While WhatsApp has been used by certain businesses to communicate with their customers, this is done in an unofficial way. However in recent times we’ve started to see WhatsApp introduce new features to cater to businesses, such as giving verified business accounts a green tick.
Now over in India, we’re starting to see real-world applications of how businesses could communicate with users over WhatsApp, starting with Netflix. It seems that in India, Netflix has started to use WhatsApp to reach out and communicate with their customers where they will use the platform to send account-related messages and also to make suggestions.
Netflix wants to send recommendations on Whatsapp now… pic.twitter.com/LsAqQUfs5j
— Sahil Khan (@sahilk) December 27, 2017
smh pic.twitter.com/kx8OAurMAL
— jugal · jugal.co (@joogasama) December 27, 2017
Given that some companies such as banks already use SMS to reach out to customers, the use of WhatsApp doesn’t seem all too different, although it seems that not many users on Twitter are too thrilled about Netflix reaching out to them every now and then. Right now it also appears that users can only receive messages from Netflix and cannot actually chat with the company through WhatsApp, at least for now, thus making it a little less useful than it could be, but perhaps that could change in the future.
In the meantime what do you guys think about this feature? Do you relish the idea of companies being able to reach out to you via WhatsApp to send promotional messages?