Marketing
Using WhatsApp Business for Restaurants and F&B 2021
March 23, 2022
7 min
Having a WhatsApp Business account and managing your customers' communications on it properly can be of great benefit for your restaurant or F&B business. The food industry is all about quality, convenience and speed. Being able to manage customer support and communications through an app your customers already love and use every day is an ideal way to establish valuable connections with them.
Through learning how to use WhatsApp for business, you will be able to use it as a great communication and marketing tool for your local business. Learn in this full guide how to use your business account to its full potential and how to find the right marketing and customer support tools for a successful business on WhatsApp.
Let's start with the basics! You can download WhatsApp Business for free on Android or iPhone and create your business account. It's a great tool built with small businesses in mind, allowing them to interact better with customers and respond quickly and efficiently to their inquiries. Simply use your business, name, your logo and add information about your store like your website, contact details, location and opening hours. WhatsApp Business features that can benefit you include messaging tools that will help you respond better to customers.
WhatsApp business can be a great customer support tool, especially for small business owners that want to connect with their customers and offer personalized customer service. The app is the go-to messaging app for most people, with over 2.5 billion active users worldwide. Being a preferred communication channel, restaurants and food businesses need to make sure they are reachable and responsive to customer inquiries on it.
Any successful business needs to prioritize building relationships with loyal customers and offering a great customer experience, especially online where it's harder to connect. Using WhatsApp for business and customer support is convenient to customers because it's free, reliable and widely available. Contacting businesses over the phone or via email are no longer viable options.
You can make your customer service experience more efficient and personal when managing your WhatsApp Business messages through Commerce Inbox. It's a new feature that helps you efficiently manage all your customers‚ messages from different platforms, including WhatsApp and Instagram. Here are some tips on how to use WhatsApp Business features to their full potential with Commerce Inbox:
1. Automated quick replies and messages
You can elevate your communications with customers on WhatsApp through setting up automated messages and quick replies. Set up automated messages for commonly asked questions and away messages to set your customers' expectations on when you will be able to respond even when you're outside business hours.
2. Informed and personalized real-time support
To be able to respond properly to customers’ inquiries and offer personalized real-time support, you can check your customers' profile and transaction history and whether they have ongoing orders with you or not.
3. Using multiple devices to reply to WhatsApp messages
While it's convenient and simple for users to chat with businesses on WhatsApp, it could be a bit more challenging and complicated for businesses. One of the main concerns of any business on WhatsApp is the inability to respond to communications on multiple devices. Commerce Inbox allows you to stay on top of all messages in one place, from WhatsApp and other platforms. You can use multiple devices with more than one agent to stay reachable and responsive all the time.
4. Keep customers updated with shipping updates
The tool also allows you to send automated shipping updates on WhatsApp to easily keep your customers updated with their order status. This is extremely helpful to food delivery and pick-up orders, since customers expect a convenient and fast service when they order food online.
5. Manage online payment on WhatsApp
You can manage any online order payment on WhatsApp easily by creating and sharing payment links in seconds to enable your customers to securely pay for their online orders.
Learn more on how ChatFood's Commerce Inbox, our customer support management tool, can help you use WhatsApp Business features to increase sales and foster client loyalty.
In addition to making it so much easier for customers to reach you and engage with you, WhatsApp Business can also be a great marketing channel. Using services from a WhatsApp Business solution provider like ChatFood will allow you to market and sell better on the platform.
Here are some of the ways you can market your food business on WhatsApp successfully:
1. Selling on WhatsApp better with the product catalogue feature
Through the simple product finder and product catalogue features on Commerce Inbox, you will be able to market products efficiently and easily. The feature also helps your customers discover and buy your products faster.
2. Set up automatic reactivation campaigns
Commerce Inbox allows you to set up automated campaigns to send personalized WhatsApp reminders as means of incentivizing inactive customers to order again. This tool will help you capitalize on opportunities to connect with potential customers and convert them to loyal and committed customers.
4. Encourage customers to engage with you
You can encourage customers that order from you through aggregator platforms to connect with you and buy directly from you next time through offering discounts and loyalty rewards. Available tools to enable you to do so can be found on your ChatFood's Dashboard. You can sign up for 30 days for free here and try it out for yourself!
5. Use customer feedback to grow your business
Customer feedback is marketing gold. Every successful business knows the value of customer feedback in starting any great marketing initiative. Use customer feedback to understand your customer better, deliver a great experience and create WhatsApp marketing campaigns that appeal to your customer base. Encourage customers to contact you on WhatsApp, ask for their feedback and make sure you use it wisely.
1. What is the difference between WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business?
WhatsApp Business features allow you to display your website URL, brief description of your business and business information like working hours and location. The personal app only has a profile section with name and phone number and is used for personal communications.
2. What is the benefit of WhatsApp Business?
You can use WhatsApp Business for:
3. How does WhatsApp Business work?
WhatsApp Business helps you interact with customers easily with the tools you need to manage and respond to messages. You can use it for customer support and WhatsApp marketing purposes like handling customer queries, asking for customer feedback, setting up reactivation campaigns and more.
4. How to verify your WhatsApp Business number?
You can follow the steps here to verify your WhatsApp Business Account. Contact us to learn more about how we can help your F&B business grow with advanced tools, including a WhatsApp Business Solution that helps you verify your business on WhatsApp.
5. Can I use WhatsApp for customer service?
Yes. You can encourage customers to order or contact you through WhatsApp for any inquiries or complaints. Just make sure you have the proper tools to manage their messages effectively.
6. How do I manage customers on WhatsApp?
You can manage WhatsApp Business customers through using a WhatsApp Business solution provider like ChatFood. It will help you efficiently manage and monitor customer inquiries and respond quickly and efficiently with tools like automated messages, simple product finder, customers' profile and more.
7. Can WhatsApp Business be used on multiple devices?
Having WhatsApp Business multiple users is an important feature for restaurants and food shops that need more than one agent to respond to customers. ChatFood is a WhatsApp Business solution provider that allows you to access your WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger messages in a centralized inbox and using multiple devices.
8. What CRM integrates with WhatsApp?
ChatFood offers a great CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool that integrates with WhatsApp and Instagram to help you manage all your customer support communications in one place. Learn more about ChatFood Commerce Inbox here.
Learn more about our various marketing tools and services here. You can always reach out to us to book a free demo so we can show you how we can add value to your business!
