Gone are the days when email and phone were the reigning king and queen of Customer Support. 

Today’s consumers are all about quick and convenient interactions, so businesses need to keep up and give them the options that are best suited to their needs. Among social media platforms and different messaging apps, WhatsApp has stood out, in recent years, as one of the best channels for Customer Support, thanks to its automation and payment capabilities, among other features that make it ideals for company/consumer communications. 

A lot of businesses have already adopted WhatsApp into their support operations, so let’s have a look at some of the best examples across different industries. 

Hotelbeds

Hotelbeds are global leaders in the travel tech space. Their cloud-based technology platforms receive 4 billion daily searches and offer access to a global network of travel products.

As the pandemic hit, Hotelbeds’ focus shifted to its customers and partners, and, like most travel operators, it started announcing COVID travel updates and policies on its website. However, since the updates were sudden and, at times, very last-minute, customers and partners weren’t always receiving the information as quickly or as clearly as they needed. So they ended up contacting the support team.

In an effort to reduce the strain on its Support agents and maintain service quality, Hotelbeds partnered with Landbot to deploy chatbots for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, allowing the user to initiate a conversation on either platform. Even though requests were surging, the team used the chatbot to self-serve support requests and reduce the service backlog.

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In just four weeks, the chatbots were developed and implemented on several Hotelbeds websites and channels. In total, Hotelbeds automated customer service for over 13,000 conversations and handled 350k requests via the bots. 

Kayros

Another one of our clients, Kayros, also automated support operations via WhatsApp to support customers during the pandemic. 

Kayros is an Argentinian startup that provides support for clinical analysis patients through digital channels such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Similarly to other business sectors, it was struggling with a flood of patient requests when the pandemic began, which put a lot of stress on its Support Team. The agents were working 24/7, responding to a lot of queries that were mostly repetitive. 

With Landbot’s solution, Kayros implemented FAQ and self-serve WhatsApp chatbots that were able to support customers while reducing the team’s backlog. At the same time, the chatbots kept a human takeover feature, which gave customers the option to transfer to a human and reduced patient confusion and anxiety. 

All in all, the WhatsApp chatbots were able to complete over 50% of customer conversations. 

Plum

Plum is an employee benefits platform that provides group medical cover for organizations in India. Among other things, it helps businesses support their employees whenever needed and allows them to digitally file their medical claims. 

In a post-COVID era, group health insurance is becoming a must-have product in India, so Plum saw an opportunity to transform the employee healthcare experience using a tech-first approach. In the process, they realized that gathering and entering data is a big task that is highly manual and repetitive in its nature, which increases the chance of human error. 

Plum knew they needed to automate the process from start to finish. They needed to build a self-serve system where customers could upload the documents required to start a claim, making it easier for the operations team to access and review these documents, initiating the claim process with the insurance providers, and eliminating emails from the picture altogether.

With Landbot, Plum allowed users not only to file their claims, but also to download their health ID cards and consult doctors, all via their preferred channel — WhatsApp. 

As a result, Plum was able to file 400 claims per month, which represented 80% of claims filed via WhatsApp and resulted in 85% of bot users opting in for future communications on this channel. 

PcComponentes

PcComponentes is a Spanish tech accessories business that offers a wide range of components, including batteries, central processing units, and video cards. 

In an effort to find better, more modern ways to connect and interact with customers, the company turned to WhatsApp as a way to improve its shopping and customer support experience, while also catering to a growing younger audience. 

PcComponentes built and deployed a digital assistant on WhatsApp to handle frequently asked questions, which in turn would reduce the strain on its Support team. The solution worked by allowing shoppers to opt-in to WhatsApp by clicking on an icon on the online store’s product pages when browsing from a mobile device. 

This WhatsApp solution resulted in a 2.3x increase in agent productivity and a 96% reduction in the time it took them to solve customer queries. 

Pelephone 

Pelephone is an Israeli mobile network operator with 2.3 million subscribers in the country. 

Established in 1986, the company had always provided customer support over the phone, but found itself in need of coming up with a solution that, at the same time, was more engaging for customers and also reduced response times and operational costs. 

So, Pelephone resorted to an automated WhatsApp-powered digital assistant to respond to customer requests. The chatbot was able to reply to these requests, and, in the event that it wasn’t, Pelephone provided WhatsApp training to its agents so that they could step in when customers needed it. 

Thanks to its WhatsApp adoption, Pelephone reduced the strain on its call centers, with 37% of calls being redirected to the messaging app. The company also saw a 30% increase in agent productivity, with agents going from an average of 60 inquiries handled to 102. 

Oi

Another telecommunications company, Oi is one of Brazil’s largest fixed and mobile communications providers. 

The company was founded in 1998, and in 2020, it was still sending physical invoices to customers. That year, faced with a mail strike in the country, Oi needed to find a digital solution to keep sending bills to its customers in a timely manner. 

Because WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in Brazil, Oi developed Joice, a WhatsApp-run digital assistant that served as a customer self-support platform. 

Customers could opt-in to the WhatsApp channel by visiting Oi’s call center or other service channels since the company promoted it heavily on its website, email, and contact pages. Joice could then send customers documents as well as handle other customer queries. 

The efforts paid off, and, in 2020 alone, Oi saw a 96% delivery rate in WhatsApp messages and an 89% read rate in WhatsApp messages. In total, 350,000 customers each month received their invoices via the messaging app, which resulted in $6 million in cost savings that year. 

Claroshop

Claroshop is a Mexican eCommerce platform and marketplace whose product offerings range from groceries to fashion, electronics, and more. 

In a business area where competition is fierce, the company wanted to find a way to stand out from competitors, focussing heavily on providing a better customer experience than other similar platforms. During the pandemic, online sales increased, but so did customer inquiries, and Claroshop needed a quick solution to offer this superior experience while taking the load off its Support Team. 

They developed and launched a WhatsApp digital assistant called Clara, which was integrated into Clarashop’s website as a support channel, so that it was easily accessible. On WhatsApp, customers were then able to find answers to FAQs, track their orders and make payments. 

In just four months of using Clara, Clarashop saw a 4x increase in agent productivity, and a 35% decrease in calls from customers wanting to track their orders, with 18% of the total of calls being deflected to WhatsApp. 

Conclusion

As these examples illustrate, WhatsApp has become a key factor in customer support operations and one that can improve customer satisfaction and reduce costs across businesses in different sectors. 

So, no matter if you’re dealing with a surge in customer requests and are looking for a quick-to-implement solution or are in need of digitalizing your processes, WhatsApp automation is the way to go.  

Make sure you don’t fall behind and get started with WhatsApp today.