{"id":57010,"date":"2018-01-19T06:23:53","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T06:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=57010"},"modified":"2018-01-19T06:23:53","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T06:23:53","slug":"whatsapp-officially-launches-app-businesses-select-markets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/whatsapp-officially-launches-app-businesses-select-markets.html","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp officially launches its app for businesses in select markets"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 18pt\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">WhatsApp officially launches its app for businesses in select markets<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">WhatsApp today officially launched its new WhatsApp Business app in select markets, including Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S., ahead of its planned worldwide rollout. The addition of business profiles and new messaging tools aimed at business customers is part of the company\u2019s broader plan to generate revenue by charging larger enterprises for advanced tools to communicate with customers on the platform now used by over a billion people worldwide.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The WhatsApp Business app is the initial entry point in this market.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Aimed at smaller businesses, the free app \u2013 Android-only for now \u2013 helps companies better connect with their customers and establish an official presence on WhatsApp\u2019s service. Essentially, it\u2019s the WhatsApp version of a Facebook Page.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The company had previously announced the app\u2019s arrival, and begun verifying business accounts as part of its WhatsApp Business pilot program back in September 2017. Verified accounts were given a green checkmark as a means of demonstrating their authenticity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">With the new WhatsApp Business app arriving today, small companies can set up their WhatsApp Business profiles by filling out information like a business description, email, address and website.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">WhatsApp says people will know when they\u2019re talking to a business because these accounts will be listed as \u201cBusiness Accounts.\u201d Over time, some of these will become \u201cConfirmed Accounts,\u201d after WhatsApp verifies the account phone number it registered with matches the business phone number.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Once established on the WhatsApp network, businesses can then use a series of tools provided by the app, like smart messaging tools that offer similar technology as what you\u2019d find today in Facebook Messenger.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">For example, the app offers \u201cquick replies\u201d that provide fast answers to customers\u2019 frequently asked questions; \u201cgreeting messages\u201d that introduce customers to the business; and \u201caway messages,\u201d that let customers know you\u2019re busy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">Businesses will also be able to access messaging statistics, like number of messages read, and they can send and receive messages from the desktop via WhatsApp Web.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">While businesses will need to use this new app to communicate with customers, for the general WhatsApp user, there\u2019s no change. They\u2019ll be able to message businesses but can control their experience by blocking numbers and businesses, as well as report spam.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">In addition, businesses will only be able to contact people who provided their phone number and agreed to receive messages from the business, the company had previously said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The Business app will later be joined by an enterprise solution aimed at large businesses with a global customer base \u2013 like airlines, e-commerce sites, and banks, WhatsApp had said last fall. It didn\u2019t announce any news regarding this solution today, but in the past the company said it would charge for these enterprise tools. Presumably, they\u2019ll be built on top of the current WhatsApp Business core product.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">The company also indicated today how critical it is to address the needs of businesses on its service, which now reaches 1.3 billion users. According to data it cited from Morning Consult\u2019s research, over 80 percent of small businesses in India and Brazil said that WhatsApp helps them communicate with customers and grow their businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">WhatsApp declined to say how many businesses are today active on its app, when asked.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">At launch, the WhatsApp Business is available as a free download on Google Play in supported markets. WhatsApp didn\u2019t offer an ETA on when the Business app would rollout to worldwide markets beyond \u201cthe coming weeks,\u201d or when an iOS version would arrive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color: #000000\">However, the company did confirm to us that \u2013 while it prioritized Android after researching with businesses where WhatsApp is used prominently \u2013 it does plan to support other platforms in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2018\/01\/18\/whatsapp-officially-launches-its-app-for-businesses-in-select-markets\/<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/whatsapp-officially-launches-app-businesses-select-markets.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WhatsApp officially launches its app for businesses in select markets WhatsApp today officially launched its new WhatsApp Business app in select markets, including Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S., ahead of its planned worldwide rollout. The addition of business profiles and new messaging tools aimed at business customers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[115542],"class_list":["post-57010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-whatsapp-officially-launches-its-app-for-businesses-in-select-markets"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}