What to consider when customers need to use their own WhatsApp accounts
Adding WhatsApp as a channel to use for authentication, customer notifications and your own marketing is now very straightforward, but if you want to support your customers to use their own WhatsApp senders through your product, there are a few more things to think about.
You'll need to think about this for any use case where your customers need messages to show their brand rather than yours, common for marketing but also notifications where the customer's end user will be familiar with their brand but not yours.
1) Create customer Meta account > 2) Source phone number > 3) Link WhatsApp to Messente > 4) Setup templates > 5) Start sending
Here are the steps to prepare WhatsApp for sending, let's now breakdown each step with the considerations for this use case.
1) Create customer Meta account
This will usually already exist, most customers will have a facebook page and many will use FB advertising. Main thing to confirm is that they have a billing method setup.
2) Source phone number
This is needed if the customer needs to create a new WhatsApp account, if they are moving an existing one you can skip this step.
Several options here:
- Customer brings their own from their telco provider or a Sim card
- Use a WhatsApp provided number - US code numbers now offered in many markets
- Contact Messente for markets where we can provide a number
1 or 2 will be simpler, with option 3 we will pass cost for the number onto you and so you'll need to think about how you charge your customer.
3) Link WhatsApp to Messente
Normally this is done from the Senders page on the Messente dashboard. However, for this use case we can provide a link in the format below that you can use to create a button in your product or your support could provide it to customers:
https://wa.messente.com/?account_uuid=[your account UUID]
- This link will allow anyone to link their WhatsApp account to your Messente account
- It opens the same 'embedded sign-up' form that opens when you click 'Connect' under WhatsApp on the Senders page
- If they have a Meta account but don't already have a WhatsApp account then they can create one with this link (using the number from step 2)
4) Setup templates
All business initiated conversations on WhatsApp must use a pre-approved template registered in the businesses' WhatsApp account so your customer will next need some templates setup. 2 options for this:
- You guide them to the Template Manager within the Meta portal to create the templates, our support guide can be a useful resouce to support this
- You push standardised templates into their WhatsApp account using the Meta API
ℹ️ We plan to launch a new Messente API to manage WhatsApp templates without having to additionally integrate with Meta. If this is of interest please let us know and we can provide early access
5) Start sending
You now just need to ensure that you use the new Sender for that customer's WhatsApp traffic and configure fallbacks if required.
Final thoughts
To avoid your customers running into problems we strongly recommend you make them aware of the WhatsApp business policy and in particular check they are not from a restricted industry, have a acceptable opt-in and opt-out policies and have a strategy for how they will reply to any responses they receive.