WhatsApp makes it easier and faster to chat with businesses
It's also faster for businesses to get started.
WhatsApp is still important to many shops and other businesses even with its privacy policy debacle clouding matters, and the messaging service wants to make those transactions quicker and simpler through updates to its Business API. To start, you won't need to type quite so often — you'll now get menus that let you tap an option instead of writing a message. You'll also get more information from businesses, such as back-in-stock alerts, so you're more likely to get follow-ups.
If you ever have a truly bad experience with a business, you'll have options to provide more feedback when blocking chats with that company.
You might see more companies using WhatsApp in the first place. The Facebook-owned brand says it has cut the time to get started with business chats from "weeks" to as little as five minutes. WhatsApp believes this will mainly help "medium and larger" firms, but that's still helpful if you'd rather not make a phone call or wait for email.
You'll have to wait a while for companies to adopt the new API. Still, this could be a welcome update in the many parts of the world where WhatsApp is ubiquitous. You might have more reason to fire up WhatsApp the next time you want to shop or manage an account.
