WhatsApp Business Vs WhatsApp Business API
By Niharika Ayyagari / In WhatsApp / July 10, 2019 / 6 Min read
By Niharika Ayyagari / In WhatsApp / July 10, 2019 / 6 Min read
It’s easy to get confused between a WhatsApp Business API and a WhatsApp Business Account. Especially if you’re in the market for a WhatsApp Chatbot.
In this blog piece, we’ll do a deep dive into what both are, how they’re similar and why they’re different.
An application built by the WhatsApp Team, WhatsApp Business is an app mainly aimed towards small and medium enterprises. Its main purpose was to facilitate better customer support and for an easier way for businesses to connect with the customers.
WhatsApp Business Account- Sending away messages.
The WhatsApp Business App also allows you to generate leads, deliver important notifications and collect feedback from your customers.
Think of your WhatsApp Business Account like a livechat tool, with limited functionality.
You can set up away messages to communicate to your customers that you’re away and will get back to them shortly.
Automating away messages – WhatsApp Business Account.
And you’re good to go! You can have your business account ready within just a few minutes.
For that, you can use WhatsApp’s Business API’s.
First, let’s understand what an API is.
API is an acronym for Application Programming Interface.
The connection between various platforms, through APIs.
It basically allows two sets of software to form an integration, in simpler words, an API allows two or more software to connect with each other.
Let’s take an example. Imagine you’re planning a trip to the Mauritius islands and you want to book a reservation in a hotel, you will visit Trivago to book a room. The process which allows you to access Trivago’s site and make a reservation is possible because of API.
The connection between the platforms is made possible by an API.
API- Ordering food from your favorite restaurant.
Now, let’s understand what a WhatsApp Business API is.
WhatsApp’s Business API’s enables companies to converse with their large customer base. While a livechat-style solution is great if you have only a handful of customers who want to talk to you at a given point of time, you need something more robust as a large firm.
Since it’s impossible to manually answer and communicate with customers at scale, WhatsApp Business API’s allow you to automate your conversations and send bulk notifications.
A WhatsApp Chatbot makes this possible.
WhatsApp Business API- WhatsApp chatbots.
While WhatsApp’s Business App could only automate a single response for after your business hours, a Chatbot is a lot more powerful. A customer based in Australia operates in a different time zone than you are if you’re an US-based company.
But that shouldn’t mean that an Australian customer should be treated without the same passion and personalization as an American customer.
Using a WhatsApp Chatbot (powered by the APIs), you can automate your most frequently asked queries and answer your customers’ questions around the clock. This way, your business is truly international.
If the bot is unable to answer a question, your agent can pick up the conversation seamlessly and answer any additional customer queries.
WhatsApp’s Business API’s are divided into Template API’s and Text API’s. Each other these APIs powers a specific campaign.
To dive deeper into this concept, let’s get to know what the different kinds of campaigns are. There are three kinds of campaigns a company can run on WhatsApp.
Now that we know about the kinds of campaigns, we can get better clarity on Template API’s and Text API’s.
Template APIs power your outbound campaigns. You can send templates in the form of payment confirmation, notifications, etc. to the customers.
Text API’s power inbound campaigns. They allow you to reply back to your customer with ease.
WhatsApp is careful about not allowing companies to turn their platform into a wasteground of spam. Outbound campaigns cannot be used to send promotional content.
WhatsApp has been very careful about giving access to WhatsApp Business API’s. It has only given access to a selected few. Third-party platforms like Verloop make it possible for you to get access to WhatsApp API’s.
Read more about WhatsApp Chatbots here.
It all depends on the number of customers you’re targetting and the nature of our business.
Content and Marketing, Verloop.io
Prefers texts over calls, unless the call is about AI, food, dogs, or travel.