From 1 October, businesses using WhatsApp for customer service need to account for a new Meta charge on Service messages.
Each registered WhatsApp Business number receives 1,000 free Service messages per month. Once that allowance has been used, additional replies sent during the 24-hour customer-service window cost 12 cents each in South Africa. Customer messages remain free.
We wanted to see what that would mean in practice, so we looked at WhatsApp usage across 29 Everlytic client organisations and 39 WhatsApp numbers between June and August. Across almost 604,000 messages, 21 of the 29 organisations would have stayed entirely within their free Service-message allowances. Among the eight that would have incurred additional costs, three high-volume organisations accounted for 93.6% of the chargeable Service messages.
What Businesses Should Pay Attention To
The figures suggest that the new WhatsApp support charge will affect businesses quite differently. For many lower-volume users, the additional cost may be limited or non-existent. Businesses using WhatsApp heavily for ongoing Service conversations need to look more closely at how much traffic each number generates.
It is also a good time to review the busiest customer journeys. Automated flows often pick up extra replies as they evolve, and those small additions are easier to overlook when there is no direct cost attached to each message. When a conversation becomes unnecessarily long, tightening it can reduce costs and make the experience easier for the customer, too.
The customer still needs a clear, complete answer, so any changes should preserve that. The useful savings are likely to come from removing clutter and unnecessary back-and-forth.
We unpack the client data, sector differences and practical implications in more detail in our BizCommunity article.
To learn more about how Everlytic can help you optimise WhatsApp for your business, visit Everlytic’s AI Studio featuring WhatsApp or contact [email protected].
