What's up with WhatsApp? How popular messaging tools threaten your business

Many businesses use consumer-standard messaging apps, often inadvertently, but this is risky. In this article I share where the dangers lie, and how to avoid them.Many businesses use consumer-standard messaging apps, often inadvertently, but this is risky. In this article I share where the dangers lie, and how to avoid them.It’s no surprise that Facebook/Meta-owned WhatsApp is the world’s most popular messaging application; as of 2022 it has around 2 billion users. Millions of organisations have downloaded the enterprise-specific WhatsApp Business app too (Meta also sells a WhatsApp API), but importantly these are tools for use in customer engagement and customer service, not for internal comms.  It’s not hard to see why it’s so well-loved: the consumer version of WhatsApp is free to download and use, and lets you message, share cat videos and send gifs all day long. For many of us it has replaced SMS and become the daily norm. Unfortunately, the convenience, ubiquity and familiarity of WhatsApp mean it has organically moved towards being used at work, whether informally between teams or worse even – a strategic decision! That can be a very bad move. As HM Government and banking giant JP Morgan Chase (to name just two) have…
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