The article covers:
- WhatsApp Business features
- How to use WhatsApp Business with MightyCall
- Why should you use Whatsapp Business with a virtual phone number?
- Why should they choose using Whatsapp Business with VoIP over hundreds of other options?
Whatsapp is the most popular messaging app in the world, with over 2 billion users in 180 countries worldwide. More importantly for your business, Whatsapp recently launched Whatsapp Business, which has already racked up more three million users.
WhatsApp Business features
Through Twilio, Whatsapp Business is more of an API than a direct VoIP competitor, which actually makes it a capable and sharp companion to any VoIP system.
The direct features include:
- a business name,
- a business description,
- business hours,
- business category and
- other identifying information like your business email, website, and address (if you have a physical store).
More in-depth offerings include a business catalogue complete with pictures and info, easy grouping tools for your contacts and greetings that you can use for various situations.
There are not any hardcoded, classic VoIP features like call queues, call recording or even auto-attendants. Whatsapp is not necessarily trying to take over that corner of the market, but rather to complement existing structures to help businesses provide the best communications experience possible—similar to the revolutionary way they helped bridge the gap between everyday communications as well.
While VoIP still focuses heavily on the calling experience, with other methods of communication—texting, social media, etc.—gravitating around it, Whatsapp has always focused on messaging—likely the main reason the app’s popularity exploded in the first place.
If that tandem sounds like something your business could use, or you already have Whatsapp and simply want to see what it can do, then installing it for use with a virtual phone number is quite simple. In all honesty, the process is no different than installing Whatsapp with a regular, sim card-attached number.
How to use WhatsApp Business with MightyCall
Please note: Due to 2022 WhatsApp policy changes limiting WhatsApp Business registration with VoIP numbers, please contact MightyCall Support at +1 (888) 256-8312 ext.2 or support@mightycall.com to check compatibility with your VoIP number.
It is important to note that you need to already have a MightyCall virtual phone number (or a number from any VoIP provider) before linking them.
- Step one: Download the Whatsapp Business app for either iOS or Android (it’s free)
- Step two: As you go through the sign-up process, enter your MightyCall virtual phone number as your contact.
- Step three: You will receive a verification text (found in the History – Texts section of your MightyCall profile); enter the code and then your Whatsapp Business account is ready to go!
You can send text messages and multimedia
You can make and receive calls
Another important note: While MightyCall allows for unlimited devices, Whatsapp Business limits you to using one device at a time.
That means that if you want to use the MightyCall+Whatsapp combo, you can only be signed in with both on one device at a time.
If you are signed in on one device and try to use the Whatsapp-linked MightyCall number on another device, the first device will automatically sign you out. If you want to use Whatsapp Business on multiple devices, you will need multiple phones/devices (which kinds of defeats the purpose of VoIP, which eliminates the need to carry several phones in the first place).
Why should you use Whatsapp Business with a virtual phone number?
There a few obvious reasons and others that require a bit more analysis. The basics is that Whatsapp is free to use, has end-to-end encrypted messaging (which protects your privacy, and more thoroughly than the majority of messaging apps can say), and is both extremely easy to use and extremely popular.
Now, typically jumping on the hype train and doing/using something just because others are doing/using it is a bad idea, but in the case of Whatsapp, the fact that there is a userbase a billion+ strong in every corner of the globe ensures the best product and easy use since the majority of people you know will probably have it installed too.
Whatsapp even lets you send a limited number of messages monthly to people who don’t have the service, a big convenience with how fallen out of favor imessage has become and how untrustworthy social media messengers have become (and yes, Facebook does own Whatsapp, but they don’t want to kill the golden pony, so it has retained much of what makes it distinct since Zuckerberg & co. took over).
Those are the reasons anyone should be using Whatsapp, but what the business community?
Why should they choose using Whatsapp Business with VoIP over hundreds of other options?
Moreso than any of its competitors, Whatsapp enables “conversational commerce”, the fancy term for what every business—especially small businesses—crave: being able to have meaningful interactions, whether it’s answering a customer question or following up, in a way that feels genuine and not drenched in the cynicism of sales. Unsurprisingly, these interactions more reliably lead to purchases and future relationships with the brand.
Businesses have started using Whatsapp because it works. While VoIP and calling still holds immense power in business today, messaging is nearly as important, particularly with younger people. A Dimensions Data survey found that 9 out of 10 consumers would choose to message a business before any other method of communication. In response to this, businesses have quickly adjusted, with the majority now including Whatsapp as a support channel for customers experiencing troubles, while other businesses have even more fully incorporated Whatsapp into their network, going so far as to take orders via the app (in fact, I had this experience just last week when booking a massage).
Add your company’s details
Your business name
Your working hours
Your address
With a robust 100-person maximum on the number of people in a group chat, Whatsapp has even become a reliable internal communication system—one that doesn’t require employees to learn complex systems or manage messages in a CRM. Better yet, with documents, images and videos easily shared among contacts, there are few things a team cannot do on Whatsapp Business.
Of course, those tasks have their place in business management, but that is where the VoIP half comes into play. Whatsapp Business keeps things easy and clear while VoIP powers the more demanding aspects of customer communications. Just as VoIP has modernized and, in many respects, replaced conventional desk phone systems, Whatsapp has modernized and largely replaced email as the preferred method of quickly contacting both businesses and colleagues.
With it being free of charge and so simple to use, there is no excuse to not combine Whatsapp Business and a virtual phone number to at least see how much your company can improve its customer communications.