WhatsApp predicted to "revolutionise" estate agency c...

WhatsApp is being predicted to become a key messaging tool for estate agents in the coming years.

Messaging provider SMS Speedway analysed statistics from social media platform Hootsuite that showed 2bn people globally use WhatsApp every month.

This means almost a third of the world’s population are using the popular app to send messages, images, video and to make calls.

Bradley Kieser, chief executive of SMS Speedway, said agents should make the most of WhatsApp Business so they can deliver messages to where customers prefer.

It has now integrated WhatsApp Business into it messaging services.

As part of the new product, all of SMS Speedway's existing features are available on the platform including appointment reminders, auto-responders and customer engagement tools.

The service can send a variety of media from images to stickers, PDFs to surveys and stickers to call to action buttons, plus if WhatsApp goes down, messages are routed via other channels to ensure the customer always gets the message.

Kieser said: “It’s only right that we meet that demand and let our estate agents deliver their messages where their customers want to receive them.

“We’ve worked closely with the team at Facebook to ensure our WhatsApp Business integration is simple and straightforward to activate, meaning we can have our clients up and running in a matter of minutes.

“This is a game changer for the property sector and we believe it will revolutionise communications with customers and within the agency - something we’ve been doing since 1994 when we launched the world’s first commercial text messaging service.

“Not only that, but because of our relationship with the customer relationship management systems, we’ve been able to create an integration that pushes all WhatsApp communications back into their system so customer service is never compromised and clients don’t lose track of their communications at any point.”