- WhatsApp Business now supports voice and video calls, and even in-message voice notes
- AI agents suggest chat follow-ups and product recommendations
- Meta claims 1.5 billion people use WhatsApp every single day
A series of new WhatsApp updates will make it even easier for businesses to communicate with their customers directly on the platform with the launch of voice calling features.
At its global Conversations conference, the company announced firms using the WhatsApp Business Platform will now be able to use more of the features everyday users have on the messaging platform, including receiving and making voice calls with customers and even sending and receiving voice messages.
Furthering this, customer service teams operating across sectors like remote healthcare can also make video calls on the platform in what could be seen as a huge update for the Business Platform.
Huge updates come to the WhatsApp Business Platform
At the same time, WhatsApp also confirmed it would be expanding its Business AI capabilities by introducing automated follow-ups and support via WhatsApp chats and rolling out product recommendations on merchant websites.
The company explained its new voice and video calling features not only improve current support, but "[pave] the way for AI-enabled voice support in the future."
Finally, the social networking giant confirmed it would be centralizing its marketing and campaign management tools across other core platforms – Facebook and Instagram – to make it easier for companies to use shared creatives, budgets and flows across all three platforms.
Besides sharing resources across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, businesses will "soon" be able to create ads for WhatsApp Statuses directly in Ads Manager to reach even more customers.
Already a popular business networking app for customer support in Brazil and India, WhatsApp is seeing healthy growth across other markets, now counting more than 200 million monthly Business users and 1.5 billion daily users in total.
The news comes just a couple of weeks after WhatsApp announced updates to its Channels, including paid subscriptions and the option for businesses to promote channels.
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