In most South African businesses the WhatsApp number that customers actually use belongs to a person. It is on somebody's phone, in somebody's pocket, and it goes home at five. When that person is on leave, the business is deaf on the channel its customers prefer. When they leave for good, a portion of the customer relationships leave with them, and there is nothing anybody can do about it because the conversations were never the business's to begin with.
This is not a small operational annoyance. It is the most valuable channel in the country sitting outside the business.
The number belongs to the business
In Velora the number is the business's. Every message lands in one inbox that the whole team can see, on a screen rather than in a pocket. Nothing walks out the door when a person does, and nobody has to hand over a phone.
The list is the triage
The filters down the side are the working shape of the day.
- Needs reply: only the conversations where the last word was theirs. That is the list that costs you money when it is long, and it is the only one most days need.
- Open, for anything still in play.
- Snoozed, for later.
- Closed, when it is done.
- And spam, out of the way.
Search finds a name or a number when somebody phones about a chat from last week.
Inside a conversation
Open one and you have the whole thread, and the twenty four hour window counted down for you.
That window is a WhatsApp rule rather than a Velora one: once someone has messaged you, you may reply freely for twenty four hours. After that you may only send an approved template. It catches businesses out constantly, because the rule is invisible until the moment your message does not go.
Velora puts the clock on the screen, and when the window has closed it offers you the approved templates instead, and only the ones that have actually been approved. You cannot accidentally try to send something that will be refused.
Notes, and turning a chat into a lead
Notes stay with the conversation, for whoever picks it up next. That is the difference between a colleague answering a customer cold and answering them knowing that the quote went out on Tuesday.
And when a chat turns into a real enquiry, one click makes it a lead, linked back to the conversation. It joins the same pipeline as the enquiries from your site and your adverts, gets the same ranking, and carries its own history with it.
The housekeeping
Snooze it until Monday. Close it. Flag it for a colleague. Or mark it spam, which blocks the number so it does not come back.
One number, one inbox, the whole team, and nothing lost when someone leaves.
The video at the top of this post is the inbox, start to finish, with nothing cut out.
