WhatsApp was acquired a few years ago for €19 billion, so phone number library Facebook has to recoup that somehow. What about WhatsApp's revenue model?
Vogel-Meijer: "We're not currently paying for this service, but we don't know what will happen in the future. After all, WhatsApp is also looking for revenue models, and that's understandable. Advertising is a very sensitive topic within messaging. As a company, you have to be very relevant with a message to be able to send people an ad in such a private environment. We're currently running some tests in Messenger, but we're being very cautious."
How are you approaching the rollout of WhatsApp as a service channel?
Vogel-Meijer: “We want to make sure everything works smoothly and will be rolling out our WhatsApp service in phases over a week and a half. The volume remains a guessing game: we have scenarios ready for both small and large increases in inquiries. We saw the latter when we introduced Facebook Messenger as a service channel and started sending flight information through Messenger. From that moment on, we saw a whopping 40 percent growth in user volume. This also presents a challenge in response time, especially because people who contact us via social messaging usually have serious questions and want a quick answer. Haste is essential in such cases.”
The volume remains a guess: we have scenarios ready for small, but also large, growth in demand.
To solve the challenge above, are you already experimenting with artificial intelligence?
Karlijn Vogel-Meijer explains: "Absolutely, we're increasingly using artificial intelligence to provide customers with fast service. We collaborate with DigitalGenius (DG) for this: DG provides an algorithm that we've integrated into our CRM environment, trained on 60,000 customer questions and answers. When a social media representative needs to answer a question, they receive a suggested answer. The representative can send this suggestion immediately, or modify it, making the system even smarter."