Is Meta Using WhatsApp to Position Itself Between Brands & Consumers?

From an industry perspective, WhatsApp Business can feel a little forgotten. The excitement – or disdain – seems to be centred around RCS for Business while WhatsApp Business continues to steadily improve its offering and grow its client list by offering an extremely compelling offering for customer care by virtue of not charging brands for conversations initiated by a consumer. Indeed, by 2030, there will be over 1.1 trillion service messages – WhatsApp’s term for customer care messages – sent via WhatsApp Business.

AI and Chatbot Integration Is Strengthening WhatsApp’s Customer Care Offering

Meta is also leading the charge in adding AI and chatbot functionality to messaging so that WhatsApp can act as a virtual customer service agent. This Business AI product is available within WhatsApp Business, so businesses do not need to integrate a third-party AI into messaging flows. This is important because consumers are increasingly willing to use chatbots if it will get their problem solved earlier. Mobilesquared data shows that in the US, 51% of consumers are willing to trust chatbots under the right conditions. In the UK, 53% of consumers might trust chatbots in the right conditions.

However, this quiet success is causing a few key points to go overlooked.

Meta Maintains Tight Control Over Brand-to-Consumer Messaging

Meta has a lot of control over how brands can approach consumers. Meta insists on strict templates, and there is a lack of flexibility on how often brands can approach consumers. Meta can choose when marketing messages are delivered or even if they are delivered at all. Meta is taking active steps to ensure that consumers don’t feel bombarded with marketing messages over WhatsApp. This makes WhatsApp extremely consumer-friendly but perhaps not enterprise-friendly.

WhatsApp Business Gives Meta Increasing Influence Over Enterprise Messaging

Another point is that WhatsApp Business puts Meta in the driving seat. A Meta policy change can derail an existing campaign and the four times a year pricing changes can drastically change how far a budget goes. But the biggest concern is that Meta is being given vast amounts of data about consumer transactions. While the brand owns the consumer relationship and WhatsApp Business is end-to-end encrypted ensuring that Meta do not know the content of messages being exchanged between a brand and a consumer, in the background Meta is gathering all kinds of messaging metadata which can be used buy Meta to inform strategy.

With other rich messaging channels not quite ready for widespread usage, WhatsApp Business’s well-featured offering means that Meta is quietly positioning itself as a gatekeeper between brands and consumers. Albeit a gatekeeper which will take a projected $50 million a day from those brands in 2030.

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Blog Author: Charlotte@mobilesquared.co.uk