In order for your customers to make a choice in a WhatsApp for Business list, you’d have to write the list in the message, and your customers had to send their choice (in content or number) in text. Sounds like a lot of trouble, right?
WhatsApp thought so too, which is why they added reply buttons and list messages: to make everyone’s lives easier.
This simple update makes your user’s experience much better when interacting with your business’ WhatsApp bot.
Why?
-
Easier, more interactive
As WhatsApp was testing this new feature, they found that people interacted more with the presence of the chatbots and they had a much higher response rate.
2. Even more personalized
While a list is static, a button list is interactive and dynamic. In other words, if your customers, for example, make reservations through the WhatsApp chatbot, the list can be made dynamic based on available slots or appointments as well as in general based on your customer’s response.
3. No template needed
While messages on WhatsApp usually require approved template messages, reply buttons actually don’t!
Reply Buttons
These are basically buttons customers can click for a response. Reply buttons can have up to 3 buttons per message.
The anatomy of a reply button message
This is just how much you can customize a reply button message.
You can use reply buttons for an easier, faster response experience for your customers.
List Messages
These are options in a list your users can make a choice of a response from. List messages can extend for up to 10 messages per list, have descriptions, and can’t contain images.
The anatomy of a list message
List messages are simply composed as below:
Should I use a reply button or list message?
Confused? Makes sense: both options are awesome, but here’s a summary of the properties of each so you’d know which suits your case better:
If you still can’t decide, here are the best use cases for each:
These new message types will add a lot of fun to interacting with your customers.
Build your WhatsApp chatbot now and experiment with your options first-hand.