This is Why Your Business Number is Blocked on WhatsApp
Whether blocked by a customer or by WhatsApp itself, the reasons are typically down to poor user experience or inadvertently breaking WhatsApp’s terms of service. So how should an enterprise protect itself from being blocked?
Bottom line: business messaging is now an integral and valued part of the customer journey. More than one in two people consider business messaging the modern way to communicate, with 53% more likely to shop with a business they can message directly.
New Responsibilities in Managing Customer Experience
For brands embracing messaging as part of their CX strategy, that’s great news. But with such great potential comes great responsibility for creating rich, worthwhile customer experiences—and even the most credible brands can come mess up occasionally. With WhatsApp, it could mean a single customer deciding to block the business or for serious infractions, being blocked from the platform entirely.
To avoid losing access to such a vital CX channel, business must, yes, commit fully to providing great user experiences—but also understand why even an innocuous message or notification can come across ‘block bait’ to customers and WhatsApp.
Why Customers Block a Business Number
WhatsApp has made it simple for users to block business—all it takes is the tap of a button. So how do companies avoid setting off a customer’s ‘trigger’ finger?
Notify, not ‘spamify’ – Don’t spam on WhatsApp
Notifications are a blessing for enterprises, ideal for helping customers and in turn generating goodwill. However, businesses should realize there is a fine line between notifying and spamming.
For instance, let’s say a brand sends a notification to a customer—but the customer is offline for an extended period. The natural instinct may be to continue sending notifications to ensure the customer receives one next time they log in.
Notifications Only When Requested
The problem? Once back online, the customer is flooded with all those notifications, all at once—that attempt to be helpful perceived as instant spam in the mind of the consumer. Cue the customer blocking the business’ number and potentially complaining to WhatsApp. The number one notification rule to take away here? Only notify as and when requested—no more, no less.
Errors Everywhere – How Errors in Your Messages can be Harmful
Sending poorly written messages riddled with errors must be avoided; such sloppiness is immediately associated with spam by WhatsApp consumers. To combat an outbreak of complaint-triggering errors, enterprise should produce an in-house style guide for WhatsApp messaging — as it would for any other customer channel — and employ suitably skilled staff to deliver error-free messaging in a consistent and credible tone of voice.
Why WhatsApp Blocks a Business Number
Things just got serious: WhatsApp has decided that the business has broken its user-centric requirements, resulting in a blocked number. But what kind of actions make WhatsApp block a business in the first place?
Comms Breakdown
If a business consistently fails to get back to its customers in a timely fashion, it’s going to lead to complaints—and a potential blocked number from WhatsApp. Such delays though are not usually down to a slack attitude but inefficient planning and testing.
When planning to roll out WhatsApp, brands must ensure they put suitable staffing levels (and an effective automated response strategy) in place. This will ensure they are able to meet the influx of customer conversations and queries that will inevitably follow.
Bulk messaging on WhatsApp
Enterprise should always put itself in WhatsApp’s shoes when trying to ascertain if it is being ‘spammy’. While it’s possible to broadcast messages to a large number of users, enterprises need to be careful to avoid the perception of spam.
That’s why the introduction of message templates help enterprises manage one-to-many notifications. Preapproved by WhatsApp, message templates provide relevant content to customers according to the platform’s guidelines.
ℹ️ Learn how to broadcast on WhatsApp without being banned – with message templates.
Technical Implementation of Business Messaging Platforms
Any technical implementation issues should also be addressed before rolling the service out across an entire customer base. WhatsApp recommends that business tests the platform internally first, using employees to identify any technical issues. Once basic testing is successfully completed, roll out the service to 1-5% of customers, slowly building up over time to 100%. Get it right and no customer need ever be left behind.
ℹ️ Prior to a phone number being blocked, it can be flagged or restricted, due to a poor Quality Rating.
Your WhatsApp business account Quality Rating shows the message quality your customers received in past 24 hours. In case you don’t know what’s your current Quality Rating is, inquire at support@tyntec.com.
Get It Right from Day One
To stay on the right side of WhatsApp’s terms of service, partner with a reputable WhatsApp Business API Solution provider. They help guide businesses during the transition, ensuring a smooth registration process, recommending best customer opt-in practices, and generating message templates that are fully WhatsApp compliant.
Best of all, the provider will give expert guidance on the best ways to interact with customers while remaining aligned with WhatsApp’s terms at all times.
And such a partnership is critical. Being blocked not only impacts on a brand’s ability to offer great customer experiences but crucially, on budgets as well. While blocked numbers can be appealed, any investment in the systems, processes and staff required to service the WhatsApp functionality will be rendered worthless during the appeal. And if the appeal fails, that investment risks being lost forever.
Next Steps