Need to buy your dog’s food at the neighborhood store? Want to order Friday’s pizza? Need to schedule medical exams? Buying a car or even your new house? Today, you can do all this via WhatsApp and, in some cases, without having to go to a store!
Present in 99% of Brazilian smartphones, WhatsApp is easily the most popular communication app in the country. From messages and memes in family groups to sales and money transfers, the app has transformed the way millions of people talk to each other daily and communicate with their favorite brands.
In 2021, a survey carried out by Infobip, Opinion Box and Mobile Time showed that 80% of Brazilians use WhatsApp in their business relationships. The trend of using WhatsApp for business, which gained even more strength as a result of the pandemic, transformed people’s habits and created a new consumer profile.
Optional physical presence
In Brazil, the automotive sector depended almost exclusively on numerous visits by customers to its stores. The industry needed to reinvent itself and in 2020 it began undergoing a rapid transformation.
As a way to stimulate the sale of cars, some automakers created new structures for the contact between salespeople and customers, ‘migrating’ to digital. Scheduling a test drive, and choosing a vehicle model and color are just some of the decisions that can be made by car buyers through WhatsApp. This remote service model works so well that customers can now receive their new cars for delivery at home after an expedited customer journey on Whatsapp! In partnership with tuvis, Volkswagen is joining this trend, transforming its customer service to be able to serve consumers directly on WhatsApp. Read more about this success story here.
Whether to buy, sell or conduct after-sales, WhatsApp has become a powerful and indispensable customer service tool. Through WhatsApp, it is possible to directly communicate with consumers, manage customers, send catalogs and proposals, close sales, and much more. However, faced with this new purchase-and-sale relationship format, businesses need to ask the question: is your company taking advantage and exploring all of the vast potential WhatsApp offers?
Much more than a chat
Here are some practical tips about selling via WhatsApp, improving communication with customers, and boosting sales:
Understand how WhatsApp works
Understanding all of WhatsApp’s features allows the creation of effective communication strategies. Knowing how to use applications available in WhatsApp Business, such as payment through the application, makes buying and selling processes more agile. You can read more about streamlining the selling process here.
Know your customers
It is essential that businesses know how to identify who their customers are, build their profiles, and understand their preferences. Knowing and analyzing the history of a chat with a customer is crucial information that can lead to a great understanding of customers and increase sales if this information is used in a business-efficient way. “Old” messages can also hold important information about customers and provide valuable opportunities for rapid personalization, ensuring the right customer is targeted with the right pitch or product at exactly the right time.
Sales assertiveness
The more you know your consumer, the better you can serve them. By understanding your consumers’ preferences, it is possible to understand their consumption habits, such as the kinds of brands they choose to interact with. This makes it simpler for businesses, ensuring more agility and assertiveness in sales.
The reality is already here, with major brands from VW and beyond turning to Whatsapp as a powerful new sales channel to gain an advantage by better serving customers. The first step is understanding how Whatsapp works and the full strength that its business features offer. Embracing the platform and understanding how it works results in real-time sales information to personalize a pitch to the customer on their preferred platform. That ability to personalize separates the brands a business’s customers like and the ones they love, it’s up to brands to act now and be the latter, and the sales will follow!
