Chatbots and conversational marketing were once seen as mere hype across various industries. However, they have now become recognized as highly effective business growth strategies, particularly within the banking and finance sectors. According to research, the global AI in the banking market generated more than $3 billion in 2020, and it is projected to reach north of $60 billion by 2030, with chatbots being identified as one of the top solutions.
In this context, messaging apps like WhatsApp have played a significant role in driving the adoption of automated conversations. Major banks and financial institutions worldwide are increasingly leveraging WhatsApp to not only attract customers but also enhance the overall customer experience.
Acknowledging the growing importance of automated conversations in the finance sector, this article provides an insightful overview of WhatsApp banking. It explores the reasons behind its prominence, the implementation process, the benefits it offers, and the most effective ways to utilise WhatsApp in the financial domain.
What exactly is WhatsApp Banking?
WhatsApp Banking revolutionises the way banks and financial institutions engage with their customers. By leveraging the popular messaging app, they can provide a convenient and familiar environment for customer interactions. This can be achieved through live chat support or the utilisation of an automated WhatsApp bot.
The WhatsApp bot can be powered by advanced NLP (Natural Language Processing) or operate based on predefined conversation rules. Its primary objective is to deliver a wide range of services and support through chat-based interactions. From lead generation to gathering valuable feedback, the bot plays a crucial role in enhancing customer experiences and streamlining operations within the banking sector.
Why is WhatsApp banking the need of the hour?
The banking and FinTech industries operate in a fiercely competitive landscape, where customers frequently voice concerns about issues such as limited accessibility, subpar customer support, slow service, and resource constraints
WhatsApp banking serves as a strategic response to address the primary challenges faced by banks and financial institutions:
- Customer retention, a critical metric in retaining valuable clientele.
- Escalating customer acquisition costs, which demand innovative approaches for sustainable growth.
- The prevailing culture of instant gratification and round-the-clock connectivity, necessitating seamless and timely interactions.
- Intensifying competition from agile FinTech startups and disruptive digital banks.
In this context, WhatsApp automation emerges as a transformative game-changer, providing a rapid and effortless means of engaging both prospective and existing customers. By capitalising on an app already deeply ingrained in users' daily routines, the need for costly bespoke platforms is obviated.
Gone are the days when banking operated within a secluded sphere, shielded from the scrutiny faced by other industries. Today, customers hold banks to the same exacting standards as leading eCommerce brands, exemplified by the customer service and interaction benchmarks set by industry giants like Amazon. The growing expectations for swift service, seamless experiences, and personalized interactions apply universally, irrespective of business scale.
WhatsApp stands out as the quintessential solution, not only due to its unparalleled popularity as the messaging app of choice for over 2 billion monthly active users, but also its market-leading prowess in facilitating immersive conversational experiences and facilitating efficient business communication.
How does WhatsApp Banking function?
WhatsApp banking is facilitated through the utilisation of the robust WhatsApp Business API, which serves as the conduit for seamless connectivity between businesses and the messaging platform.
With the API at their disposal, banks and financial institutions can choose from various approaches to implement WhatsApp banking. They have the option to develop a bespoke automated system from scratch, leverage a no-code WhatsApp API solution to expedite the deployment process, or engage the services of a specialised agency to craft a tailored solution on their behalf.
WhatsApp Banking Benefits
Employing WhatsApp in banking enables companies to scalably provide excellent client experiences. You can maintain order, timeliness, personalization, and consistency. But that's only the very beginning.
Wider Outreach
Integrating communication and services into WhatsApp empowers companies to harness the extensive reach of this popular messaging app. This strategic move facilitates effortless scalability to accommodate the growing demands of your business and messaging requirements.
Security
By integrating communication and services into WhatsApp, companies gain the ability to leverage the widespread popularity and extensive user base of this messaging app.
This strategic decision allows for seamless scalability, enabling businesses to easily adapt and meet the growing demands of their operations and messaging needs.
Productivity
By automating regular operations and queries, WhatsApp banking enables you to boost productivity and free up your human agent’s time and attention for problems and tasks that need it.
Reduced Customer Acquisition Cost
Beyond post-purchase assistance, WhatsApp banking offers other advantages. In reality, the sales stage is one of WhatsApp's most common and useful use cases.
Superior & Stronger Customer Experience
As customers come to demand the same level of service from all organisations, whether they are doing business with their preferred retail brand or a bank, customer expectations are rising year over year. It's so crucial, in fact, that banks that do make investments in improving customer experience reportedly expand 2 times faster than their rivals.
This is what WhatsApp business automation can assist you with!
Higher Customer Loyalty and Lower Churn Rate
Nowadays, keeping existing clients is more cost-effective than finding new ones. Because the communication remains open, WhatsApp automation has a great potential to speed up resolution.
Easy Execution
Creativity is made simpler and more accessible by using the WhatsApp Business API in conjunction with WhatsApp banking. Financial organisations may speed up the process by using third-party no-code suppliers rather than investing a lot of time and money in creating digital solutions from scratch.
Higher Revenue
Conversational banking generally has the potential to increase revenue growth by 30% while cutting expenses by up to 20%, according to Conversational Banking research.
Leading WhatsApp Banking Use Cases
There's no denying that adding WhatsApp to your service might be beneficial. In this part, we'll examine every potential use for this product over the whole customer's lifecycle.
- Lead Generation
The creation of high-quality leads is simple using WhatsApp. You may gather client information by including a straightforward click-to-WhatsApp function in your advertising or by providing an opt-in form on your website.
You obtain the lead's name, phone number, and access to a channel of communication that customers do not find burdensome or bothersome as soon as they choose to learn more about your business. Having WhatsApp on your phone also promotes trust.
- Lead Follow ups
Following the gathering of contact information, you can easily go to the qualifying or persuasion step. Your conversion rates may be significantly increased with only a quick message and a discussion with a WhatsApp bot. As an illustration, our sales team employed WhatsApp automation for their outreach effort, which resulted in a 90% open rate, 30% engagement, and a response time of under 1.5 hours, as opposed to the email results, which were about 20% open rate, 10% engagement, and a response time of over 12 hours.
- Onboarding New Customers
It frequently takes time and help for new consumers to comprehend the service and be able to fully benefit from it. New clients may be engaged with a WhatsApp assistant for banking and led through the onboarding process at their own speed.
- Document Upload
Document upload and validation are crucial components of onboarding in the banking industry. Customers frequently give up at this point because the procedure is either excessively sluggish and onerous or because they are interrupted. Users of WhatsApp may benefit from familiarity and consistency.
Uploading and distributing documents is not a problem because the WhatsApp interface is familiar to the majority of users. Additionally, if the procedure is halted, the dialogue continues and may be continued at a later time.
- Account service management
With just a few clicks, your clients can manage their accounts and request things like account balance checks, credit card status updates, payments that are past due, or transaction histories using WhatsApp chatbots for banking and finance.
This bot may be used as a standalone feature or as a component of a more comprehensive financial assistant.
- Personalized financial advice
Customers may get clear, customised financial advice from WhatsApp assistant whenever and wherever they are.
Institutions may analyse spending patterns using personal data, such as transaction history, and provide tailored saving insights and computations, helping clients manage their money more effectively when they are on the go.
- Payments and transfers
Since there is less and less cash used in everyday transactions, most individuals want a rapid means of sending and receiving money while they are on the go. With WhatsApp's end-to-end payment and checkout journeys, users can quickly facilitate simple transactions between friends or between people and enterprises. Accessing their account via WhatsApp makes it simpler, quicker, and easier to remember to pay bills and provide confirmations of transactions.
- Answering FAQs
The majority of banks and financial organisations provide a wide range of services, including checking, savings and loans. Making sense of such information overload is frequently difficult. Your clients may use a WhatsApp chatbot to get answers to inquiries they frequently have regarding interest rates, loan options, credit limits, special offers, eligibility, branch or ATM locations, and other topics.
This not only helps to speed up query resolution, but it also relieves your human agents of tiresome, repetitive chores, allowing them to concentrate on instances and inquiries that really need their help.
- Send timely updates and reminders
WhatsApp is a great platform for sending important alerts because the majority of users check the app everyday and engage with it roughly for over an hour each day.
You may send reminders about upcoming payments or unpaid bills as well as news about new services and opportunities using WhatsApp banking.
- Customer Feedback
Every company that wants to expand and succeed, views customer feedback as the holy grail. But getting it is no simple task. When a consumer has everything they require, they typically forget about one. WhatsApp saves the day once more.
The likelihood that consumers will react to your feedback requests or surveys is increased by the fact that WhatsApp users use it regularly and that replying to any message seldom takes longer than a few seconds. This gives you information on how to enhance your services.
What's Next?
Across all industries, WhatsApp Banking is quickly rising to the top of the list of corporate communication solutions, financial and banking services are also included.
Financial institutions of various sizes and shapes may modernise their communications and keep up with the expanding needs of contemporary clients thanks to the solution's accessibility and affordability.
WhatsApp conversational solutions' success is not an isolated incident but rather a recurrent and repeatable phenomena that may be essential to a company's expansion.
Speak to a WyreBots WhatsApp Banking Expert today and get all your queries answered in 30 minutes.