Salesforce and WhatsApp have announced a strategic partnership at Dreamforce 2022. The partnership will allow Salesforce customers to connect with their customers and build new messaging experiences on WhatsApp.
WhatsApp-first business messaging will bring the companies capabilities to deliver convenient, integrated, and personalised experiences between people and businesses worldwide. The company says the integration will transform how brands connect seamlessly with consumers through conversational engagement. This would include conversations across marketing, commerce, and service interactions. Companies can activate their customers directly through the brand-new Salesforce Genie. A new data platform supporting real-time CRM that delivers seamless, highly personalised experiences across sales, service, marketing, and commerce. This enables companies to target those audiences with real-time data that informs Click-to-WhatsApp ads on Facebook and Instagram to drive customers to a one-to-one messaging experience.
The new integration will enable brands to easily customise their experience to connect with their customers. Salesforce says in a fast, simple, and personal way to answer questions, provide support, and promote and sell products. This increases engagement, loyalty, convenience, interaction, and satisfaction for both the brand and the customer.
Messaging the next great customer frontier
Messaging is the next great customer engagement frontier and a preferred customer engagement channel. 66% of online adults agree that messaging is their preferred way of communicating with a business. Customers expect timely and personal interactions, conveniently within their preferred channel, that deliver richer, personalised experiences that seamlessly connect the full brand relationship.
- Nearly 90% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services.
- 85% of customers expect consistent interactions across departments.
- Nearly 60% of customers prefer to engage companies through digital channels.
- 86% of IT leaders say that improved customer-facing technologies are critical for their organization to compete.
Delivering richer personalised experiences
One company that has piloted the new integration is the global beauty brand L’Oreal. Asmita Dubey, L’Oreal’s Chief Digital & Marketing Officer says, “L’Oreal is on a mission to invent the future of beauty. This also requires us to revolutionise how we connect with our customers around the world. Our customers move fast – we not only have to keep up but exceed their expectations across every interaction. Increasingly, our customers use their mobile devices as their primary way to engage our brand. We needed a single messaging solution that pulls in information across sales, service, marketing, commerce, and IT. To help us deliver personalised customer service, deliver product recommendations, and increase sales. Being able to do all the above on WhatsApp as a single messaging platform could have a tremendous opportunity in beauty. To drive conversational commerce and build greater engagement.”
Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, and Commerce Cloud applications will integrate with WhatsApp to support promotional and customer service messaging. Transactional conversational commerce capabilities are also planned. Businesses will be able to transform brand and customer relationships across billions of conversations by personalising the messaging experiences for every customer at scale. Salesforce says this will enable customers to engage audiences on WhatsApp, accelerate sales, and drive better 24/7 customer support.
Enterprise Times: What this means for business
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging services in the world. Businesses send more than 100 million messages per day on WhatsApp. The partnership offers brands the opportunity to elevate their customer experience through personalisation and a seamless experience that uses encryption technology. With trust as a priority, organisations need a messaging service that provides privacy and security. With Salesforce enabling personalised conversations and WhatApp as the most popular messaging service in numerous countries, brands have the opportunity to offer a seamless, branded, and convenient engagement platform that provides convenient digital customer services for every customer. It will be interesting to see if WhatsApp partners with other key platform providers.
