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Have you ever heard of the saying ‘never judge a book by its cover?’ You probably have.
The reason why this saying is used so much is that - you guessed it - people judge books by their cover all of the time. And trust me, your business is one of those books.
If you are using WhatsApp Business, your greeting message is the cover of your book. Greeting messages allow you to make a strong first impression, even if you are being contacted outside of business hours.
In this blog, I will tell you everything you need to know about greetings messages for WhatsApp Business and how to use them to your advantage:
- What is a WhatsApp Business greeting message?
- Why should you use a greeting message for WhatsApp Business?
- WhatsApp Business greeting message examples
What is a WhatsApp Business greeting message?
When somebody sends you a message on WhatsApp Business for the first time, you can automatically send them a so-called WhatsApp Business greeting message. It's simply a welcome message for customers on WhatsApp Business. You can make multiple greetings for different types of situations.
With Trengo, you can create one greeting message for all of your communication channels. Think of email, live chat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp Business.
Why would you use a greeting message for WhatsApp Business?
Using the right type of greeting message at the right time can help you achieve the following:
- Lower your response time
- Improve the customer experience
- Increase customer satisfaction by guiding customers towards the right information
- Don’t leave customers that message you outside of business hours hanging
- Collect valuable leads
Learn how a retail company manages to receive more than 500 orders via WhatsApp Business per day.
Note: you can only use WhatsApp Business greeting messages when using the WhatsApp Business app or the WhatsApp Business API. In the video below, you get a 3-minute explanation of what the exact differences are between WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJSvahtDDzg&t=1s
What does an effective WhatsApp Business greeting look like?
Even though there are countless variations of greetings, an effective greeting via WhatsApp Business should follow the following best practices:
1. Set clear expectations
Your primary goal should be to set a realistic expectation of when your customer can expect a message. It simply feels better for a customer to know for certain when they will be responded to.
Be very specific in setting these expectations. To illustrate why let’s look at two quick examples.
1)
“We’ll get back to you ASAP.”
2)
“We’ll get back to you within 24 hours.”
The first example is a bit of a vague promise and doesn’t set a specific expectation. ‘As soon as possible’ could mean anything between one minute and 10 hours.
The second example, on the other hand, sets a clear expectation and gives your team the opportunity to overdeliver.
2. Be as transparent as possible
The second best practice is to simply be honest and transparent.
Nobody likes lame excuses for slow response times. If your team just so happens to be a little in over their head that day, there is no shame in simply saying that you are busy.
3. Give it a human touch
In a lot of greetings, whether it is via email, live chat, or WhatsApp, I have noticed how the tone is often quite formal.
But just because the message is automated, doesn’t mean you have to come off as a robot.
I would advise you to always sound as human as possible. Keep it professional, sure, but avoid sounding like a lawyer. Well, unless you are a lawyer, of course. You get the point.
Top 10 WhatsApp Business greeting message examples
In all honesty, there is no such thing as ‘the best greeting message for WhatsApp Business’. It really comes down to your situation and what it is you are trying to achieve. That’s why I have put together a list of WhatsApp Business greetings for different situations.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
General WhatsApp Business greeting messages
1. "Thank you for your message! We will get back to you within 24 hours. Kind regards, the [your business] Team."
2. "Hiya! Welcome to [your business]. We will get back to you within 3 hours. In the meantime, you can check out our help center. We have put a lot of effort into it, so the answer to your question may already be in there!"
3. "Hello! Good to see you. Did you already know we currently offer a 50% discount on all of our products? The code is XXXX. Don't tell anybody ;-) Let me know if you have any other questions and I will get back to you shortly!"
Now, that wasn’t exactly rocket science, was it?
The key to using any type of messaging app is that you don’t overdo it. WhatsApp offers a quick and informal way of getting in contact with a person or organization. Keep your company’s tone of voice and overall brand in mind, but always keep it short and sweet.
At Trengo, we use the first message during business hours.
Customer support greeting examples
4. "Hi, thanks for your message! Our support agents will check your message and make sure it is forwarded to the best-fit person. We will respond to you within 24 hours."
5. "In the meantime, you can check out our help center full of answers to frequently asked questions here: [add your own link]."
An important trend in customer support is that a growing number of customers want to be able to use self-service. With Trengo, you can easily create your own help center. This way, customers can always have access to information, even outside of business hours.
Event-based greeting messages
Sometimes, your company may be in the middle of dealing with seasonal activities or special occasions. Whether it is busy because of Christmas time, or at the other extreme because of the covid-19 outbreak, you need to inform your customers. I'll give you two examples for both cases.
6. "Ho ho ho! Please let me know if you have any questions. Our elves are very busy packing all the gifts, so we may not reply as fast as you are used to from us."
7. "Hey there, how can I help you? Please be aware that we may answer a little less fast than usual in these unprecedented times."
Greeting messages for out-of-office usage
When business hours are over and there is nobody in the office to answer incoming WhatsApp messages, your customers may have to bridge some time before getting a reply. There are multiple ways to tackle this.
Send to homepage
8. "Thank you for your message! We are currently out of the office, but we will get back to you first thing in the morning."
For more information, please head over to our website: www.trengo.com.
Reply with your business hours
At Trengo, we use the following out of office greeting:
9. "Thanks for contacting Trengo!
We'd love to help, but we're *currently closed* 🕦 (See our schedule at trengo.com/businesshours). We'll come back to you the next working day ⏰.
In the meantime, did you know we have a Help Center at help.trengo.com that answers our most frequently asked questions? Perhaps you’ll find your answer without the help of our agents 😱.
Cheers,
The Trengo team"
As you can see, we also incorporate our help center and give customers a clear reason why we are not able to respond right away.
Collect a lead
10. "Hey there! Sorry, we are currently not able to respond to your message. Please leave your name and email address, and we will get back to you within 24 hours. Team Trengo."
Using WhatsApp is a valuable way to get leads, even when you are out of office. Ask the potential customer to leave their contact information and you can get back to them the next day.
WhatsApp Business message templates
As I already mentioned earlier, WhatsApp Business welcome messages are the messages that you can automatically send once a person messages you on WhatsApp Business. If you would like to proactively get in contact with your customers, you should look into using WhatsApp Business message templates.
My colleague Luuk wrote an insightful blog about WhatsApp Business message templates, which you can read here.
Provide the best customer experience via WhatsApp Business
With Trengo, our next-generation inbox for customer communication, you can provide the best possible customer experience via WhatsApp Business. It allows you to receive WhatsApp messages together with all your other channels in one inbox (such as email, voice, and live chat), use WhatsApp Business with multiple users, create your own WhatsApp chatbot, and more.
PS: get 30 WhatsApp marketing templates for free
We put together a Google sheet with 30 free-to-use templates for Whatsapp marketing efforts. Just leave your email address here, and we’ll send you the templates. No strings attached.
