WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world today with 2 billion active users. On top of this, there are already 50 million businesses active daily on WhatsApp Business.
These trends are a good starting point to help you decide whether it’s time to leverage WhatsApp as a channel to support your customers and how to go about it. If you have questions such as – does the WhatsApp Business app support multiple users? Which WhatsApp solution is right for you, then you have come to the right place.
We’re going to break down how multiple users work on the WhatsApp Business app and API, which one is better, and what are the challenges and benefits of selecting one over the other. Let’s dive in.
WhatsApp Business for multiple users: Different business sizes
WhatsApp has two offerings – WhatsApp Business App and WhatsApp business API, based on the size of the business, and both have different ways to add multiple users and devices.
1. WhatsApp Business App: For micro-sized businesses
WhatsApp Business is a free-to-download app launched in 2018 that was built to help micro-size businesses communicate more efficiently and securely with their customers. It has all the features of regular WhatsApp messenger, along with features like quick replies and labels to help businesses sort and quickly respond to customer messages.
The WhatsApp Business App allows you to use WhatsApp Business for multiple users. Earlier, it was accessible only for one smartphone and one PC. However, after the recent update in 2022 to WhatsApp Business App, you can link WhatsApp Business on up to 5 devices, comprising 1 phone + 4 additional devices for each number.
WhatsApp is also planning to roll out premium tools for the app, which aims to help small businesses as they grow. WhatsApp Business Premium tools will be optional paid features that help you run your business more efficiently and attract more customers.
While the WhatsApp Business app is a good starting point for micro businesses, as your business grows, you will need more sophisticated tools and automation to deliver premium customer support.
2. WhatsApp Business API: For SMBs, mid-size companies, and enterprises
When it comes to SMBs, medium-scale or large enterprises, the business requirement changes from just being available on WhatsApp to addressing high chat volumes, providing self-service to their customers, improving faster resolution time, keeping track of performance metrics of chatbots and agents, and also having the ability to scale your support team by adding any number of agents to your support team.
WhatsApp Business API allows businesses to do all this, in addition to connecting it with your CRM, automate processes through their existing tech stack, send unlimited broadcast messages, assign repetitive tasks to bots, use contacts from databases instead of relying on phone contacts, and much more.
How to use WhatsApp Business App with multiple users
If you are a micro-sized business and is looking to provide support to your customer on WhatsApp with basic functionalities and a few support agents for free, then the WhatsApp Business app is for you.
How to add multiple users on the WhatsApp Business app
Adding multiple users to the WhatsApp Business app is a fairly simple process and takes only a few minutes. On the WhatsApp Business app, you can use a maximum of 4 devices – 1 Mobile Device + 4 Additional Devices (PC/ mobile/ tablet) with the same phone number
Let’s take a look at how you can add multiple users/devices using the WhatsApp Business app.. This process is easy and takes only a few minutes.
- Go to your WhatsApp Business App.
- Tap the More Options icon with three vertical dots.
- Click Linked Devices.
- Click LINK A DEVICE.
- Scan the QR code, and you are done
Limitations of multiple users of the WhatsApp Business app
Although at first glance, having multiple users with the WhatsApp Business app looks like a free and quick fix to provide better support on WhatsApp, eventually, as the query volume increases, even for a micro business like yours, it will be a pain to deliver a great customer experience and ensure agent productivity at the same time. Let’s take a look at those reasons.
- Can’t assign a chat to an agent.
- No way to track missed chats.
- No way to prioritize or deprioritize a chat
- No way to mark chats as resolved
- Multiple agents can end up working with the same customer from different devices, creating a lot of confusion for your business and customers.
- No way to track user details, orders, or previous conversations with other agents.
- No way to track agent performance, resolved queries, or even missed ones.
- No chatbot support
And because of all these limitations, using the WhatsApp Business app is just a quick fix to support your customers initially. However, if you are looking for a full-stack WhatsApp solution to deliver a great experience to your customers and agents, a superior alternative is to use WhatsApp Business API integration with Freshchat.
How to use WhatsApp Business API with multiple users
Setting up your Whatsapp Business API is more complicated than simply downloading an app like for Whatsapp Business, as described above.
As WhatsApp just offers the Business API (which is a set of codes) and not a ready-to-use software, it has to be used by used via customer messaging software such as Freshchat, which can leverage all the offerings of WhatsApp API and can also provide agent-side automation, analytics with real-time dashboards and native integration with other messaging channels.
How to access WhatsApp Business API with Freshchat?
As Freshchat has native integration with WhatsApp Business API and is also an official Business Service Provider of WhatsApp, setting it up with Freshchat is extremely easy. For that
- Sign up for Freshchat
- Select WhatsApp as a messaging channel
- Apply for WhatsApp Business API
We’ll help you with the application and approval process of WhatsApp API, which will take 3-5 days. Once that is done, you can add any number of agents to the WhatsApp channel and start supporting your customers.
How to add multiple users on the WhatsApp Business API with Freshchat?
By using a customer messaging solution like Freshchat, you can add any number of agents to support your customers on WhatsApp and even on other messaging apps. Adding a user in Freshchat is an easy process. To add a user in Freshchat
- Go to Settings > Manage Users
- Fill in details of the user, such as name and email ID
- Choose the role of the user such as Support Agent
- Click save, and you are done
The added advantage of using WhatsApp API with a customer messaging solution like Freshchat is that the multiple users you have added to your account can respond to customer queries coming from different channels, such as your website and other messaging channels along with attending to the queries coming from WhatsApp as well.
Benefits of using multiple users with WhatsApp Business API and Freshchat
Wouldn’t it be great if your customers could just help themselves with simple queries like checking their order status or even shop on WhatsApp without having to contact an agent? WhatsApp Business API enables you to deploy bots and create self-service flows to help your customers apart from allowing agents to help your customers.
Here are some of the major benefits of using the WhatsApp Business API and Freshchat integration:
Support Benefits:
- Deploy chatbots to answer customer queries and hand over conversations to agents when required.
- Equip agents with order and customer details, so they have better context about customer queries.
- Improve agent efficiency by automatically tagging chats based on messaging channels such as WhatsApp, FB messenger or Instagram, so they don’t have to manually search for chats from a specific channel.
- Track the performance of your support team with a real-time dashboard and make sure your team is adhering to the SLAs.
- Send invoices, and order details directly to customers using WhatsApp API templates.
- Provide self-service options such as checking account details, renewing your subscription, or canceling the order.
Marketing and Sales Benefits:
- Send proactive campaigns with the help of WhatsApp templates. A great example of this is ecommerce stores sharing discounts or even promoting referral programs
- Run ads on Facebook and Instagram, that will directly open a conversation on WhatsApp.
- Build a full-fledged ecommerce store experience on WhatsApp to provide a better buying experience.
- Send cart reminders to customers to improve sales and reduce the cart abandonment rate.
Get started with Whatsapp for Business today
WhatsApp for business is here to stay. It’s a platform that is easy to use and provides the necessary statistics about the performance of your messages. However, it is important to consider your business size and needs while choosing between the WhatsApp business app and API.
While the WhatsApp Business app looks really attractive to a micro-business, as it is available for free, as you grow your business, you will need a robust WhatsApp solution. A solution like Freshchat will give you the best out of WhatsApp Business API, and help you integrate all your business communication channels into a single, unified interface and support automation across the board (messaging, website, and apps).
Try Freshchat today
