There is a world waiting for you behind the classic green icon of the most famous chat app in history. WhatsApp Business is here, and it could be your front door towards new features and tools to get in touch with customers, colleagues, collaborators and lead. Often translated as a "contact", a lead is an individual or company who has shown interest by sharing contact information, such as email address, telephone number ....

Yep, that's right. WhatsApp leaves us a lot of room for maneuver when we try to use this online messaging application to interact with our friends. But, let's face it, it has always been there a bit of disappointment when trying to take advantage of everything in the office.

Better Telegram. Or maybe Yammer, one of the main ones social network business. But the idea that WhatsApp still had some cards from play in the business sector it was in the air.

The spread of the application makes it a universal tool for sharing content. A concrete example? There has always been a branch of dark social which requires to integrate web pages with sharing buttons on WhatsApp and other underground channels.

Because people use chats to share content and this is something to consider. But professional relationships often do they transfer to these realities.

The first revolution: WhatsApp Web

With WhatsApp Web you can already work in a certain way, with one desktop screen which allows you to send carefully formatted messages. Just like if you were managing a control panel of a customer care software. But this is only one aspect.

The professional turn that can take most famous chat in the world has just begun. With WhatsApp Business you can transform this reality into a real work tool.

Download, install and use WhatsApp Business

If you want to use the nuances of this application you can consider WhatsApp Business. Namely the professional version of the messaging app that allows businesses to stay in contact with customers. How to get this tool?

Just download it. For now it is only available on the Google Play Store but the potential is infinite and on the rise. Think that 89% of respondents of this research signed by Twilio wants to keep in touch with companies through SMS and instant messaging apps.

And among the main solutions there is WhatsApp. Sounds like a good reason to work hard with this app, don't you think? Here's where to start for make the most of it for your company.

Create and leverage a company web profile

Activate an official presence for your work with Google Maps address, website link, email and telephone. In the settings you must immediately optimize a number of decisive aspects for the success of your channel on WhatsApp Business. On Settings I recommend that you tap on the fields:

• Absence message.
• Welcome message.
• Quick responses.

In the first case you can define a content to send to contacts who want to interact when you are not available (you can always indicate the times), and maybe you can give indications on which email addresses to use to solve the problem. The second step is about being able to automatically send a message when a person subscribes to your channel.

In both cases these options are activated with the ON / OFF lever and can be changed by clicking on the pencil icon. With quick replies, on the other hand, you can make conversations easier thanks to keyboard shortcuts. Time is an important resource.

How to best use WhatsApp Web

You have to make sure that people are able to discover your ability to create good conversations on WhatsApp. This means that you have to insert a contact icon as you already do for all other social networks. A small detail: now you are forced to think in mobile terms

It's okay to have the icon on the desktop site but don't forget that the mechanism is immediate, especially from the smartphone. So make everything more essential on the version of the site dedicated to mobile navigation. The code to accomplish this is simple. There he is:

https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=

The cool thing is that you can add a welcome message as soon as people click the button to chat with your WhatsApp Business account. This is a great way to send special offers, gifts, discounts and all possible gifts to retain the user.

What to communicate with users with WhatsApp?

There are different ways to take advantage of WhatsApp Business. The most intuitive: making your availability available to solve problems and answer user questions. A clear passage at first sight, but it can actually become a full-time commitment if you don't have a structure behind you to answer all the questions.

Remember that timeliness is everything, you can't make people wait 24 hours: chat is speed and times must be halved. The tone of voice it must be appropriate to the situation. Simplicity and intuitiveness, again these are the essential points.

You can add a thousand different solutions to the classic customer care function. For example, you can engage your audience and push them to message for participate in games and contests, or you can update the single with respect to shipments. It all depends on your possibilities and needs, with WhatsApp Web a world opens up in front of your company.

Will you use a tool like WhatsApp Business?

Of course, it is difficult to give an answer without having tried a tool like this firsthand. But one point is clear: we are always looking for new software to optimize work processes, for streamline the steps and make everything easier. Even relationships with potential customers.

WhatsApp Business has an advantage: it is a platform known to all, so it will be easy to engage contacts and bring them towards a professional use of this reality. Do you think this is the natural evolution of the most famous chat on the web? Leave your opinion in the comments.