Home » Whatsapp Bring its enterprise API to the cloud to fasten adoption

Whatsapp Bring its enterprise API to the cloud to fasten adoption

Whatsapp business Api

by sachinsb

A new, cloud-based version of WhatsApp’s WhatsApp Business API, housed on Facebook’s servers, will go into beta testing today. The company claims that by moving to the cloud, the setup time for integrating with the API would decrease from weeks to only minutes, enabling businesses to switch to WhatsApp’s API platform more quickly in order to communicate with their customers who have chosen to receive their messages.

Over the past few years, the business has steadily expanded its Business API, making it one of the main ways the otherwise free messaging app will generate income from its service. Businesses currently pay WhatsApp on a per-message basis, with different charges depending on the volume and location of messages delivered. The current (non-cloud based) API has been adopted by tens of thousands of major companies, including, among others, Vodafone, Coppel, Sears Mexico, BMW, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Iberia Airlines, Itau Brazil, and Bank Mandiri.

There will still be support for this older version of the API, and there are no current intentions by WhatsApp to compel users to switch to the new cloud-based version. It is free to utilise both APIs.

Businesses using the WhatsApp Business API typically collaborate with a solutions provider like Zendesk or Twilio, which makes it easier to integrate the API with the client’s backend systems. In these situations, WhatsApp frequently makes up just a small portion of the business’ consumer communications plan. They might also suggest using other channels for communication with clients, like email, SMS and other messaging apps, and more. But historically, this API integration procedure has taken some time, sometimes even several weeks or even a month.

Many businesses don’t want to wait so long while getting up and running on new systems because the epidemic has expedited a move to internet purchasing that was already happening before COVID.

By providing a more simpler and quicker technical integration procedure, the new cloud-based API seeks to ease things on that front.

Several dozen of WhatsApp’s current solution provider partners, including Zendesk in the U.S., Take in Brazil, and MessageBird in the E.U., will first participate in the beta testing of the new API.

According to Zendesk’s VP of Product, Mike Gozzo, “The Cloud API is a huge step in simplifying the complexity of using WhatsApp for both service providers like us and our clients.” We will be able to concentrate more on supporting the numerous rich features made available via the API if we don’t have to bother about hosting WhatsApp Clients, he continued.

The introduction coincides with a period of change in how customers interact with businesses. According to WhatsApp, more than 175 million users message businesses every single day, and this trend is expanding, especially in non-U.S. markets like India, Brazil, and Indonesia. More generally, WhatsApp is noticing a shift in customer demand toward texting rather than 1-800 numbers, where users must traverse phone systems and wait on hold. Clients find this bothersome. Additionally, operating call centres can be costly for enterprises.

WhatsApp users prefer messaging to calls, according to a survey they conducted themselves last year. It discovered that 75% of users in some of its biggest nations expressed a desire for the ability to message companies. And 68 percent of respondents indicated they were “more likely” to conduct business with or buy something from a company if they could message them.

Another way that WhatsApp has benefited from this trend is through. Click-to-chat advertisements that appear in Instagram or on Facebook’s News Feed and allow users to instantly message a company on WhatsApp represent its second important source of income.

With its WhatsApp Business App, the company targets the small business market and enables mom-and-pop shops and other neighbourhood businesses to access clients online. Since its inception in 2018, there are now 50 million users worldwide.

WhatsApp had been working on various API enhancements prior to today’s Cloud API introduction. These included enabling companies to respond to incoming messages more rapidly and supporting various message types, such as out-of-stock warnings, for customers who opted in. (In the past, WhatsApp’s API was concentrated on “timely” alerts, such as sending out a flight’s boarding pass.)

Customers who communicate with businesses, according to the company, will notice an instructional message at the beginning of their conversation informing them that this is a different experience from messaging with friends or family (which is fully encrypted). Depending on the options supported by the company, customers can select how they want to cease connections in a variety of ways. It could be possible for them to opt-out by simply texting the company to stop or going to the corporate website to make a change. However, it could simplest to simply block the company in the app.be

With a few select partners, the Cloud API launches in a limited beta today. These partners will soon onboard their first customers.

WhatsApp does, however, want to start making the API available to other solution providers and organisations directly in 2022.

 

 

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