How to integrate CRM with WhatsApp

Real-time customer engagement

With CRM integration, you’ll be able to view all your WhatsApp communications across devices & channels like websites, chatbots or social media in one location and engage with customers in real time. WhatsApp CRM also allows your team to send personalized responses instantly to gain the trust of customers.

Instant response to queries

By integrating WhatsApp API into your CRM, you can manage your no-code WhatsApp chatbots & automate your in-chat responses to offer instant responses to customer queries at all stages of their journey. The option to add labels & notes to denote a customer’s status and urgency helps your team identify their needs faster, give quick resolutions & follow up accordingly.

Provides personalized interaction with customers

One of the main advantages that you get with a WhatsApp CRM is the increased level of personalization. Since your CRM holds all your customer data, the WhatsApp API integration allows you to create custom greetings, promotional messages & offers for customers as per their needs, interests or location. This helps your team to cater to individual customer needs, reduce churn & help grow your business.

Improves tracking & follow-ups

WhatsApp has become an integral part of business communication. Therefore, it is important to get real-time tracking of communication to help in effective follow-ups. With WhatsApp CRM, you can view the entire customer journey for a particular client and track their communication through a shared dashboard. There are also a variety of reports & analytical features that help you identify issues & follow up efficiently.

Streamlines internal communications

WhatsApp CRM provides a shared inbox feature that helps your team see all the business communications on a single screen. By merging communications across channels, your teams can collaborate with each other and share critical information like meeting notes, calendar events, tasks, customer insights, analytics and more. In addition, your team can filter out the customer’s messages based on demographic, status & intent to gain additional insights.

Gain sales & marketing insights

Integrating WhatsApp API into the CRM helps monitor marketing & sales processes to gain insights that can improve customer experience. By tracking individual customer conversations & monitoring the interactions that take place at each step of the journey, your team can understand the needs of their clients & the best ways to interact with them to improve the customer experience.

Read more on WhatsApp for sales: 13 tips to boost your business

Through native integration

To convert your WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business account WhatsApp requires businesses to create their own unique WhatsApp API account & get it approved. You can apply for a WhatsApp API using Facebook. The approval will take around one to two times. Your team will need to use the Facebook developer page and build your own application through coding. However, this is a tedious & technical process because your team needs to understand the Facebook developer process & also learn about the WhatsApp compliance process to manage your WhatsApp strategy efficiently.

Pros

• No dependence on third-party service providers.
• The front-end interface can be customized based on your needs.
• Need to only pay for WhatsApp’s conversational pricing.

Cons

• Need a knowledgeable team with coding expertise.
• Onboarding will mostly take longer.
• Need to constantly allocate time for researching new tools & integration opportunities.

Through third-party integration like Gallabox

If you’re a small or medium business, you might not have the resources or time to do native WhatsApp API integration, then you need to partner with a WhatsApp Business Solution Partner (BSP) like Gallabox. BSPs are WhatsApp-acknowledged partners who have been assigned to help SMBs with WhatsApp API creation & integration. Since Gallabox knows all about WhatsApp's restrictions, commerce policy & approval process, you can rest assured that the application process is shorter and hassle-free. The professional team can also provide custom integration support based on your existing CRM. This makes your job much easier and helps you focus on other critical business processes.

Pros

• Shorter approval & onboarding process.
• Professional integration support for all types of CRMs.
• 24/7 assistance to help with various WhatsApp workplace solutions.
• Knowledgeable staff who can inform your team about the latest tools & integration opportunities.

Cons

• Applications & tools might not be completely customized to fit a specific need/niche.
• Would have to pay extra for interface setup & maintenance. (Gallabox doesn’t charge a set-up fee).
• The interface might take some time to get used to.

ShipRocket

• Open your ShipRocket account & Click on ‘Settings’ on the left navigation panel.
• Under ‘Settings’, click on ‘API’ → ‘Configure’ → ‘Create an API User’.
• Fill the email address & password.
• Share the information with the Gallabox team to finish the configuration.

Woocommerce

• Open WordPress dashboard & click on ‘Settings’ under the WooCommerce dropdown list.
• Click on ‘REST API’ under the ‘Advanced’ tab.
• Click on ‘Create an API Key’ & enter the required details.
• Open ‘Permissions’ and click on ‘Read/Write’ in the dropdown.
• Click on ‘Generate API Key’.
• Once the API key is generated, you need to update the website URL, consumer key & consumer secret.
• After entering the details, you can email the details to developers@gallabox.com to integrate Gallabox WhatsApp API.

Shopify

• Open Shopify’s Admin Console & select Apps.
• Click on 'Manage private apps' under the Apps section.
• After that, click on the 'Create new private app' button & enter the necessary information to create an app.

Once the app is created, click on ‘App details’ & enter the following details.

• Private app name - "Gallabox"
• Emergency developer email - "developers@gallabox.com"

Upon app creation, you can scroll down to see your API key, Password & Shared Secret. Share these details to developers@gallabox.com.

• After the app is created, you also need to give ‘read permission’ access to Gallabox on the following modules
• Fulfillment services
• Orders
• Order editing
• Product listings
• Products Shipping
• Third-party fulfillment orders
• ScriptTag (need both read/write permission to add WhatsApp Widget to your shopify website)
• After giving the permission, select Latest (2021-10) Webhook API version.

In addition to these CRMs, Gallabox can also help with custom integrations with other CRMs.

Also Read : Best WhatsApp CRM providers to scale your business