WhatsApp Business Advantages and Risks, the most popular messaging application in the world, has just taken a step forward that many have long outlined: it has just launched its first version focused on the business world.

Suspicions began when, in January 2016, it was announced that it would be totally free, and many began to wonder how they could finance and earn income.

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This Tuesday gave the green light to WhatsApp Business, its new business model to connect companies and consumers.

It is a “free application for small businesses or businesses” that will also work as “a business solution for larger companies that operate on a large scale with a global customer base, such as airlines, e-commerce companies and banks.”

In the case of large corporations, the service will have a monthly cost that has not yet been disclosed.

“More and more people are using the app to connect with businesses and businesses that matter to them,” reads the blog entry on September 5.

The company says it has heard stories from business owners who “use WhatsApp to send messages to hundreds of customers from a single phone and also from people who are unsure whether a WhatsApp business is real or not” and that such interactions are “a little rudimentary”.

He hopes to solve these problems with “new features” that he will try over the next few months. And one of them is WhatsApp Business.

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“Important Notifications”

Larger firms can use WhatsApp Business to send “important notifications” to their customers, such as flight schedules, order delivery confirmations, and other updates.

In the case of smaller ones, it will serve as a more direct way of communicating with your current and potential customers, sending them official communications through it.

In addition, it will have other uses, such as real-time translations and multimedia messages that promote interaction with the client.

WhatsApp Business is in its pilot phase and engineers are still “developing and testing new tools” within the platform, but it is already known to be available for Android, iOS and Windows Phone devices.

It is expected with a double interface: one that allows the entrepreneur to communicate with all his contacts. Another to offer you the possibility of launching your ads to your target audience. But the specific details about its operation have not yet been revealed.
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Verified profiles

What is available are some of the verified profiles that allow companies to prove their authenticity and “differentiate themselves from anyone else”, something that social networks like Facebook or Twitter have already inaugurated.

If you see a green icon next to the user name, it means that the app confirmed that the phone number of that contact belongs to a company account.

Communications with that contact will be differentiated by yellow messages in the chat window and it is not possible to delete those messages.

Verified profiles will accept pre-configured commands to streamline communications and send automatic responses.

At the moment, this option is only available for “a limited number of companies that are participating in the pilot project”.

One of the first firms with verified profile is the Netherlands airline KLM, which reported in a video that 250 customer service agents will use WhatsApp Business to communicate with their customers in real time in 10 languages, including Spanish.

These are some of their uses, according to the airline:

updates
reservation confirmations
real-time notifications
sending documents
24 hour customer service

The goal is to use the platform as a way to contact the customer in a simpler and automatic way.

For users: blocking and reporting

Communications between companies and users will be encrypted from end to end.

But what if users do not want to receive commercial content? Very simple: just block the number from which they receive the notifications.

To lock a contact you have to access the “Settings” menu within the application and add the number.