Thursday, 2 June 2016

Customers taking time to download your new App? Get on WhatsApp with them!



Every new businessman, feels that building an app for customer service, is gateway to success. With this mindset, businesses spend thousands of dollars and time in coming up with a sleek, super-efficient app, compatible on multiple platforms. 

How Customers Look at Your New App: 
However, the real challenge in getting returns from app lies in making customers download your app and use it.  Especially, if you are an emerging or localized business (taxi, food ordering, grocery, service station, hospital, taxi, real estate etc.), customers think this way about your app:

 "Sould I install app for each restaurant in town? Why should I learn new UI every time?"
"I need to visit many doctors, why should I install apps of all the hospitals in town?" 
"For hiring a taxi, why should I have 10 apps downloaded, for each taxi service?"
"My city has 50 online grocery stores. Do you expect me to download 50 apps?"
"I don’t know this company…not sure, what data they might access from my phone?"
Bottom-line… Today, no customer is really interested in slowing down his smartphone, for installing an app, from a new company.  
So, to ensure the investment done on app development brings some results, we end up paying, another thousands of dollars on marketing the App. Even after that, we see fewer app downloads and not enough orders via app. Already going through this? Or seen someone go through this?

Why WhatsApp?
Growth of your client base is not because of a sleek app. It’s because of your nature of services, the delivery & pricing model, your excellent service repeatedly.  Your investment in new business must be focused around improving these aspects and not building an expensive app, to start with. Initially, you can focus on less costly customer acquiring channels like Phone call, Email, SMS and the most popular with customers now a days… WhatsApp.
WhatsApp is free for customers locally as well as internationally. Customer can send requests as text as well as media files (e.g. photo of grocery list, a broken product to be serviced etc.) to company. Customers are using the UI that they are most comfortable with. Customer can send requests round the clock. How convenient!
Benefits to your business using WhatsApp? 

Huge cost saving with more customers. You can provide customer service with just a single WhatsApp enabled phone. No investment on multiple phones and phone operators.  Whatsapp phone number is genuine.  So, no need to pay for an OTP authentication service, especially if you accept COD payment. For regular customers, who already know you, you can minimize orders via market place app who charge 10-30% commission on orders.
Customer service is even more easy on WhatsApp using Bag A Chat customer helpdesk solution. This solution is same as the automated Email or SMS based helpdesk, except for it connects to WhatsApp. If you have an existing CRM/helpdesk tool for customer service, then Bag A Chat solution connects WhatsApp to your service tool. So, your service portal remains the same for customer representatives. For details visit, http://bagachat.com/customer_helpdesk.html or contact info@bagachat.com to book a demo.
Investment on App will help eventually. But, the more your business grows, the more your customers will be happy to download the app! It’s not the other way round!