Tip #12 : Sending Transaction-based Messages Through WhatsApp

Hello Everyone,

We've been sharing tips and tricks every week to help you handle specific business scenarios with ease. Go ahead and check out last week's post about calculating commissions for salespersons, in case you missed it.

For this week, we'll be looking at sending your customers transaction-based messages, such as invoice links and payment reminders through WhatsApp.

How would this help you?

Keeping your customers informed about their upcoming renewals and overdue invoices plays a key part in getting paid on time. This, in turn, prevents your customers from facing service disruptions because of forgotten or late payments.

Apart from email and SMS notifications that can be sent from Zoho Subscriptions, you can now keep your customers informed through an additional channel--WhatsApp.

How It Works

For this trick, we'll be using a custom function that can take advantage of WhatsApp's Click to Chat feature, which lets you send messages without having to save a number on your phone's address book. This custom function can be used with any WhatsApp account, and doesn't require a WhatsApp Business account to function.

See an overdue invoice or upcoming renewals for one of your customers? Simply click the custom button from the invoice or subscription details page to open WhatsApp Web in a new tab with your customer's chat screen. On this tab, a message with your customer's details and an invoice link will be automatically filled in the text box. All you have to do is hit send to notify your customer instantly.

Setting It Up

To set up this custom button for invoices:

Go to Settings > Preferences > Invoices.
Click New Custom Button on the top right.
Enter a name for the custom button, such as "Remind via WhatsApp".
Copy the function, which can be found on GitHub, in the Deluge script editor (The message content can be changed with the Deluge script to suit your needs).
Click Save.

Now, this custom button can be accessed from the invoice details page by clicking More > More Actions > Remind via WhatsApp.

Note: The same custom function can be used for the Subscriptions module by making small changes to the Deluge script and the message content.

We hope you've found this week's post useful. Try it out for yourself and let us know what you think about it. Also, feel free to suggest more business scenarios that you'd like to see us cover in the comments below. We're always open to suggestions!

Cheers,

Sasidaran K
The Zoho Subscriptions Team

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