Using WhatsApp for Business: Brazil Leads, SA, India, Ireland, Spain, Malaysia Next Best

WhatsApp was founded in the year 2009 and in just six years it has succeeded in acquiring 1 billion users worldwide. No other instant messenger has been able to achieve this phenomenal growth in such a short period of time. Moreover, about 1 million new users register everyday so you can assume the potential reach it will have in the coming few years.South Africa is the top country using WhatsApp with highest % of online adults in this market.

When it comes to business, Brazil leads the way. With 56% WhatsApp penetration among mobile internet users, Brazil still has 60% of mobile users who use pre-paid plans as per a report by Statista. WhatsApp is the single most used app in Brazil with over 95 million users and 93% of country’s population. The core reason being the cost-effectiveness and no obligatory monthly mobile bill contracts for those who cannot afford to spend on those expensive plans, especially the youth and the poor.

Large multi-national corporations and small businesses too have already started use of WhatsApp for business in Brazil. Telefonica, one the of largest telephone companies in Brazil uses WhatsApp for customer service. Real estate firms sell properties to middle class population using WhatsApp. Right from online shopping to flight booking, everything that people need has a source to get it done through WhatsApp.

Brazil is one of the best example of a country using WhatsApp for business. WhatsApp in Brazil is not just limited to customer service, Mitsubishi Motors used WhatsApp in 2014 for pre-sales tasks such as providing car color, models and other details to potential customers and if the customer liked it, they were then directed to a local dealer for the test drive or purchase.

Around 1 in every 5 companies in Brazil use WhatsApp for advertising and marketing. Itau Bank is one of the largest bank in Brazil that uses WhatsApp for communication with their customers. Many hotels and resorts accept bookings and orders using WhatsApp. There are many other functions that are carried out routinely on WhatsApp in Brazil.

Speaking about other countries, US is bit slow to adapt to WhatsApp as of now. Germany, UK, Italy, Ireland, Argentina, Spain, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Australia are showing signs of quick adaptation. 83% of teens in Germany use WhatsApp, India has more than 70 million users and Italy, Argentina has more than 83% of mobile users using WhatsApp. UAE too has 77% social media users that use WhatsApp for communication.

To sum it up all, using WhatsApp for business seems to offer numerous opportunities to businesses all over the world. A business can absolutely not afford to neglect using WhatsApp for advertising, marketing, sales, project management or customer service. Bag A Chat provides a seamless way of using WhatsApp for business with an integration of customized application that suits every business need. Find out more here how you can use Bag A Chat app with WhatsApp for business.

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Real Estate Agents: 5 Tips To Do Better Business on WhatsApp & Hike

Popular instant messengers such as WhatsApp and Hike are no wonder the most chat applications used by real estate professionals all over the world for one simple reason -  all the prospective clients (buyers and sellers) are easily available on these free messengers.

Real estate agents, brokers or realty consultants need to communicate with their prospects a lot more than anyone else and have to constantly keep in touch with their prospective leads. WhatsApp, Hike is considered as the best medium by them to remain connected with their prospects by sharing real estate information every now and then.

How Bag A Chat can help real estate agents do better business on WhatsApp and Hike?

Bag A Chat app acts as an add-on for WhatsApp and Hike and enables you to do business tasks that WhatsApp and Hike does not support. Here are some prominent features of Bag A Chat that can really boost your real estate business on WhatsApp and Hike.

1.Save only important property related information received from prospects

A real estate agent or broker receives enquires from prospects such as ‘needed 1 bhk flat on rent in so and so area’, ‘plot for sale’, ‘bunglow on rent’, along with property details & photos from various people. To keep a track of this information in future, you can selectively save this information using Bag A Chat app and not all the messages. So, you can never miss this information when required after a few days or months.

2. Quick search required property related information from prospects

Now that you have saved hundreds of real estate enquiries on chat messages from buyers and sellers, say after a month, one of a buyer calls you back asks about an update on his requirement for example ‘1 bhk flat on rent in thane, Mumbai’. You can quickly search using his name, group, labels, date range or text such as Thane, Mumbai or 1 bhk and get all the related messages quickly to address his enquiry immediately. Let your client know that you are working on their requirement without asking them repetitively for same information.

3. Set reminders to property related enquiries received in chat messages

Suppose, one of your client has raised you an enquiry about buying a hotel in Delhi on WhatsApp or Hike and you know you have someone who has this property for sale. You can quickly set a reminder or alert to this message to call that person at a certain time. This can really help you close the deals quickly without losing the business for more high worth and possible deals.

4. Access property enquiries from anywhere on the go

You don’t have to stick to your mobile for referring to your saved property enquiries all the time. Once you have uploaded all the important property chat conversation on your cloud Google Drive and Dropbox using Bag A Chat app, you can easily access from anywhere on PC, Laptop and tablets.

5. Add labels and organize chat messages from clients and group of agents

As a real estate broker, it is indeed very much important to work with other agents to share property details and enquiries and close the deals in quick time. It is often difficult and time-consuming to work alone and search for properties and prospects single-handedly. Using Bag A Chat app you can quickly organize property details including photos and videos from a group of agents and label them accordingly by client name, property name, agent name or deal type such as buy or sale deal.

There are many more features other than above that can really help you boost your real estate business on WhatsApp or Hike using Bag A Chat app. Successful real estate agents or brokers always use latest technologies and apps to boost their business and close more deals than others who rely on just personal connections.

Make Bag A Chat app your real estate companion and see the difference it makes to your business. Install the app now from Google Play Store, and yes, it’s free. However, if you are a big real estate agency or company and willing to get a customized Bag A Chat app for your own business, then you can get it so. Simply write to info@bagachat.com or visit www.bagachat.com/business for more details.

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How Bag A Chat App Can Help You Manage Your Projects Better?

With a strong emphasis on efficiency, performance, and reporting, being a project manager today is significantly different from what it was before 2005. With so many changes happening around all the time, it is always possible to face project failures.

The major factors for project failures are lack of involvement from senior management, capturing time and costs against projects, non-usage of any project management software, lack of knowledge about tools related to project management, lack of project management training and inability to deploy costly project management software. The project management industry is continuously evolving and the role of a Project Manager is always challenged.

Why Use Instant Messengers such as WhatsApp & Hike for Project Tracking?

Apart from being free and easy to use, instant messengers offer the convenience of being connected to your customers 24x7. These instant messengers such as WhatsApp & Hike can affordably be used in project management in following ways

1. One to One Chat – You message back and forth with project team members
2. Group chat – You can chat with two and more people at a time, up to hundred team members at a time with you and each other.
3. Broadcast – You can broadcast a project update to all members without allowing them to reply.
4. Calling – You can instantly call any of member
5. Share documents – You can easily share documents such as PDFs, flow charts, excel logs, videos with your team members back and forth.
6. Use with Web – You can also use web to access chat messengers such as WhatsApp.

How Bag A Chat App helps you with Project Tracking on WhatsApp & Hike?

Bag A Chat is an innovative app that works as an add-on for instant messengers such as WhatsApp, Hike and more. Bag A Chat enables you to make an enhanced use of business chat messages on instant messengers. If you are using instant messengers for project tracking, Bag A Chat app should assist you in managing your projects better in following ways –

1. Selectively save only project/status updates in chat messages

As a project manager, you may get hundreds of project updates from each of your team member. In that case, there is always a possibility of these messages being mixed up with your personal chat messages. In this scenario, selectively saving project updates becomes easy using Bag A Chat app.

2. Organize project chat messages under labels

As a project manager, you may be simultaneously working on many projects. In that case, it is very essential to maintain the project updates differently for different projects. You can easily organize chat messages under labels such as Project 1, Project 2, Project 3 or Accounting Project, Sales Project, HR Project, Development Project or anything that is convenient to you. Assign labels that you can easily remember and relate.

3. Smooth vendor management

Vendors and suppliers often send invoices, product images and quotations on WhatsApp chat. As a project manager, you can label them smartly as ‘Invoices’, ‘Purchases’, Store PO, Invoices, Product Images, Supplier Name, Vendor Name for easy and quick reference for future discussions, follow-ups and payments.

4. Project Data Privacy and Cloud backup

Bag A Chat app lets you maintain project privacy by saving these messages on cloud and eliminating the risk of images, text messages and media files being deleted from gallery or messenger. In addition, no one other than you can access these messages on your mobile phone when they are saved in the app.

5. Smartly Search Project Messages 

When you have received hundreds of project chat messages from hundreds of team members, it is not easy to search for a particular message. With Bag A Chat app, you can smartly search messages with multiple search criteria. Save you time and effort using this super-fast way to search chat messages.

This may not be all for you as a project manager, you may have more needs in your project such as integrating chat communication with your ERP, CRM, SRM or any other internal business software, a collaborative view of business communication, management dashboards or any other business insights based on project chat messages. In that case, Bag A Chat can customize a solution to adapt to your business needs. See in more detail here how Bag A Chat works in project tracking or write to info@bagachat.com and we can get in touch with you quickly.

Check out our next blog post for real life business examples of using Bag A Chat app for project tracking in various business segments.

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5 Business Benefits of Analytical Reports Created on Chat Messages from WhatsApp, Hike & Other Messengers

The popularity of WhatsApp is ever increasing since Facebook bought the instant messaging service for $19 million. More and more businesses are already using popular instant messengers such as WhatsApp or Hike for customer service, business support, e-commerce, official communication, and general enquiries. Countries such as South Africa, Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Mexico, Spain, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong are among the top users of WhatsApp, Hike and other instant messaging applications.

Instant messengers such as WhatsApp being a free platform, businesses are thriving to make best use of these platforms and gain maximum exposure and reduce advertising costs. These apps are a great way for a local business to communicate with its customers. As a business owner, if you are using WhatsApp or Hike for customer service, business support, trading, retailing or banking and not analyzing the chat messages then you are losing the important insights for your business.

It is not just about marketing/sending/receiving chat messages to and from customers but also getting insights on how effective is your business communication. Here are five business benefits that you can derive by creating reports based on WhatsApp chat messages.

1. Feedback : Discover if you are making your customers happy

When customers send you feedback on popular instant chat messengers such as WhatsApp, Hike or any other messenger, you immediately come to know if the customer is happy with your service or not. As a business, it is very important to track the customer feedback over a period of time when you are dealing with thousands of customers.

2. Responsiveness: Know if your customers check your messages

When a business sends any messages to a new customer or an existing customer base, it is very important to know who have really checked the messages and when. This is a very important insight from a business perspective, as it lets you know the best time suitable for sending the messages and know which of the customers in your group are most active and responsive to your messages.

3. Chat Comparison: Learn what works and what doesn’t

As a business, you may send out a friendly festive greeting or a new offer and discount or an update about the product or a service on a regular basis. The message could even be about a same topic but created differently with beautiful images and wordings. In that case, know which of your posts works well and which does not - by creating reports that shows number and type of responses.

4. Manage Customer Relationship – Provide timely resolutions

A timely resolution to any customer complaint not only keeps the customer happy but also ensures recurring business and long-term association. Customer relationship is a key to success for any business. Create reports to know the complaints resolved through chat messages and maintaining the history of conversation as closed tickets and open tickets.

5. Measure Performance: See how your team is doing

You may have appointed a number of staff for interacting with customers on WhatsApp and Hike. In that case, it is very important to know the daily performance of the staff such as number of chat messages sent, received, customer response in a group and engagement using the group drivers or vibrant buddies reports from Bag A Chat app.

Why use ‘Bag A Chat’ app for creating reports from WhatsApp Chat Messages?

WhatsApp & hike does have limitation though and they have no intention to make it business friendly. Clearly, their blog says it all “We want WhatsApp to be the product that keeps you awake... and that you reach for in the morning. No one jumps up from a nap and runs to see an advertisement.” WhatsApp is clearly not interested in providing business benefits to any user.

Bag A Chat app makes the analytical reports very much possible for a business and also works as an add-on to WhatsApp/Hike and any other instant messenger for providing the business benefits that no other app is currently offering. There are lot many features that a business can benefit apart from just using analytical reports based on whatsapp chat messages or hike chat messages.

Simply write to info@bagachat.com to enquire about personalized business reports or any future needs.

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Simplify Customer Care and Business Support With WhatsApp & Bag A Chat App

Long-term customer care is key in every business. Instant Messengers such as WhatsApp offer personal touch to customer care in many businesses like real estate, wealth management, hotels, e-commerce startups, clinics, traders and more. And, why not? These interesting stats will tempt to you start using WhatsApp for Business and Customer Service.

Potential of WhatsApp for Business

WhatsApp has over 900 million active users as of today and over 1 million new users register everyday. More than 700 million pictures are shared on WhatsApp everyday and while 70% users check WhatsApp daily. More than 27% selfies shared on internet are made usually for WhatsApp sharing. An average user checks WhatsApp more than 23 times in a day. So looking at these stats, one can assume how much potential a business has for promoting business or best in class customer service.

Why WhatsApp for Customer Service?

1. Customer services is always assumed to be a costly service as businesses and many of the small and medium business owners find it difficult to manage the customer service department efficiently. Majority of the time and money is invested in product development, marketing and sales. Customer service is often affected due to lack of appropriate tools and systems in place.

2. With the availability of WhatsApp, a free tool available for use as a perfect medium for customer service, many businesses have started to use WhatsApp for business in customer service department. Small and medium business owners are tapping in the opportunity to connect with their customers by sending periodic announcements, updates, and season’s greetings to their valued customers.

3. Countries such as South Africa, Brazil, Singapore have already started using WhatsApp for business almost like any other application. India has the largest number of active users contributing to 10% share of its total user base. Many other countries in Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe are switching to WhatsApp for business and personal use.

As a business owner, if you are using whatsapp for business, then one should also use Bag A Chat app. Bag A Chat app is a free app that works as an add-on for WhatsApp when engaged in customer service using whatsapp. Wondering how Bag A Chat can help you with WhatsApp for Customer Service?

Check out our next blog for detailed benefits of using Bag A Chat app and WhatsApp for business and customer service.

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Skyrocket Your Business: 3 Incredible Benefits of WhatsApp

The staggering number of 900 million WhatsApp users all over the world is a revelation for every business big or small. If you are not using WhatsApp for marketing your business, you are missing your chances of tapping a huge customer base.

WhatsApp should not be just confused with using to share text messages, images and videos with just your friends and groups. But, you can use it spectacularly for uplifting your sales prospects.

Here are 3 Incredible Benefits of using WhatsAp for Business

1. Be Approachable to Your Customers

Every customer new or old prefers to become a customer of the company who is quickly approachable. Many companies just give email address, toll free numbers, or website address to customers but often responses are not immediate to emails or numbers often found busy. In that case, customers find it difficult to reach you in quick time.

With the use of WhatsApp, your customers can quickly send you a message stating their requirements. As a business owner, you can then quickly respond to their queries instantly. If you have Bag A Chat app installed then it becomes all the easier. As it lets you save and organize these customer’s messages. In today’s world, it is more about being connected to your customers and be easily approachable.

Moreover, customers get more freedom to express needs/requirements than a business-defined format on web/app. Many of first customers are your WhatsApp connects or their referrals only. If you do well with them, acquiring new customers becomes easy.

2. Eliminate investments in expensive software and systems

A smart business owner is always in search of cost effective and economic solutions for its business. With WhatsApp being $1/year (and free in many countries including India), it simply eliminates the need for deploying cost-effective and high price software and systems needed for customer relationship management. Even if you introduce a new app, it would take enormous time for your customers to trust it and make use of it connecting with you. In addition, the investment you can assume.

With WhatsApp and Bag A Chat, there is absolutely no need to develop expensive business app or programs as WhatsApp is free and hence the trust factor is very high. Over 900 million users are already using WhatsApp and if you are not with them, you are keeping yourself away from your customers.

3. Write Off Promotions & Advertisement Costs

If you are new business or an old business introducing a new product or service, imagine the kind of
investment you will need to promote or advertise the products and services. With WhatsApp available, you can eliminate this cost or reduce the extent of the cost required in advertising and promoting your products and services.

Constant advertising on WhatsApp through images, text and videos can help you to reach a large number of customer base. Share discounts, coupon codes, how-to-videos, attractive e-brochures or may be a radio or TV advertisement that you may have created. Frequently updating your business profile photos and status messages too can help you gain quick attention. When Bag A Chat used with WhatsApp, it becomes all the more easy to save, share and organize promotional materials and get a report on how your prospects are responding to these advertisements.

Some Crucial Benefits of Integrating Bag A Chat App With WhatsApp 

1. Organizing and planning your WhatsApp conversation is simplified and sophisticated with Bag A Chat app. Your office assistant, marketing executive or sales promoter can easily manage your WhatsApp marketing with Bag A Chat with little or less training.

2. Your WhatsApp data is always secured and saved on your cloud Google Drive or DropBox allowing you to access from any location. You may travel to world and would want to see how your WhatsApp campaigns are performing, simply go to your cloud and get the insights.

3. Solving your customer’s queries and communicating with vendors and team becomes more easy and traceable. This new app is a free CRM, SRM tool for solving your customer Support/vendor/team manangement needs at your initial level of business

4. As a business owner, you would always want to know how your consumers are behaving in response to your WhatsApp promotions and advertising. Bag A Chat gives you meaningful insights with reports such as time machine and serves as a perfect customer behaviour analytics tool.

5. We all know, our WhatsApp account is always flooded with contact numbers and conversations and it becomes difficult to organize and locate specific details when required on the go. Bag A Chat comes in handy at this point in time enabling easy access and storage of contacts, addresses, leads for future use.

6. Business is all about decision-making. For making decisions, business owner needs to have concrete data insights that he can trust. No matter how much you use WhatsApp for your business but if you are unable to measure and track the success, it is not really helping you. Bag A Chat is one such app that helps you with smart marketing decisions based on analytics and historical data.

With so many features bundled up in this light-weight Android app, your existing or emerging business is bound to skyrocket and reach the peak in no time. Start using WhatsApp for your business along with Bag A Chat app and beat the competition intelligently.

You can also integrate Bag A chat app with any of your internal business systems that you are
currently using. Be it Salesforce or GetBase, Bag A Chat can be integrated with any complex application with ease. Just write to info@bagachat.com and we will get in touch with you quickly.

For example - check out how insurance professionals can benefit from use of WhatsApp and BagAChat together in this article - http://blog.bagachat.com/2015/12/insurance-professionals-adopting-bag.html

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