The CRM allows marketers to engage with their audience in real-time. Marketers can use WhatsApp to manage and resolve queries from website visitors and leads, send transactional messages, reminders, and more directly from the CRM.
Connecting WhatsApp
- Go to Admin Settings > WhatsApp for business and click Add number.
- Verify your company’s Facebook Business Manager account. Please visit your FB Manager account> Requests > and click on Accept.
NOTE: This interaction is entirely between Facebook and your company. The CRM has ZERO control over this step. It is suggested that your business keep their Facebook account verified prior to setting this up.
- Once your account is verified and after you have approved Freshworks as a Business Service Provider, your account will be enabled and will contain the phone number of your business that you have provided.
- Select the number that you wish to be used for WhatsApp communication with your customers.
If you want to enable Chatbots for the number, click Enable Chatbots. - Once your WhatsApp number is authenticated, our team will enable WhatsApp Campaigns for your account.
Setting up Message Templates for WhatsApp Campaigns
To initiate a message with your customers via WhatsApp, Message Templates are used. These help you send proactive notifications and messages to your customers.
Message Templates need to be approved by WhatsApp beforehand and will have to follow a specific format. You can create different templates based on your business use-cases. WhatsApp does not allow sending Promotional messages to customers and tends to reject such templates. Read more on Message Template Guidelines here.
Guidelines to creating Message Templates
Content: You can use WhatsApp only to send updates, alerts, and transactional messages.
Formatting: Follow the below format based on WhatsApp’s guidelines:
Template Name: Provide a relevant template name for the one that you want to create. It can only contain lowercase alphanumeric characters and underscores ( _ ).
Example: account_registrationTemplate Category: Below are the categories that are approved by WhatsApp. The Message Templates should fall under one of these categories:
Account Update
Payment update
Personal finance update
Shipping update
Reservation update
Issue resolution
Appointment update
Transportation update
Ticket update
Alert update
Auto-reply
- Template Content: Message Templates are limited to 1024 characters. Your template can use numbered placeholders '{{#}}' for every variable in your message. Each variable can be replaced with text that contains letters, digits, special characters, or spaces.
Here is an example of a WhatsApp message template with three variables:
| Hi {{1}}, your order no. {{2}} has been placed. To track your order, please visit {{3}}. |
The formatting of the variable is important. The numbering must start from 1, be in ascending order, and have two curly braces on both sides.
| Example: Hi {{1}}! Thanks for subscribing to our Loyalty Rewards program. We’ll send you a {{2}} update with your new schedule. You can log in online using your rewards ID {{3}}. Happy Shopping! |
WhatsApp allows you to create up to 250 templates for your business use cases.
| Formatting | Description | Symbol | Example |
| Italic Text | Add an underscore on both sides of the text | _example_ | Welcome to _Acme_ |
| Bold Text | Add an Asterix on both sides of the text | *example* | Your order number is *OD123* |
| Strikethrough | Add a tilde on both sides of your text | ~example~ | This is ~better~ best! |
| Monospace text/code | Add three backticks on both sides of your text | ```example``` | ```print'Hi there';``` |
Getting your Message Templates approved
1. Once you’ve created message templates, you can share them with us in the below format as a document/spreadsheet:
| Template Name | English Content | Template Category | Attachment Type |
| order_confirmation | Hi {{1}}, your order no. {{2}} has been placed. To track your order, please visit {{3}}. | Alert Update | No Attachment |
| refund_initiated | Hi {{1}}, we apologize for the inconvenience caused. We have initiated a refund of {{2}} for order {{3}}. Please find your invoice in the document attached. | Payment Update | Document |
Where {{1}}, {{2}} and {{3}} denote the different variables. Please note that message templates once submitted to WhatsApp cannot be edited.
2. Freshworks will initiate the approval process with WhatsApp on your behalf. Once your message templates have been approved, you can start using them to create WhatsApp campaigns.
Creating WhatsApp Campaigns
- Locate WhatsApp Campaigns under Marketing Automation in your CRM account.
- Click on Create WhatsApp Campaign and give your campaign a name.
- Next, configure your campaign with the necessary details. Select your WhatsApp number, the suitable message template, and the language you intend to send the message.
- You can add images to your message, preview your message on the right, and personalize them with placeholders. You can also provide a fallback value in case the intended placeholder value turns empty.
- You can choose to save your messages as a draft, send a test message, and then publish your message.
You can also choose not to send a message if any or all of your intended placeholder values are empty during runtime.
Configuring WhatsApp Campaigns in Journeys
- Locate Journeys under Marketing Automation and create a new Journey or go to your existing Journey
- Build your Journey based on your requirements. Use the Send WhatsApp Message action block in your Journey to automate WhatsApp campaigns.
- Select the Campaign that you want to automate.
- You can also choose to create your campaign from within the Journey. Once this is created, you can go ahead and start the Journey to automate your WhatsApp Campaigns.
Responding to WhatsApp messages
When a customer receives a campaign message from your CRM on WhatsApp, they will have the ability to respond to it just like any other conversation. All such responses will be sent back to your CRM and can be accessed from the Team Inbox where your support agents can respond to queries and address issues.
Inside the team inbox, filter out all WhatsApp replies that you have received from your customers by clicking the dropdown and choosing WhatsApp.
This filters out all WhatsApp replies. Select any one of them to start interacting with your customers through their WhatsApp.
NOTE:
- You can respond to a WhatsApp query only within 24-hours of receiving the query. After 24 hours, the conversation will expire.
- The agent only has the ability to respond to an inbound WhatsApp message. They cannot initiate a conversation with the customer via WhatsApp. The conversation can be initiated only by the customer.
You can view all WhatsApp Campaign related activities of your contacts under the Contact Activity Timeline. You can also view all related metrics with the View Metrics listed under WhatsApp Campaigns 
Similarly, the CRM also offers analytics for WhatsApp campaigns. Get insights into key metrics such as opens and reads through the curated dashboard created for WhatsApp Campaigns.
Creating Segments based on WhatsApp activity
The CRM also allows you to create segments based on WhatsApp activities. You can filter contacts based on WhatsApp messages sent, replied to, and more, to send targeted campaigns.
Note: Sending test messages on WhatsApp to numbers also incurs a charge