Salesforce and WhatsApp — Easing Customer Interactions
Salesforce is continuously showing its dedication to helping companies streamline their communications, this time, by integrating WhatsApp with their Salesforce instance.
It’s a natural path forward since WhatsApp is one of the world’s most used mobile messenger apps, with over 2 billion active users.
The broad usage of WhatsApp is driving the need for companies to integrate WhatsApp into their day-to-day business, offering new experiences right on the app while easily managing them across Salesforce Customer 360.
The integration is also necessary because customers’ expectations are high. They engage primarily from their mobile devices and want seamless, timely, and personalised experiences when connecting with brands.
This way, Salesforce users can work within their CRM and communicate with customers directly via WhatsApp. On the other hand, customers can engage with brands via their preferred messaging app. Companies can provide personalised support, recommend products, and sell them.
As a result of this convenience, customers become more engaged, satisfied, and loyal.
What you should know about WhatsApp and Salesforce integration
WhatsApp within Salesforce can provide a more intuitive path to connecting with customers by leveraging a user-friendly interface supported by various functionalities.
Salesforce allows both service and sales reps to communicate with customers, while ingraining Einstein Bots in the mix to automate and improve the message delivery to the customers.
Some of the communications, therefore, will lean more towards lead generation, while others will be used for customer service or both.
For example, customers may receive a WhatsApp message with a notice about an upcoming order arriving next week. Marketers can then add a promotion with a discount for a related product. Then, the customer can add this suggested product to their next order via a button within the app.
Things to keep in mind when starting your WhatsApp integration journey:
- Templates – WhatsApp reviews and approves templates before companies decide to use them to ensure spam is eliminated. The templates are grouped into ten notification types.
- Consent – Companies need to acquire customers’ consent before initiating a conversation through WhatsApp. The consent must come through another channel, such as email or SMS. After customers respond to an outbound notification, they can continue messaging an agent within the same thread.
Einstein Bots & WhatsApp
Companies can leverage Salesforce’s AI engine Einstein to customise and automate customer interactions.
Einstein Bots can provide a seamless handoff from the bot to an agent by offering on-brand answers to common customer questions. Bots can provide automated responses, additional information, or issue triage — bringing complex cases directly to agents.
Because Einstein Bots are connected to the Salesforce CRM data and processes, they can learn from ongoing interactions and evolve over time.
According to Salesforce, Einstein Bots is available in 180 countries, in instances with both Service Cloud and Chat user licences or with Digital Engagement user licenses.
Connecting WhatsApp to Salesforce
Companies can connect their WhatsApp messaging feature directly within Salesforce utilising Digital Engagement.
Final thoughts
Are you considering integrating your Salesforce org with WhatsApp? Do you have additional questions? Reach out to our team at Cloud Orca to help you get started.
