Create a WhatsApp chatbot: for business, for website, free
Are you a business owner who wants to use the features that WhatsApp offers to enhance communication. Would you like to automate certain tasks or services in order to improve productivity? In this article we are going to talk WhatsApp's chatbot and how to create one.
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is a software that simulates a conversation with humans, based on a series of automatic responses that have been previously programmed. This tool can optimize the customer service, the product presentation, as well as the purchasing process of your company, without constant human intervention. Furthermore, because it is a software, this tool is available in real time and 24 hours a day. For many companies, this makes it a key component of the entire marketing strategy.
How to create a chatbot on WhatsApp?
WhatsApp offers two different alternatives for this procedure: one for medium or large companies, and one for small companies.
Medium and large companies
If you have a big company, you will first have to request the approval of WhatsApp Business API in order to create a chatbot. The process of getting a green light will take up to two or three weeks and is left to the courier service. In this article, in the "WhatsApp Business API" section we offer you some tips to improve your chances of getting an approval.
WhatsApp Business API
This is the WhatsApp Business Application Programming Interface. As we said before, it has limited access. If you decide to apply on your own, you will have smaller chances of getting accepted. That is why we recommend using a specialized platform for chatbots. These platforms streamline the procedure and also offer you a database host, which is a necessary requirement to carry out this process. In addition, those platforms will make things much easier for you, if you do not have any programming knowledge.
There are many chatbot platforms, free or paid. It all depends on how complex you want the features of your bot to be. We recommend the ChatCompose platform, which is free with the possibility of extending the offer for a small price. If you want them to manage the approval to the API, you have to enter your data.
Once this is done, the platform will contact you and give you instructions on how to proceed. They will also ask you what type of chatbot you want, which means how sophisticated you want it to be and what features you want it to offer. That is, you have to take some time to think about all of these things beforehand and, among other things, the kind of dialogues you want to be established. You will also have to decide which greeting you prefer and the tone of the conversation. It is always best to avoid closed responses in order to favor the interaction. Additionally, you will have to choose the format, the channel management, define the internalization, etc.
Small companies
If you have a small company, we recommend the WhatsApp Business because that should be enough. In addition to offering all the features of the conventional WhatsApp version, it allows you to make automatic messages, create a company profile, establish a catalog presentation, insert labels in your contacts, and much more!
WhatsApp Business
The world of WhatsApp Business, despite being more limited than the previous one, offers various features such as those mentioned above. Here are the configuration steps to follow:
- Download WhatsApp Business for free.
- Enter the phone number that you want to associate WhatsApp Business with - this is a verification process. You must bear in mind that you cannot have more than two WhatsApp accounts associated with the same number.
- Complete your company profile.
- Configure welcome and absent messages, and quick replies.
Note: You will need a Facebook account to carry out this procedure.