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Discover our comprehensive comparison of Time2Chat, SMS, RCS and WhatsApp features. Compare the strengths of each mobile channel at a glance to find the one that's perfect for your needs.
Elsa Paparone
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Conversational commerce is transforming and improving the way brands interact with their customers, building longer-lasting exchange relationships.
This new conversational approach to customer relations allows you to start a conversation with your users, wherever they may be, by sending messages directly to their cell phones via a variety of channels (RCS, SMS, WhatsApp).
A variety of tools (online platforms, chatbots, product carousels, etc.) are available to professionals, enabling them to offer content that is richer and more dynamic than ever. This evolution not only adds a new dimension to the customer experience, but also reshuffles the cards in your sales strategy.
Today we take you on a journey of discovery into conversational commerce.
Conversational commerce is characterized by the use by companies of new communication technologies such as chatbots integrated into messaging applications, two-way SMS two-way and other voice assistants.
It enables professionals to ensure personalized interactions with their customers, but above all to lead the exchange with your customers and accompany them throughout the sales funnel during a session/conversation.
These conversations can easily be automated, ensuring efficiency and speed for the company. What's more, the use of these different customer relations channels, sometimes in concert, leads to an overall improvement in the customer experience and the ability for operational staff to analyze the data collected. The integration of a multi-channel sales strategy rapidly accelerates the sales process.
In short, the principle of conversational commerce is to enable your customers to carry out all their purchasing actions in a single channel, without having to leave it to land on your website or an online payment platform. It is therefore important to identify in advance which conversational messaging is preferred by your targets to ensure the purchase of your products.
In recent years, corporate communication via SMS has exploded. Nowadays, customers don't just want to be kept informed by SMS, they also want to talk to companies via these popular messages. New legislation forcing companies to use 09 numbers has led to the emergence of a new feature called Time2Chat.
Visit Time2Chatalso known as SMS conversational, is a mobile solution specially designed for exchanges between brands and their customers. This product combines SMS and voice. Benefiting from the native presence of SMS, available on all phones even without an Internet connection, it combines a number of advantages for a variety of uses (appointment confirmation, parcel delivery...). Communicate with your users via a messaging system that's well-known and popular with the general public. Time2Chat offers a toll-free number linked to your business. So your customers can respond directly to the number (09) assigned to you. It's also possible to plugging a chatbot (like the one proposed by smsmode© and dydu, powered by artificial intelligence 😉)
RCS (Rich Communication Service), or SMS 2.0, is a messaging protocol developed by Google that enables you to share messages with your customers featuring enriched media content (images, videos, GIFs, carousels, maps, buttons, etc.). Just like its predecessor, there's no need for an additional application to receive these messages: they're received directly in the native messaging applications of smartphones(both Android and Apple). Its professional use (called RBM for Riche Business Messaging) enables you to engage in conversations with your customers from a Google-validated brand profile, a certification that can be identified and recognized by your users.
With 100 billion messages a day, WhatsApp is a channel that is very popular with users. WhatsApp Business is the version dedicated to the business world. This channel enables you to reach your customers on their mobiles, via the most popular instant messaging application of the moment. Once your profile has been validated by Meta (Facebook), you're ready for enriched conversations! Please note that WhatsApp Business is designed more for customer service or "pull marketing" (initiated by the online user). It's customary to include a chatbot to answer your users' recurring questions.
Recent studies show that conversational commerce has been well received by users, becoming part of their daily routine. For example, they prefer to be informed of the most important updates to their favorite service by SMS, which they are much more likely to open than a conventional e-mail. Engagement rates and sales seem to be rising steadily. This proposal for an exchange channel and an "upgraded" customer experience at your fingertips is seductive. Its use seems to be taking root in customer habits.
Find out more about our major study based on 745 million mailings SMS.
Technological advances in conversational commerce will benefit companies that know how best to integrate them into their sales strategy. Chatbots, SMS conversational, are all tools that will enable brands to offer a more fluid, personalized and responsive customer experience and purchasing process. Recent figures show that these new instant messaging tools are becoming increasingly popular.
Try out our SMS platform and benefit from 20 free test credits, with no obligation.
Romain Didelot
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Opting for the integration of a chatbot in WhatsApp Business messaging means choosing the #1 ally for customer relations in an application made for 2.0 conversation. WhatsApp connects billions of users. Thanks to WhatsApp Business, companies now have a multi-functional channel for engaging their customers. Using chatbots within WhatsApp enables you to stand out quickly and on a massive scale. This tool alone can change your brand image. A conversational bot helps your support team, engages your customers and gives you an omnipresence capable of boosting your sales processes. Follow our guide to implementing a WhatsApp Business chatbot implementation.
WhatsApp has launched WhatsApp Business, a free downloadable mobile app for small businesses. The app energizes your mobile communication and takes it to the next level by helping you connect with your customers via message, engage in conversations with them, showcase your products and answer your customers' questions. With WhatsApp Business, you can create a catalog to showcase your products and use special features to automate, sort and reply to messages. By using WhatsApp Business APIAPI, you can also connect a chatbot to your business accounts.
Marketing is tightly controlled on WhatsApp Business. To guarantee a quality customer experience, push marketing is not possible. You can sell your products on WhatsApp (a payment system is integrated), but the exchange must be initiated by the consumer. Only template messages are initiated by the brand, but they are subject to prior validation by Meta before they can be sent to customers.
Billing is per conversation, with a lower cost when the conversation is initiated by the user. Once the conversation has started, everyone can interact for 24 hours. During this window, messages sent by the user to the brand, as well as those sent by the brand to the user, are free.
The model chosen by WhatsApp for its business app is very user-friendly, making it both a service and an ideal channel for customer relations. The integration of a chatbot is therefore more than relevant.
A chatbot is a program capable of interacting with humans via messaging, a web platform or a mobile application.
This conversational robot, considered AI in some advanced cases, "replaces" the customer advisor for users, most often during the first contact. Chatbots are ideal for solving simple problems, answering frequently asked questions or clearly defining customer needs before a human agent intervenes .
In short, chatbots are expert tools for easily enhancing your customer experience via message.
While the use of chatbots is widespread on web solutions or Facebook Messenger, it is not yet extremely present on WhatsApp Business. On the user side, it works like all conversational chatbots: people communicate with it on WhatsApp via the messaging interface, as if they were talking to a real person. In most cases, the chatbot is simply a set of automated responses organized in a tree structure that simulates a human conversation.
But for truly convincing results and a better customer experience, it's best to opt for an AI-enhanced chatbot. This is the case with the chatbot we offer in collaboration with our partner Dydu, an expert conversational AI startup that offers a chatbot based on natural language understanding, artificial intelligence and generative AI, for a seamless customer experience.
While it's "possible" to build a response tree on WhatsApp Business yourself, the service has many limitations that you should be aware of before embarking on a development that won't offer all the advantages of a true conversational bot. Building the bot yourself can be tricky and time-consuming, which is why you need real assistance.
With the chatbot, you win on all fronts:
Customer relations involve a fair amount of repetition, so being able to entrust these tasks to a virtual agent is a big plus. Chatbots are available H24, never worn out by answering the same questions, and insensitive to the annoyance that can sometimes arise from a dissatisfied customer.
What's more, exchanges on WhatsApp Business are charged by the conversation, which means that on this messaging service more than any other, resolving a customer request within 24 hours saves money. The use of a well-configured chatbot that can respond to messages all the time is also advantageous from this point of view.
WhatsApp limits commercial approaches, prohibiting outbound marketing. The use of messaging for businesses is therefore reserved for customer relations. But not every customer has a problem. Some will contact you in search of a product. If you want to be there for them quickly and at the right time, this is the ideal tool.
All companies can use these tools, as all corporate functions are concerned. Whether it's a question of retrieving a purchase order, a forgotten password, a customer address... All support departments, from accounting and IT to general services and logistics, are confronted with recurring questions that AI can handle efficiently.
The chatbot can also be a true digital collaborator, influencing the well-being and efficiency of your employees . The possibilities are endless, and the data that can be transferred to your robot is virtually infinite.
Management, HRHRIS, stress management ...
These diverse issues in a large company can be easily managed bythe robot's artificial intelligence. These "Business to Employee" (B2E) applications are available on several channels, including WhatsApp, and are able to support employees in small, medium-sized and larger companies.
Many platforms can help you build a WhatsApp bot, but not all of them will help you get your account validated for access to the service's API. And without WhatsApp validation, you won't be able to launch your chatbot.
It's possible to create a company profile on your own, or even set up a basic chatbot without an API, but doing so without support is very time-consuming, and processing a large number of requests may prove impossible.
Creating a chatbot yourself means writing all the answers to a huge tree structure and selecting (on a smartphone) all the trigger keywords.
To access the WhatsApp Business API and send large volumes of messages, it's best to use a service provider recognized by Facebook. WhatsApp is an application that aims to inspire trust. It takes to heart the verification of all business profiles to guarantee its users a quality experience and avoid SPAM and phishing at all costs. Validating a profile can therefore be arduous, and authorizing use of the API even more so.
Choosing us also means making the process of creating your company accounts, and therefore your WhatsApp chatbot, easier.
By using our WhatsApp chatbot solution, bot development can begin immediately, while awaiting WhatsApp approval. This means you can save time and have a working bot as soon as you get your API key.
Like all bots, our solution lets you create conversation flows, but it does so with the help of Artificial Intelligence. Its AI is based on LLMs (Large Language Models), like OpenAI's Chat GPT. In other words, advanced technology for human language recognition and dialogue assistance.
A dedicated, experienced team is with you every step of the way, whether you want to set up a high-performance, easy-to-use response tree, or begin a machine learning process dedicated to your business. We'll help you rapidly create the most efficient conversation flow capable of responding to +90% of requests.
By choosing smsmode©, get your company profile validated quickly and enjoy all the benefits of a WhatsApp chatbot:
The first step for real chatbots is to have a connection to the WhatsApp Business API. Secondly, you need to meet certain prerequisites. The purpose of the chatbot is important to WhatsApp. It is forbidden to use a WhatsApp chatbot for marketing messages, WhatsApp chatbots are reserved for customer service. Also, at any time, switching to a human agent must be possible.
The stages of creation :
WhatsApp Business is expected to become a preferred customer service channel for users. Its intuitive use allows users to get answers quickly and at any time. On the brand side, WhatsApp Business is a great way to build loyalty. It allows you to adopt a personal communication and keep in touch. With a chatbot, your presence on WhatsApp Business is constant. You have the opportunity to relieve your customer service and at the same time give the consumer a 360° support. This will fully satisfy your customers and boost your sales.
Try out our SMS platform and benefit from 20 free test credits, with no obligation.
THE smsmode© blog ©
7 December 2021
Continue reading " Infographic: The New Mobile Messaging Channels 2021 "
The blog : smsmode©
The blog : smsmode©
The idea? Automate your customer conversations via a conversational bot to save time, staff and money!
Continue reading " smsmode© x fAIbrik: Plug a chatbot into your WhatsApp Business "
The blog : smsmode©
The blog : smsmode©
