WhatsApp Business is now available (almost) all across MENA including Saudi, UAE, Egypt & Jordan

WhatsApp Business, the newly launched dedicated Android app for businesses is now available (almost) all across MENA including Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan, Egypt & Morocco, we have confirmed. The service was first launched last month in select markets including United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Indonesia, and Italy.

WhatsApp Business is being dubbed as WhatsApp’s version of Facebook pages that aims to connect businesses with their customers by establishing a presence on the network of 1.5 billion users.

We tried the app for few hours and it functions just like the regular version of WhatsApp with some extra features including Business Profiles, Quick Replies, Greeting Messages, and Automated Away Messages.

Business Profiles

This is one of the first and perhaps the biggest difference between WhatsApp Business and the standard WhatsApp application. Business Profile lets you put up information about your business including the address, category, description, business hours, email address, and websites.

Any user chatting with a WhatsApp Business account will be able to see these details. And all these accounts are marked as Business account.

When you download the app and install it. Just make sure that you use the correct name as it cannot be changed later.

Quick Replies, Greeting Messages, and Automated Away Messages

WhatsApp Business also lets you set up quick replies that can be used during conversations with your customers. This is very handy for frequently asked questions. So let’s say a lot of your customers want to know about your branches in a specific city. You can set up the lists for each city and call them using /cityname or whatever keyword you’ve saved them with, in the Quick Replies settings.

Then you have Automated Away Messages that can be used when you’re not around. You can turn the feature on or off depending upon your availability. Just like Automated Away Messages, you can also set up default Greeting Messages that users are welcome with when they start chatting with the business.

You can also use your landline to activate WhatsApp Business after downloading it. For activation, when shown, choose the option ‘Call me’ and you’ll receive a call on your landline with the activation code.

A lot of small businesses are already using the standard WhatsApp to communicate with their customers. WhatsApp Business will be a no-brainer for those and many more. Who wouldn’t want to be on a network that has more than 1.5 billion users in the world. You can download the app here.