In today's business landscape, messaging apps play a significant role in customer operations. Customers can engage with businesses, seek support, ask questions, receive personalized recommendations, read reviews, and even make purchases—all within messaging apps. Many micro/small businesses conduct their entire operations through platforms like WhatsApp or Facebook, including marketing, sales, and support.
As Bigin continues to evolve as a customer operations solution, it's crucial to adopt seamless integrations with messaging apps. To address this, Bigin has a module called Messages which enables businesses to integrate their messaging channels into Bigin, facilitating easier and more effective customer interactions.
Prerequisites
To integrate WhatsApp with Bigin, you need the following:
A Facebook Business Manager account
A verified business
A WhatsApp Business account
A registered phone number to access the WhatsApp Business API
Note: Zoho cannot verify Facebook and WhatsApp accounts, so you must do it manually.
Integrating WhatsApp into Bigin
Go to Setup > Channels > Messages and click Connect Now to initiate the integration.
Provide the necessary details for Facebook authentication.
Once you save these details, you'll be redirected to the WhatsApp Business page and a new module will be added to your Bigin account—namely, Messages.
Permissions
Bigin provides two types of user permissions:
View and reply to messages: Users can both view messages and reply to them.
View: Users can only view received messages
Messaging window features
After integrating with WhatsApp, you'll have access to the Messages module. All the messages the business receives can be viewed here. There are two types of chat views available: All chats and My chats. Apart from that, you can perform certain actions, such as the following:
Assign owners
Create records
Check related views in Contacts, Companies, and Pipelines modules
Apply filters
Track message status
Check new message counter
Perform quick actions
Create pipelines and add notes
Send quick replies
Credits
The costs of WhatsApp messages vary by region. Customers will be charged for outgoing messages using Zoho IM credits. One credit is equivalent to $2 USD, and with 40 credits ($80 USD), you can send 10,000 outgoing messages. Please check this link for pricing details.
You can also opt of auto-recharge, whereby credits are automatically recharged when the current number of credits reaches a certain minimum threshold.
That's all for this enhancement! To learn more about Bigin's WhatsApp Integration, access the help link.
Release plan
In the future, we will encompass WhatsApp templates, messages initiated by businesses, and the automation of WhatsApp messaging using workflows.
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