Facebook parent Meta on September 12 unveiled a series of new features and enhancements to WhatsApp Business ahead of the crucial festive season. These changes are aimed at helping small businesses build a presence, create better in-app chat experiences for their customers, and help accelerate their sales growth.
The new features announced at Meta's first WhatsApp Business Summit in Mumbai are part of the social networking giant's efforts to drive monetisation from WhatsApp, the world's most popular messaging app with over 2 billion daily active users worldwide. India is the messaging app's biggest market with over 500 million users.
"The ubiquity and ease of WhatsApp places it at the center of India's transformation, helping businesses fuel compelling ideas and new models of growth," said Sandhya Devanathan, vice president, Meta India.
"These features and programmes demonstrate our commitment to helping businesses maximize their value per dollar while providing exceptional customer experiences on WhatsApp," she said.
Meta Verified now available to all small businesses
Meta is making its paid verification service, Meta Verified, available to all eligible small businesses in India using the WhatsApp Business app. This rollout comes about a year after it was first announced in September 2023. In June, Meta had stated plans to roll out Meta Verified to WhatsApp Business users in Brazil, India, Indonesia and Colombia.
The company also introduced new paid subscription tiers to Meta Verified in May, in order to better serve a wider range of business needs.
At the time, Meta said it determines plan eligibility for each business profile based on a range of measures including the business activity on its apps and volume of interactions with consumers on its platform, including profile visits, post engagement, and number of message conversations among others.
Subscribers will be able to create a verified channel or verify an existing one, set up professional WhatsApp webpages that showcase information from their business profile and catalog, and link multiple devices into a single WhatsApp Business account, depending on their tier.
All subscribers will also have access to basic features such as verified badge, account support, and impersonation protection.
Sending personalised messages
Starting September 12, small businesses will also be able to use the WhatsApp Business app to send personalised messages to their customers for a fee in India. This includes appointment reminders, birthday greetings or updates on a holiday sale.
Businesses will be able to send messages with the customer's name and customisable call-to-action buttons, and also schedule these messages for a specific day and time. The feature was first announced in June 2023.
Meta stated that it will also soon launch a 'WhatsApp Business Yatra' wherein the company executives will visit various tier-2 and tier-3 cities in India to provide on-ground, in-person training to small businesses. The company will train these businesses on setting up their WhatsApp Business accounts, creating catalogs, and educating them on how to set up ads that click to WhatsApp among others.
In addition, the firm will build a resource center on its website, which will act as a quick-access tutorial center for these businesses, it said.
Expanded WhatsApp Business offerings
Over the past year, Meta has been bolstering its WhatsApp Business offerings as business messaging becomes increasingly important in its efforts to diversify revenue streams beyond traditional digital advertising.
In June, the company introduced new AI tools for small businesses to better assist consumers. This includes the ability to activate AI agents that can act on their behalf and an intelligent AI assistant that can help create engaging 'click-to-WhatsApp' ads. Meta also extended its paid verification service, Meta Verified, to users of WhatsApp Business app in India, Brazil, Indonesia and Colombia.
Last year, WhatsApp changed how it charges businesses by introducing new conversation categories: Utility, Authentication, Marketing, and Service. Businesses are now charged based on these categories instead of charging a flat rate for all conversations. In June, the firm introduced a new category called 'authentication-international', targeted at international OTPs (one-time passwords) that are priced significantly higher than authentication messages.
A month later, WhatsApp announced that it is changing the pricing for marketing and utility conversations on its platform. The firm has significantly lowered the rates for utility messages starting August 1, 2024, and will increase the rates for marketing messages in certain markets starting October 1, 2024.
Meta also updated its WhatsApp Business messaging policy in August, allowing companies from regulated sectors such as real-money gaming and over-the-counter drugs to use the WhatsApp Business platform to send promotional messages to users in India.
This move is part of a broader change in the company's business messaging policy that is opening up the platform to certain regulated or restricted sectors, including alcohol, in limited countries. Messages that promote alcohol are, however, not permitted in India.
Companies in these regulated sectors are also prohibited from sending messages through the WhatsApp Business app or providing any commerce experiences to buy or sell goods or services as they are governed by Meta's Commerce policy, which bars such activities.
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