Meta on Thursday said it is beginning to roll out Verified on the WhatsApp Business app in India, Brazil, Indonesia, and Colombia. The company has also introduced new AI tools to help businesses serve customers better.
Meta’s ‘Verified’ badge means a business has registered their information with Meta and is receiving impersonation protection. Last year, the company announced that it will begin testing Meta Verified soon, with small businesses using the WhatsApp Business app before introducing it to businesses on the WhatsApp Business Platform.
“With Meta verified, it’s going to be easier for small businesses to build credibility with their customers and establish your brands that customers will feel more confident when they’re reaching out to you,” said Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, at the Conversations event.
“We’re also expanding the ways that businesses can support their customers to include voice calls on the WhatsApp business platform, so that people can talk directly with the company for bigger purchases, or more complex questions that can’t be sorted out over chat,” he added.
With regard to the new AI tools, Meta will enable businesses to activate AI in their chats with customers, to provide support and help sell their goods and services. The concept is that of having AI act as an assistant within the WhatsApp Business app to help with things like creating a Facebook or Instagram ad that clicks to start a WhatsApp chat or getting support using features like catalog or quick replies.
The company will soon test this capability in India and Singapore markets.
“Our vision is not just to build a single AI assistant, but also to enable lots of different AIs that can serve different purposes, including for businesses. Any business should be able to quickly stand up an agent that can talk to your customers, provide support, and facilitate commerce,” Zuckerberg said.
The company is also bringing calling into the chat for users to call larger businesses on WhatsApp in just one tap. Besides, it has also introduced customised customer messages feature for businesses. This will help them send personal messages like a birthday greeting or holiday promotion in a faster and more efficient way, rather than manually sending them.
Zuckerberg said the company’s new optimised delivery tools will help businesses build on the strength of its AI systems to deliver the right message to the right person on WhatsApp.
“Up until now, businesses would typically message all customers who had asked to receive updates on WhatsApp. But now you can use Ads Manager to deliver messages to those customers who are most likely to be interested With our AI systems recommending the right subset of recipients,” he added.
The new features will help businesses see better return on investment, Meta said.
