Meta Integrates WhatsApp, Salesforce to Let Merchants Chat With Consumers

Meta will be integrating WhatsApp with Salesforce to help businesses add ways to chat with customers, a WhatsApp blog said Tuesday (Sept. 20).

This will let them add more options to talk and manage communication directly from Salesforce’s platform.

WhatsApp says its goal is to add “faster, richer” interactions and make it easier for businesses to get running through its service. It comes as messaging has become a more prominent way for businesses to communicate with customers.

WhatsApp wrote that it has opened up the WhatsApp Business Platform to any business wanting to get started, which can help out with things like “deepening customer relationships, driving sales and providing support in an efficient and delightful way.”

Salesforce, as a massive customer relationship management (CRM) platform, will help businesses connect with customers – for example, L’Oreal group brands will reportedly use WhatsApp to address customers who left items in a shopping cart, sending them coupons and offers.

WhatsApp said it wants to continue to “build tools that will help more businesses provide support to their customers, showcase and discuss products, and more.”

WhatsApp was also asked earlier this year by Brazilian prosecutors to hold off on rolling out a new feature called “Communities,” which would let users expand their messaging circles and reach 2,500 people at once.

Read more: Brazil Asks WhatsApp to Delay ‘Communities’ Launch

PYMNTS wrote that the prosecutors were concerned about the spread of misinformation in their election this year.

They said the extended reach of “Communities” would come as there had been a proliferation of fake news “about the functioning of institutions and the integrity of the Brazilian voting system” which could threaten democracy there.

According to the report, WhatsApp has been popular among supporters of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who has been seeking reelection and not doing as well as left-wing former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.