Are you thinking about implementing the WhatsApp API Malaysia in your company and want to learn more about how it works? We’ll go through how the WhatsApp API works in depth in this comprehensive and regularly updated guide.
What is the WhatsApp Business API?
The WhatsApp Business API, which was released in August 2018, allows brands and businesses to have access to WhatsApp’s code in order to obtain more detailed information and develop features and integrations tailored to their specific needs. It’s essentially a software that allows you to create solutions that integrate WhatsApp and enhance some of its capabilities. In concept, the most typical applications include integrating WhatsApp into support and sales CRM systems, establishing BOTs and automatic responders, and even automating transactional notification sending (but be careful: non-promotional).
WhatsApp isn’t only the world’s most popular messaging programme for communicating with friends and family, with over 2 billion monthly active users. It has now become a crucial avenue for more and more businesses to engage with their customers on their preferred app. WhatsApp’s use for business has grown to the point where it now spans a wide range of industries, from automotive to tourism, e-commerce to insurance.
WhatsApp Business vs. WhatsApp Business API: What’s the Difference?
Whatsapp provides two more solutions for businesses in addition to the most popular apps for personal usage. Because the two have such a similar name, it’s easy to mix them up: WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Business API. Despite their similarities, the functionality, potential applications, and pricing are vastly different.
1) WhatsApp for Business
The WhatsApp Business app is available for free on the Google Play Store and the App Store. It’s the best option for small enterprises that communicate with clients through this channel. Within the WhatsApp platform, the app allows you to create a professional, practical, safe, and effective contact channel. The organization will be able to use its corporate WhatsApp account instead of using personal numbers in this way. WhatsApp’s Business app has seen a number of enhancements. It allows you to create tags, enter office hours, create a product catalog, and a variety of other useful functions. Despite being a fantastic tool, the WhatsApp Business App has some restrictions. The key advantage is that it remains connected to the smartphone on which it is placed, allowing for solely manual control of the messaging feature. This is inconvenient for businesses who need to build this critical channel and scale it in large quantities.
2) WhatsApp Business API
The WhatsApp Business API is a service tailored to the needs of large and/or expanding businesses. This version includes advanced and unique features that are tailored to the corporate environment and are not available in the ordinary WhatsApp Business. There is no WhatsApp interface or app with the APIs, unlike the WhatsApp Business app. Users must connect the WhatsApp API endpoint to an external platform, in order to use it. These third-party apps provide you access to capabilities that aren’t available on the “basic” WhatsApp. For example, you might be able to handle multi-agent chats on a CRM designed specifically for this purpose (there are firms where groups of over 500 employees collaborate using the same WhatsApp number), or you might have automation systems for sending transactional notifications (widely used for example by shipping and e-commerce companies).
What is a BSP (Business Service Provider)?
BSPs (Business Service Providers) are Facebook-approved providers who provide access to the WhatsApp Business API. These are significant organizations that specialize in corporate communication and have been chosen by WhatsApp to manage both API access and billing. Twilio and Gupshup are two of the most well-known, although there are over fifty in total (a complete list can be found here), each with its unique set of features, complexity, and pricing.
Although it is feasible to request API access directly from WhatsApp, doing so is time consuming and costly. The most accessible and fastest method of requesting the WhatsApp API is to use a BSP.
In most circumstances, BSPs do not provide proprietary inboxes for WhatsApp messaging management (or if they do, they are very limited). Once you’ve obtained a WhatsApp API account via a BSP, the best way you can do is integrate it into a solution developed expressly to manage it. This solution’s suitability will be determined by your company’s requirements.
What are the most important features of WhatsApp’s API?
In addition to being able to replicate (nearly) all of the capabilities that are already available in the normal version of the WhatsApp client, the WhatsApp Business API will allow you to:
1) Create a multi-user platform using a WhatsApp API account. Your sales or customer support professionals will be able to respond to consumer questions using external message management platforms with such a solution. Each employee will be able to communicate with clients using technologies that mimic the native WhatsApp app, but the supervisor will have complete control over all communications between the support team and customers.
2) Quickly distribute content: the official API will allow you to manage chats and deliver notification messages, alerts, polls, or services to a large number of people (with some limitations relating to promotions).
3) Consolidate client communication into a single number: Using the WhatsApp Business API, your organization can consolidate all customer interactions into a single WhatsApp number, avoiding communications being dispersed over several WhatsApp accounts maintained by various sales or support workers.
4) Get thorough conversation reports: It is indisputable that one of the most significant drawbacks of utilizing the Whatsapp app for business is the lack of precise statistics and reporting. It will be able to generate WhatsApp statistics for company chats thanks to several solutions that connect the WhatsApp API. This information will provide you with valuable insights that will help you plan your company’s future strategy. You will be able to design remedial steps that will protect and grow your business by analyzing this data.
5) Create chatbots: The WhatsApp Business API allows agents to create automated message flows that allow them to respond to customers’ most frequently requested inquiries at any time.
Another factor to consider is that WhatsApp’s APIs will allow you to communicate with consumers in a secure manner, using end-to-end encrypted messages that neither WhatsApp nor third parties will be able to read, making this method much safer than e-mails.
What Are WhatsApp Verified Templates?
Message templates can be used to send a WhatsApp message to a customer who has not previously communicated with your business or who has not reacted to an existing chat for more than 24 hours.
This option was intended to prevent customers from receiving spam messages from businesses and to maintain WhatsApp’s high value as a channel for customer-business contact. This is why pre-approval of Message Templates is required.
Understanding how the ” 24 Hour Time Window ” works will help you better grasp how message templates work. This window begins when the customer contacts the firm via WhatsApp or replies to a template supplied by the company and lasts for 24 hours. Whatsapp allows the company to engage with the customer via session messages during these 24 hours (i.e. it allows the company to write freely to the customer using text, images, documents, etc.).
It will be necessary to utilize a template message that has been pre-approved by WhatsApp after 24 hours from the last customer message (or if the client has never been in contact with your organization before).
WhatsApp normally approves customer service/support templates. Promotional communications are approved less frequently (except in a few countries/languages).
