Brief guide to using WeChat Business, the most loved social application on the Chinese market.
Why consider WeChat for Business
If your company wants to increase its own brand awareness and encourage thedirect engagement of customers in the Chinese market, WeChat is the right tool. The entire Chinese audience, infatti, non ha accesso a Whatsapp e nemmeno a Facebook, Twitter o Instagram ed ecco perché è possibile promote it within this market share only through thesocial app loved and used by them, WeChat.
If you already have one social media marketing strategy but your desire is to penetrate the Chinese market, WeChat is an app absolutely to consider. Below three reasons so start considering its use:
- very high coverage, with 1.09 billion users, most of which come from China. In recent times, however, WeChat has also arrived in the United States and is slowly keeping up expanding to other countries as well;
- it's a single platform of its kind, in fact it is not correct to say that WeChat is the Chinese WhatsApp. This app concentrates several features such as the possibility of buy online, make payments, video calls and so on;
- app innovates continuously and very often presents interesting features for connect brands to their customers.
Speaking of business features, particular emphasis deserves Shake function. This allows companies to interact with mobile users who are nearby and has been used by Burberry, on the occasion of the Chinese New Year, for launch a contest which allowed participants to win the limited edition Burberry Lunar New Year envelopes.
How to open a profile WeChat Business
Companies can activate three different types of WeChat accounts:
- subscription, similar to the Facebook Pages, which allow you to send only one broadcast message per day;
- service, with four messages per month, and one wide range of features such as WeChat Stores, WeChat Pay, instant customer service is GPS;
- enterprise, available only in China and reserved for internal communications.
To set up a company profile, you can open the official platform and click on "Register now" and choose the most appropriate account according to your business needs.
Now you will be asked to enter all details about your company such as country, company name, email address, account administrator and more. Under "Official Account Info" enter the account name and write one short presentation of your business.
The last step is verification. You need to submit a list of documents such as a business license, a signed and stamped official application letter, a copy of the identity card of the contact person, telephone bills and more (perhaps a bit complex process). Once WeChat has verified the company it will be necessary to pay a fee of $ 99 per account per year.
NB: If the registration page is loaded in Chinese click on the drop-down menu at the top right, next to the globe icon, e select english to automatically translate the different fields on the page.
Take your Customer service to a PRO level
Today as today, if a customer wishes to do a question or complaint a company expects one quick answer. That's why social networks remain the preferred medium of communication.
What a user expects is that companies use theirs same communication channels and with WeChat, which can be considered as an all-in-one platform, you can implement your own customer strategy. Here three ways to take your customer service to a higher level thanks to theuse of WeChat Business.
Assign a personalized contact to your customers
A successful customer care it is based on the personalization of the communication and WeChat allows you to do it by inserting up to 100 customer service representatives. When a customer has a question, he comes assigned to a representative which can answer questions and concerns in real time.
Although not a Chinese brand, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines uses WeChat to provide top-level customer support. From the selection of places to cancellations, passing through reservations: users can send any type of request via WeChat.
Use automated answers for FAQs
To provide relevant customer service experience, companies must be very reactive. One way to do this is to use automatic replies to some FAQs, a bit like it is already possible to do through Facebook Messenger.
In addition, WeChat allows you to set up welcome messages which are automatically sent to users when they start following your account. This feature also exists on Instagram, but to date it is not possible to activate it except through the use of BOT prohibited by policy. In short, a certainly complete tool to ensure that the user has one good service experience.
Keep track of history
No customer likes the idea of having repeat their problems to various customer service operators. By integrating WeChat with the Corporate CRM, any brand is capable of keep track of history chats with customers, assign regular representatives and thus offer a unique and uninterrupted experience.
Promote on WeChat
WeChat, like all other existing social platforms, also offers the possibility to the brands of ADV through gods advertising banners that appear within the app. can target by gender, age, position and specify the types of accounts on which you want to display your banner ads.
The Call-to-Action there are many available and you can ask your audience to start following your profile, buy a product, visit a landing page, download an app or request a discount code. In short, nothing so complex and different from what is possible today on the other social platforms used in everyday life.
Conclusions
WeChat is one very promising marketing tool and it is essential to push i Chinese-speaking consumers to interact with your company. With his growing penetration rate and the various promotional means available, the platform works for both large brands and for SMEs outside China who wish to start operating in that specific market
