How Banks and Financial Sector can Benefit from WhatsApp Business

whatsapp-for-banks

I am sure you are no stranger to the WhatsApp messaging platform. After all, it is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world today. More than 2 billion users across 180+ countries are using this application to interact with their friends and family.

Well, the cherry on top is that now WhatsApp for business is available to have professional conversations too. One of the key beneficiaries of this move by Facebook is the banking and financial services industry. We all know, the BFSI sector is usually one of the firsts to react when it comes to improving customer experience. So, when we talk about digital transformation, banking and financial institutes are the first to come to mind.

Digital Transformation of BFSI with WhatsApp Business

Some of the leading banks like Kotak Mahindra Bank, Saraswat Bank, HDFC Bank, AU Small Finance Bank, etc. have already started offering WhatsApp banking services.

How does WhatsApp banking work?

The first step to getting started with WhatsApp banking is getting the consent of the customer customers. Customer can give their consent via different options. One way to do so is by giving a missed call on the bank’s WhatsApp number. Similarly, they can also drop a message on the same number to initiate a conversation. However, the important thing to note here is that the WhatsApp number will be different from the phone banking number.

Availing Banking Services

Banks offer an array of services – personal banking, loans, credit card, corporate to name a few. And even though some have gotten used to the net banking or mobile banking, there still is a significant population who would rather visit the bank’s branch. However, with WhatsApp being a popular messaging platform and people using it on a daily basis, it presents as a great channel to extend banking services. Customers can chat with the bank to get details of their credit cards, fixed deposits, request for mini statements, pre-approved loans, etc. that too on their preferred channel.

Chat Banking

Chat as a channel has gained prominence in recent years. Be it web-chat, mobile chat, and now chatting over WhatsApp, it’s one of the fastest ways to ensure first contact resolution. With WhatsApp Business API being launched, financial institutes now have a great opportunity to engage with their customers on the WhatsApp platform. Some of the ways of doing that are:

#1. Transactional Notifications: Banks can address simple and routine customer queries such as balance inquiries, sending reminder notifications for credit card bill due, etc.

#2. Informational Updates: Banks can also use this channel to educate the customers about their new services, or share documents for troubleshooting. Thus, saving both the customer and the bank official’s time.

Why Banks and Financial Institutes Should Use WhatsApp for Business

Save Time

Eliminate the need for the customers to visit your branch to get things done. Offer contactless banking services and support. Thus, saving your bank employees’ time while allowing them to focus on high priority and urgent matters.

Save Money

Modernize your customer engagements while reducing costs. Distribute your customer queries onto WhatsApp while offering self-service options to the customers. Integrate bots to further increase productivity by letting them handle routine queries while having the option to transfer the chat to an agent when required. Thus, lesser agents, more channels, and faster resolution.

24X7 Availability

Automate your workflows to cater to the customer queries during non-business hours. For eg., allowing the customer to schedule a callback or self-serve depending on the instructions provided.

Omnichannel Services

Add your customers’ and prospects’ choice of messaging platform to your customer engagement strategy while ensuring truly omnichannel customer experience. The supervisors and managers can always track the effectiveness of WhatsApp engagements using insightful real-time dashboards or channel-specific reports.

Multi-lingual Support

Personalize your conversations and make your prospects and customers feel comfortable while interacting with your organization. WhatsApp supports more than 50 languages. The banks can create message templates in different languages or have live chat in the customer’s preferred language.

Secure Conversations

Do not compromise on the privacy and security of your customers or organization. WhatsApp offers end-to-end encryption to ensure a conversation between two-parties remains private. Thus, preventing data leakage.

Ready to get started with WhatsApp Business? Book your demo today to experience Ameyo’s WhatsApp Customer Service Solution!

Shambhavi Sinha

Shambhavi Sinha is working as an SEO expert at Ameyo. She also likes to write tech-based stuff. Her aim is to provide knowledge to users by sharing the knowledge about the latest trends about contact centers.