In this new installment of Partner Talks, we talk to the CEO of Digital Strategy, Luis Alberto Villafuerte.
It is a company that is committed to digital transformation and they see WhatsApp as a tool for communications, which has already caused a great impact in Ecuador.
Luis Alberto Villafuerte – CEO of Digital Strategy
IT specialist with 20 years of experience in software development and software implementation. Currently working as a specialist in Digital Transformation and ZOHO CRM development and integration.
Key points of the interview
An opportunity to grow
Digital Strategy realized that the pandemic and post-pandemic period forced companies to adapt their communications. Luis Alberto told us about the reach of WhatsApp in Ecuador: of its 17 million inhabitants, 10 million are users of the application.
This is an undeniable potential for any company that decides to adapt, as the app is the main tool that users use to communicate with their family and friends on a daily basis.
They consider themselves strategic partners of their clients in all matters of digital transformation, and accompany them in the relationship they form when using CRM and other strategies, so they did not hesitate to partner with Woztell and begin to implement WhatsApp as a means of communication for their customers.
We have experienced a wave of applicationitis, I think that now there are applications for everything and you can have applications on your cell phone that you don’t use on a daily basis. WhatsApp, on the other hand, is an application that is designed to connect people and is already being used by everyone.
With a great tool comes great responsibility
We ventured to ask Luis about the practices adopted by companies that use WhatsApp for communications.
He told us that some of them are looking for a quick fix of using tools not approved by WhatsApp to send mass communications, which is against their usage policy. A malpractice can lead to the blocking of the WhatsApp account, which terribly hurts any type of company that has moved its communications to the messaging app.
We talked about how the WhatsApp API has limitations, but they exist for the common good and to avoid sending intrusive messages that instead of bringing value to customers, are invasive and annoying to them.
The nature of this version of WhatsApp is to give a quick response and if businesses don’t use WhatsApp in a way that they can manage themselves and give information instantly, the opportunity for communication may be lost.
WhatsApp for all tastes and sectors
Another point to highlight is how much better user support is once it is done through WhatsApp. In this way, businesses can organize and distribute the work so that it does not only depend on one person responding with a cell phone to hundreds of accumulated messages.
In this case, we are talking about the healthcare and delivery sectors, both of which have benefited from the use of WhatsApp. Both to provide vital information quickly in the case of health and to be able to offer the catalog and all kinds of data to customers for deliveries.
WhatsApp has become a form of personalized and secure communication for customers, both digitally with WhatsApp’s encryption policies and physically, as they do not have to go to premises where there are many people.
And what is the future of WhatsApp in Ecuador?
Knowing how we use it [WhatsApp], why we use it and what advantages we can give them and as this way of communicating with customers grows, we can also take advantage of the new technology that is coming out.
Luis told us that some companies have already adopted implementing the WhatsApp button on their websites, but that is only a first step. There is a need to change the way WhatsApp is used for mass communications.
In his opinion, and in ours, we must focus on educating companies on the possibilities offered by the app and how they have to perform actions in a secure way.
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