3 Ways to Drive Efficient Customer Support with WhatsApp
Bird
Mar 10, 2022
1 min read
Key Takeaways
Fast-growing companies often struggle with rising support volumes, higher call center costs, and agent burnout. WhatsApp provides a scalable, efficient alternative to phone-based support.
Messaging channels allow agents to handle 4–5 conversations at once, reducing cost per contact and improving customer satisfaction.
Call deflection from voice to WhatsApp lowers operational costs and shortens wait times—one global electronics brand deflected 25% of all inbound calls to WhatsApp.
Automated ticket routing helps teams manage high support volumes by directing inquiries to the right agent based on language, sentiment, geography, or message content.
Guzman y Gomez used NLP-powered routing to distinguish urgent vs. standard issues and distribute them to the correct managers, enabling them to handle a 10× surge in messages.
FAQ chatbots on WhatsApp handle repetitive, routine questions to reduce agent workload and accelerate resolution times.
Aramex implemented a WhatsApp chatbot to answer common questions, achieving 2.7 chats per one phone call and nearly tripling productivity.
Automation frees agents to focus on complex issues and high-value customers while improving response speed for all users.
Bird Flow Builder makes it easy to set up call deflection, routing logic, NLP classifiers, chatbots, and fallback channels without heavy engineering.
WhatsApp offers a convenient, familiar user experience that increases response rates and reduces friction for customers.
Messaging-based support reduces costs, boosts agent morale, and improves the overall customer experience.
Flow Builder, Inbox, and Bird’s preferred WhatsApp partnership provide a complete automation stack for scalable customer support.
Q&A Highlights
What are the main challenges fast-growing companies face in customer support?
Rising inquiry volumes, high call center costs, slow resolution times, and overwhelmed agents.
Why is WhatsApp a more efficient support channel than voice calls?
Agents can manage 4–5 chats at once, reducing cost per contact and improving customer wait times.
How does call deflection to WhatsApp work?
Customers waiting on hold are offered the option to switch the conversation to WhatsApp, where the interaction continues asynchronously.
What impact did call deflection have for the electronics manufacturer mentioned?
They successfully shifted 25% of inbound support calls to WhatsApp.
What makes automated ticket routing valuable?
It ensures inquiries reach the right agent faster, based on attributes like language, sentiment, geography, or topic.
How did Guzman y Gomez manage a 10× increase in customer messages?
They used NLP-powered routing through Flow Builder to triage messages and escalate urgent cases to the right managers instantly.
What problem do repetitive questions create for support agents?
They consume too much time, feel mundane, and prevent agents from focusing on complex, high-value issues.
What does a WhatsApp FAQ chatbot do?
It automatically answers common questions like store hours, returns, delivery tracking, or order status.
What results did Aramex achieve with its WhatsApp chatbot?
They handled 2.7 chats per one phone call—nearly 3× productivity—and freed agents to focus on complex tickets.
How does automation improve customer experience?
It accelerates response times, ensures inquiries go to the right person, and reduces friction during support interactions.
How does WhatsApp help reduce support costs?
Messaging scales better than voice: multiple concurrent chats per agent, fewer calls, and less staffing needed.
What tools from Bird help implement WhatsApp automation?
Flow Builder for automation and NLP, Inbox for agent workflows, and official WhatsApp integration for reliable delivery.
Challenges facing customer support teams at fast-growing companies are complex.
The acceleration of growth leads to an exciting uptick in customers, but it also means an inevitable overload of customer support inquiries. However, support teams can balance efficiency with offering a customer experience that meets the rising expectations of customers — all while ensuring that they don’t blow through their budget or burn out their support agents.
The key is customer service automation done with the right tools and processes in place. Modern businesses are also discovering that effective marketing automation requires moving beyond one-way messages to create genuine conversational experiences with customers.
Three solutions to improve your customer support with WhatsApp
We’ve identified three headaches you might be facing — and offer easy-to-implement solutions to each, using WhatsApp along with Bird’s Flow Builder and Inbox.
These solutions allow your business to establish customer service automation on WhatsApp to accelerate ticket resolution times, boost agent productivity and reduce support costs at scale.
Challenge #1: Growing call center costs
Solution: Deflect expensive voice calls to WhatsApp messaging
Call deflection allows a customer on-hold over the phone to continue a conversation on messaging apps, like WhatsApp. To maximize the effectiveness of WhatsApp communications, implement fallback channels like SMS or voice to ensure customers always receive your messages. Conversations held over messaging apps are more cost-efficient than phone calls and provide a better experience for customers.
Research finds that agents can handle 4-5 customer conversations concurrently, and implementing chat can lead to a 6.8% decrease in average cost per customer contact.
When our large electronics manufacturer implemented call deflection with MessageBird, they were able to deflect 25% of their inbound customer support phone calls to WhatsApp.
Challenge #2: Complicated ticket routing and assignment
Your support team may have been able to rely on manual processes to sort through, prioritize and assign tickets to agents when inquiry volumes were lower.
But as your business expands geographically or offers product lines with specialized experts, agents require automated assistance to properly manage and respond quickly to an ever-increasing volume of tickets.
Mexican restaurant, Guzman y Gomez, saw their online takeout orders skyrocket during the early days of the pandemic. They needed to figure out how to route a 10x increase in customer messages.
Solution: Automatically route tickets to the right agent on WhatsApp
Automated ticket routing based on key characteristics like language, sentiment, geography, and more can help get tickets to the right agent faster. With Bird Flow Builder, you can set up rules to detect and ‘tag’ certain attributes when a message or ticket comes in. You can then use these ‘tags’ to assign the ticket to the right queue.
Detect message content, language, and more in order to send customer inquiries to the right agent.
Guzman y Gomez leveraged a support ticket routing flow to triage incoming messages on WhatsApp.
Using natural language processing (NLP) built into Flow Builder, Guzman y Gomez was able to differentiate between emergencies and run-of-the-mill complaints. High-priority messages were escalated to the general manager, the head of operations, and the manager of that specific store.
With automated routing, Guzman y Gomez’s lean workforce was able to efficiently handle the 10x increase in customer chats without missing any high-priority messages.
Challenge #3: Too many repetitive questions (and answers!)
Live agents often see incoming chats that are similar in nature.
“Where is my order?”
“What are your business hours?”
“What is the closest store location?”
“Can I return my package?”
These are only a few examples, but the point is that your live agents often have to spend too much time answering frequently asked questions.
For Aramex, a leading logistics provider in Australia and New Zealand, the majority of its customer questions were around tracking, scheduling, or rescheduling deliveries. While these were easy for agents to help with, it often involved several back and forth communications, which took up too much of agents’ time.
It’s unscalable and cost-intensive for companies to have agents consistently complete routine tasks — plus, it makes its agents’ job feel mundane.
Solution: Deploy an FAQ chatbot on WhatsApp
Easily build an AI-powered chatbot to allow your customers to answer common questions themselves. This not only keeps your customer happier by letting them get answers to their questions faster, it also enables your business to lighten the load on live support teams.
Aramex implemented a chatbot on WhatsApp to answer common support inquiries, freeing up its agents from routine tickets. The chatbot allowed Aramex to manage 2.7 chats per one phone call, increasing their productivity by almost 3x. Plus, by deflecting the frequently-asked inquiries, its agents were able to more effectively support more complex tickets and high-priority customers.
Start offering better, more efficient customer support with Bird
Bird’s Flow Builder, Inbox, and preferred partnership with WhatsApp enable your business to quickly scale and optimize customer support. These three solutions are just the tip of the iceberg!
Are you ready to supercharge your support team’s morale, impress customers and save on costs? Connect with us today! We can’t wait to help you get started.
