Once only used as a person to person (well, small groups as well), communication tool, WhatsApp is clearly becoming more. We’ve heard from a number of companies locally that they are adding WhatsApp to their options of communication with customers. It’s an interesting business use of the tool which we’re sure WhatsApp never planned or predicted.
We received this WhatsApp message a few days ago and thought we’d share it with you. The company is one of the most visible panel beating companies in Harare and them going WhatsApp must be indicative of a trend.
Are you using WhatsApp at your company to communicate with customers?
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12 comments
That makes a lot of sense, way to go Farchis
Unless I signed up for the message I would see it as spam, not as a valid advertisement. One thing I would like to see from the Ministry of ICT is anti-spamming laws being introduced. It’s not just guys like this but big companies like Econet, although I’m sure they have some fine print indemnifying themselves.
True. Imagine if every company you did business with did this. You’d get hundreds of messages a day most of which you probably aren’t interested in at the time.
l second this l had to blacklist a certain finditfast.co.zw coz apparently they sell the lists to different pple so u can received 5 emails on a day from different companies who are paying to use a the list
Econet deserves a Consumer Council of Zimbabwe award for the numerous messages it sends to users every 5 minutes. Buddy beats, Ecocash, Buddy that, 34443, 34445, Datsun120Y you name it! These days when your phone message tone rings and so does your colleagues’ who happens to be on Econet also rings, you just know who it is from. While laws will take time to be crafted seeing that party politics and power rule supreme in Zimbabwe, I think there must be something like the “Webby” awards for technology companies that do irritating things, boring things, biggest boobs, etc. (focusing on the negative yeah! seeing that everyone just wants “positive” things these days, even at the expense of the truth.)
Haha @55eda97a25a3b60bf00a370fa6836a8f:disqus that sounds like a good one, and who will forget the infamous @Econet Wireless message that used to be added onto your sms’s … Econet are pioneering things and are doing alot of good things but there are those bloopers that come up 🙂
It’s been like this for months now. Listen on radio and you’ll notice a number of companies companies preferring that customers whatsapp them instead of email. I remember getting requests by some companies to make a CRM that converges Facebook inboxes, SMSes & Whatsapp. Interesting trend indeed
This sounds like correct thinking the CRM not just whatsapp to me is not a solution there is so many cons to it and a lot of manual work
I think there’s an opportunity for entrepreneurs there, to make a converged customer messaging solution because businesses are usng way too many platforms for communicating with customers. Emails, SMSes, Facebook inboxes and comments. Not sure on the Whatsapp though, might be illegal to hack around it.
l pray for that day we need a revolution in the IT sector l have met many IT senior personnel people who just refuse to integrate
Most who refuse to integrate refuse to integrate because they do not have the skills or know-how and don’t want to admit it. If they would make money through integration or stay on the job, they would do it. It’s like someone who tells you that a social network cannot be built with Joomla because he cannot find a free extension (rather than code the extension).
100% that’s why l say we need a revolution coz the pple who are at the top are clueless and some of them suspicious on anything new saka we need new pple