Look at how your customers actually contact you. In most African markets — and increasingly elsewhere — the answer is the same: they write on WhatsApp. Not by email, not through a form. And that's excellent news, on one condition: stop treating WhatsApp like a personal messenger.
The problem with “artisanal” WhatsApp
As long as customer conversations live in one person's phone, the company owns neither its contacts, nor its history, nor its pipeline. An employee leaves, the conversations leave with them. A message arrives on Sunday evening and is buried by Monday morning. Nobody knows how many enquiries came in this month, or how many converted.
What wiring it into a CRM changes
- Every inbound conversation becomes a tracked contact, with a status and an owner
- Unanswered enquiries are followed up automatically — nothing falls through anymore
- Catalogue, confirmations and follow-ups go out from a business account, not a personal phone
- Management sees the volume, the response rate and the sales the channel produces
The customer changes nothing: they write on WhatsApp as before. That's the whole strength of the approach — the structure sits on the company's side, the simplicity on the customer's.
The best sales channel isn't the one recommended at conferences. It's the one your customers already use.
Where to start
A properly configured WhatsApp Business account, even a light CRM, and three automations: acknowledgement of receipt, follow-up of unanswered enquiries, post-sale check-in. That foundation goes live in a few weeks and immediately changes how the pipeline is held. The rest — catalogue, segmentation, campaigns — builds on top, progressively.
