How Indian Edtech Startups Can Use WhatsApp To 10X Their Business Potential

With around 2 Bn active monthly users, WhatsApp is the #1 messaging app worldwide. And guess which country has 500 Mn WhatsApp users—the highest in the world? That’s right, India. 

Since launching WhatsApp Business API – meant for fast-growing, midsize/large companies –  in 2018, the app has taken the businesses of all sizes of the world by storm, and Indian edtech institutes have been at the forefront of adopting WhatsApp Business for their everyday communication needs.

Edtech institutes communicate with their customers across three core customer touchpoints:

• The discovery phase, when parents come to know about the institution
• The purchase phase, when they convert into paying customers
• The support phase, when they expect the institution to resolve their problems

If you look at it from an edtech institution’s perspective, WhatsApp checks all the boxes since it allows them to generate leads, convert them into customers, and provide timely support—all from within the same app.

Challenges With WhatsApp Business App

WhatsApp Business App was built mostly with small businesses in mind, which is why it lacks the robust functionalities that a fledgling edtech brand needs to manage its ever-growing customer touchpoints. 

While WhatsApp Business App offers a simple tech interface for edtech brands to communicate with their audience, it doesn’t offer out-of-the-box capabilities that are critical to your business productivity. 

For instance, there are a lot of things you can’t do with Whatsapp Business App such as: 

• Workflow management
• Tracking
• Data administration
• Send bulk messages to prospects and customers
• Automatically trigger messages via APIs 
• Track agent performance

These drawbacks hold your edtech brand from responding promptly to your prospects and converting them into paying customers when they are at the peak of their engagement. 

Thankfully, WhatsApp Business API makes up for these limitations. It offers several advanced automation options to help your edtech brand reach more customers in a short time, offer a personalised customer experience, and reduce your customer support overheads. 

If you are thinking about using WhatsApp or are already using WhatsApp Business to manage your customer conversations, you can make a massive impact across all three customer touchpoints by upgrading to WhatsApp Business API.

Leveraging WhatsApp Automation To Grow Your Edtech Business

Here are a few use cases of WhatsApp that are common across edtech brands:

Acquiring New Students

Edtech institutes often include a WhatsApp chat widget on their website to offer personalised customer journeys to their website visitors. By having a chat widget right there on their home pages, your edtech brand can open an interactive communication channel to engage with potential buyers.

Improving Enrollment Rates With Relevant Retargeting

Many students and parents land on your website for casual window shopping and leave without taking any action. With Whatsapp Business API, you can send automated messages to people who left your website without a trace. 

A well-crafted set of automated WhatsApp messages can help you nudge them to interact with your brand or convert high-intent prospects into leads—or customers.

Creating A Sticky Onboarding Experience

For edtech brands, new student drop-offs are a serious problem and a way to lose business. With the right kind of chatbot experience, edtech institutions can offer a hyper-personalised onboarding experience for new students to feel welcomed to their new classroom. 

For instance, you can create an automated chatbot workflow to guide the student to download the welcome kit, get answers to the common FAQs, find relevant resources for their courses, or ask for real-world support from an agent.

Improving Engagement With Customer Segments And Broadcast Lists

With the advanced features and functionalities that WhatsApp Business API offers, you can create chatbots using no-code platforms to create customised customer segments and separate broadcast lists for driving contextual engagement. 

For instance, you can create different customer segments for:

• Prospects who have shown interest in your course offerings
• Students who have enrolled in one of your courses
• Parents who want to stay abreast of their kids’ progress

Instead of cramming all kinds of conversations in the same WhatsApp group, you can broadcast relevant messages to different groups based on the purpose of the group.

There’s A Lot More You Can Do With WhatsApp Automation

WhatsApp Messenger and WhatsApp Business are good starting points for small edtech brands to manage their customer interactions. But you will hit a wall once you start growing your student enrollments and when you want to offer consistent customer experience across multiple customer touchpoints. 

WhatsApp Business API opens new portals of opportunities for growing edtech brands to make use of advanced integrations and customisations that aren’t readily available within the WhatsApp ecosystem.