2020 was a challenging year for retail businesses across the globe. With the pandemic and the lockdowns, many retail businesses struggled to maintain their customer base. Now that 2021 has started and things are looking optimistic, many retail businesses are looking to bounce back. To win back their customers and attract new customers, retail businesses need to drastically improve their customer support. The best way to do the same in the current era seems to be digital communication tools like WhatsApp Business.
It is no secret that WhatsApp has changed the way we communicate. With the recent addition of WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Business API, we can clearly see its impact on the various business sectors as well. For retail businesses that completely depend on customer support and loyalty, it is important to take advantage of the digital communication tool. This article was created to highlight how retail businesses can get the most out of both WhatsApp Business & WhatsApp Business API.
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Personalized Support
Retailers need to provide a superior customer experience to ensure that the customers stay loyal to their business. With WhatsApp Business, retail businesses can offer personalized assistance and create a rapport with their customers. In addition, they can also send personalized marketing messages to the customers and increase sales. It is estimated that over 70% of customers want businesses to send personalized mails and chats (Reference Link - https://smarterhq.com/blog/personalization-statistics-roundup).
Instant Assistance
It is no secret that customers expect retailers to understand their needs and provide instant assistance. Using WhatsApp Business’ quick replies and the API’s session messages, retailers can immediately assist customers with their queries. WhatsApp Business can also be used to send product guides, tips/tricks and FAQs to render a more comprehensive assistance and rapidly improve customer satisfaction.
Upselling/Cross-selling
Assistance Retail businesses should dedicate enough time and effort to sell related products/services to existing customers because it is widely known that upselling increases business revenue by over 30%. Since WhatsApp is a highly popular chat platform, it enables retail businesses to build rapport with their customers. This is important for retail businesses that are looking to increase their revenues and sales. WhatsApp Business supports media options like images & video, which can be used to suggest relevant products to both new and existing customers. With WhatsApp Business, retailers have the option to pitch relevant products/services to existing customers and generate more revenue through sales. Furthermore, retail businesses also have the option to review the chat history to highly personalize their suggestions.
After-Sales Support
In today’s competitive world, it is important for retail businesses to render the best customer support even after completing their sales. With both WhatsApp Business and the API’s template messages, retail businesses get the option of providing product updates, delivery notifications and real-time shipping updates to improve the customer’s experience. Providing a superior after-sales support will greatly boost customer loyalty. In addition to boosting customer loyalty, this added convenience will make customers remember your business fondly and recommend the same to their family, friends and colleagues.
Enhance In-Store
It is important to understand that the future of retail will not be completely digital. Retail businesses will always have a physical component in the future as well. So, retail businesses have the need to align both their physical and digital channels to render a superior customer experience. With WhatsApp Business, retailers can seamlessly integrate both the digital and physical components. For example, when customers visit the physical shop, their WhatsApp chat history can help retailers provide a more personalized service.
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Payment Support
With the introduction of WhatsApp Payments, businesses can now seamlessly conduct transactions using the WhatsApp Business app. This is an enormous help to small and medium sized retailers as they do not need to use separate apps for marketing, customer support and transactions. For customers, WhatsApp Payments offers increased convenience as well as security, which makes it incredibly useful. WhatsApp Payments can also improve upselling or cross-selling initiatives as sales executives can immediately close the transaction within the chat window.
In this article, we have showcased six ways that WhatsApp Business could help retailers grow their businesses. It is very important for retailers to understand that the points touched upon this article is just the tip of the iceberg and there are several more advantages of using the digital communication platform. Therefore, we strongly advice retailers to start using WhatsApp Business or WhatsApp Business API to grow in this highly competitive market.
Further Reading:
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