company makes money by allowing third parties to tap into its enormous user base. WeChat is like a giant, very busy mall, and the brand stores in this mall all pay the mall-owner good money, allowing them to stay in business there[35]. If your brand only has a website, chances are slim that the mobile-first potential customers will ever see it. Claim a space on WeChat, however, and they might just see you and like you! You’ll have to attract their attention, though…

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Who is “they”? These are the WeChat demographics, according to GWI: 1

WeChat is popular in the younger age groups and higher-income quartiles. After teen favourite Snapchat, it actually has one of the youngest user bases on any chat app, helping to explain why usage is higher among the much-coveted 16-24 group.

2

WeChat has become an important force in many other Asian countries too, with about 3 in 10 being active users in Hong Kong and Malaysia. That 26% of the online population in India (mostly of Chinese background, but still) is using WeChat is key too: taken together, the size of the online populations in China and India are colossal (what’s more, the numbers of internet users in both countries are rising sharply each year).

3

WeChat users are most likely to “follow” people they know in real-life via social media. However, an impressive 53% says they’re following their favourite brands. And with close to half saying they follow brands they’re thinking of purchasing from, the importance of WeChat as a brandconsumer touchpoint is clear[36].

Read that last bit again:

An impressive 53% says they’re following their favourite brands. And with close to half saying they follow brands they’re thinking of purchasing from, the importance of WeChat as a brand-consumer touchpoint is clear. About half of all WeChat users follow the brands they love on WeChat, quite ready to buy something from those brands. They’ve come to converse, to communicate with brands that grab their attention. So learn how to stand out. Read everything you can about WeChat, play around with WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger so you can move onto the next level as soon as a WeChat-like app gains momentum in the Western world.

35 In fact, my first company, Livecom, made one of those apps for China Telecom. That was worth a party in Amsterdam and Shanghai… 36 GWI PROFILE Q1 2015 on WeChat, GlobalWebIndex

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The rise of artificial intelligence In the meantime, another race is being run: there’s an “AI arms race”[37] going on, and all of the big boys are involved. All over the world, scientists are vigorously “working toward a future where artificial intelligence (AI), telepathy, and virtual reality are commonplace”[38]. Telepathy? Yes – if the future is up to Facebook, we’ll send our thoughts to another person using nothing but the power of the mind. Facebook is also working on a laser communications system to beam data from the sky right into rural communities, which is pretty smart as they can then introduce WhatsApp to those emerging markets (and Messenger once they’re advanced enough). Also, if Zuck’s dream comes true, human beings will be immune to diseases in the future. In fact, there’s already an AI machine (IBM machine Watson) assisting hospital doctors[39], transforming healthcare as we speak. Artificial intelligence is here, and together with messaging, it will change the future of customer service forever.

37 ‘Apple has bought 2 artificial-intelligence companies in 4 days’, October 2015, Business Insider 38 ‘Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of the future is full of artificial intelligence, telepathy, and virtual reality’, July 2015, Business Insider 39 ‘Six ways IBM is putting Watson to work in hospitals’, November 2015, Mobihealthnews

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Take a look at this: January 2014

Google acquires a ‘secretive’ artificial intelligence company called DeepMind Technologies, which builds learning algorithms for simulations, e-commerce and games.[40]

October 2014

Google acquires Dark Blue Labs and Vision Factory, two Oxford University spin-off companies specialising in machine learning and computer vision.

Mid 2014

Facebook creates a Behavior Modification Laboratory, aka the Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory (FAIR Lab).

January 2015

Facebook acquires Wit.ai, a company that makes it easier for companies to build their own ‘Siri’, an intelligent virtual assistant or AI bot who can turn natural language into ‘actionable data’ (like book a restaurant for you or jokes around a bit).

April 2015

Facebook adds 6 AI experts to its FAIR Lab.

June 2015

Facebook opens a second FAIR Lab in Paris (FAIR Paris).

October 2015

Apple acquires Perceptio, a company that makes imagerecognition technology for smartphones.

October 2015

Four days later, Apple acquires VocalIQ, a start-up developing technology to help computers understand human speech.

January 2016

Apple acquires Emotient, a start-up that uses artificial intelligence to analyse people’s facial expressions and read their emotions.

February 2016

Microsoft acquires Swiftkey, maker of a predictive keyboard powered by artificial intelligence installed on countless smartphones worldwide.

40 DeepMind’s generic self-learning algorithms can now outperform humans on arcade games.

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A few years from now, big brands will get so many questions directly from customers that their customer service teams will be too big to handle. Enter the virtual assistant, aka the chatbot. ‘We need it to make conversation commerce a scalable option,’ Jarno Duursma, social media expert in the Netherlands, says. AI is going to take over a part of business communication. ‘We don’t yet know how that will work exactly,’ Jarno admits, ‘but I’m sure that large customer service teams will be supported by a virtual assistant between now and five to ten years.’ I can only agree whole-heartedly, and so would Ted Livingston, founder of Kik:

The beauty of bots: [they] can reduce friction to as close to zero as computing allows.[41] AI is already present – albeit not all that impressive yet – in Facebook (M), Apple (Siri), Google (Now), Microsoft (Cortana). According to Jarno, M is the best so far. ‘And it will undoubtedly improve even further. Facebook is financially capable of buying AI companies just to reel in the best artificial intelligence experts.’ Apart from lots of money and a smart team, the Facebook company gets top-notch data to feed its AI bots: Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram are like 3 big data-cows. Facebook will definitely be part of our future – it can’t not be.

Her is here For now, the future’s still in China. The best chatbot of them all (though I can’t verify that without Mandarin knowledge) is XiaoIce, a text-based chatbot developed by Microsoft for the Chinese market. “Little Bing” is a true conversationalist: allegedly, she’s witty, sensitive, cultured and sweet, chatting away as naturally as a friend. To learn how we humans tick, XiaoIce taps into as many social media messages as she can and ‘reads’ them.

41 ‘The Future of Chat Isn’t AI’, March 2016, Medium

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

When XiaoIce was released for a public test on WeChat on May 29 [2015], she received 1.5 million chat group invitations in the first 72 hours. Many people said that they didn’t realize she isn’t a human until 10 minutes into their conversation.[42] 1 in 4 of its over 40 million users have already declared their love for XiaoIce[43]. To Microsoft that must be a confirmation that XiaoIce has turned out just the way they wanted her to: ‘An example of the vast potential that artificial intelligence holds — not to replace human tasks and experiences, but rather to augment them.’[44] One day pretty soon, artificial intelligence will be so advanced that chatbots can offer better customer service than a human being. And customers won’t care. Whether they’re being helped out by a human being or by a chatbot is irrelevant – as long as they’re being helped quickly and well. In fact, they’d rather buy from a brand with a good chatbot than from a brand they can’t reach out to and don’t have a true relationship with. So let’s help our customers out. Let’s reach out to them, throw out a lifeline. Let’s start conversing with them on WhatsApp, the most direct channel available in the Western world at the moment. Let’s be part of the relationship revolution.

42 ‘Your Next New Best Friend Might Be a Robot’, February 2016, Nautilus 43 ‘For Sympathetic Ear, More Chinese Turn to Smartphone Program’, July 2015, New York Times 44 November 2015, Microsoft official blog

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Using WhatsApp for customer service

CONCLUSION / Don’t take my word for it

‘it’s great to talk to you through WhatsApp. Feel like I know you! ’ ‘Thx for helping out. Great service’ ‘cool that you’re on whatsapp ’ ‘Yes, I do need new cartridges! That’s smart of you

what’s your best

deal?’ ‘Thanks, it worked! I placed my order just now!’

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