Easy Payments and a Great Customer Experience with Clickatell's Retail Solutions

“Consumers have a greater number of choices today than ever before, more complex choices, and more channels through which to pursue them. In such an environment, simple, integrated solutions to problems—not fragmented, burdensome ones—will win the allegiance of the time-pressed consumer.” – Harvard Business Review

Clickatell has developed digitally-driven retail solutions for global customers over the past two decades. The team now offers a host of chat options that let companies engage with their customers through preferred communication platforms. Through WhatsApp Commerce, Chat 2 Pay, SMS API, and more, Clickatell provides user-friendly retail solutions that create a seamless customer journey. Here’s a look at how this works.

WhatsApp Business API

WhatsApp for Business was developed for smaller start-ups that had less demanding communication needs. However, Clickatell offers you WhatsApp Business API, which facilitates the dissemination of higher volumes of messages to thousands of customers around the globe. Using the WhatsApp Business API, you can respond to customers on the platform for lower rates. 

“At the same time, the organizational disruption caused by lockdowns favors digital tools such as workflow automation, chatbots or voicebots, and self-service portals.” – Bain and Co.

Benefits of WhatsApp Business API

There are many reasons why organizations are leveraging this popular communication platform for business purposes. Here’s a look at some of them:

-  CRM integration

You can integrate WhatsApp Business API into your CRM (customer relationship management) software as it’s compatible with most leading CRMs available. Through the CRM software and WhatsApp Business API you can communicate important information such as delivery and shipping updates, refund confirmations, and other important retail alerts to improve your customer experience. 

-  Customer support

The integration of WhatsApp Business API enables your customer support team to communicate directly with your customers through API. This facilitates faster communication and enables 24/7 support across the globe. You can even use templates for daily communication with customers, providing ticket updates, delivery statuses, two-factor authentication, payments, and more.

-  Automation

You can use the WhatsApp API to build transactional chatbot, which can engage with your customers without human intervention. These chatbots allow for automated messaging experiences, allowing your business to respond to frequently asked questions and general service and support queries, for an improved customer experience.

Clickatell’s WhatsApp Business API lets you benefit from: 

• Automation of a wide range of business functions

• A pre-integrated WhatsApp service

• A drop-and-drag interface for self-service workflows

• Tools to make dialogues as human as possible

• Transfer of conversations from chatbot to humans 

Chat 2 Pay

This is a fantastic commercial shopping service that allows your customers to pay on the WhatsApp chat or SMS platform without any hassles. This is a secure, convenient, and contact-free checkout service that transfers information from the business to the customer to the payment provider without any risk. This is a simple payment solution that benefits both you and the customer. The way Chat 2 Pay works is: 

• You send a payment request as a link to your customer via SMS or WhatsApp  

• Your customer receives the secure link and clicks on it, which redirects them to the checkout page  

• The customer fills in the payment details and submits it 

• The customer receives confirmation of their order and the receipt via the message platform

There are several Chat 2 Pay options depending on your particular business needs. These include:

• Chatbot messaging: This Chat 2 Pay node includes automated payment experiences in the customer service and support chatbot using SMS or WhatsApp  

• Live agent messaging: Your customer support agents can send the payment request in real-time to your customers

• Salesforce OMS (order management integration): Integrating with salesforce OMS allows your customers to pay for orders placed with the live agent without reading out the card details

• Enterprise-grade APIs: Using a direct API integration with Chat 2 Pay, the request is triggered programmatically from your mobile or web application 

Chat 2 Pay will drastically improve the customer experience by letting customers pay on a channel they’re familiar with. The increased sales and contact-free checkout will also reduce business costs and drive revenue. 

Two-way SMS API

Another fantastic way Clickatell allows you to engage with customers is through its two-way SMS API that lets you send SMS messages in bulk, while also receiving valuable responses from customers. Some of the ways you’re able to improve the customer journey through to payment with SMS API include: 

• Notifications and alerts of account activity, purchase information, return confirmations, and time-critical news related to any changes

• One-time passwords and confirmations for user verification and authentication

• Marketing campaign messages with information related to promotions and discounted offers 

Omnichannel retail options

The advantage of Clickatell’s chat platforms is that they can provide you with an omnichannel solution that supports messaging across various platforms. The omnichannel retail solutions take WhatsApp and SMS API to the next level, facilitating engagement across the numerous chat platforms available today. This effectively takes your customer from product or service discovery, through to easy chat payments in a single solution. The advantages of this solution include: 

• Automating interactions through chatbots for texting, scanning QR codes, and more

• Keeping customers updated with order and payment confirmation, delivery tracking

• Reminders about carts with incomplete purchases

• Engaging customers on promotions while increasing customer retention

Why choose Clickatell?

“Companies are quickly catching on to the importance of Chat Commerce in their channel strategies, but far too many are not paying attention to user experience (UX). A poor user experience will not only frustrate customers but can stop them from ever engaging with a business in the channel again.” - BizCommunity

Providing customers with retail solutions like Chat Commerce is a great way to improve their experience, but you have to ensure the engagement is simple and effective – or you risk losing them to a competitor. With decades of experience, Clickatell can assure businesses of effective digital commerce - through Chat 2 Pay or WhatsApp commerce platforms - that drives productivity and keeps customers happy.