Moving a marketplace's enquiry calls onto WhatsApp

Many Indian B2B marketplaces still lean on outbound calling to confirm enquiries, chase approvals and update buyers on orders. Calls are staff-heavy, hard to schedule across time zones and languages, and leave no searchable trail. The operational problem is throughput: a growing enquiry volume outpaces the number of agents who can dial, hold and log each interaction reliably.

Moving these repetitive touchpoints to WhatsApp reframes the work as structured, asynchronous messaging. Quick replies, CTA buttons and forms let a buyer approve an enquiry or acknowledge a shipment without a live agent. The question this workflow raises is which interactions genuinely suit a button-and-form flow, and which still need a human voice to resolve ambiguity, negotiation or complaint.

AiSensy reports that IndiaMART shifted enquiry approvals, order confirmations and shipping and delivery notifications onto automated WhatsApp messages using quick replies, CTA buttons and WhatsApp Forms in place of outbound calls. According to AiSensy, this messaging-first approach handled the bulk of routine buyer touchpoints that had previously required agents to dial out.

On outcomes, AiSensy states that buyer conversion rose by 33 percent and that complaints fell by 60 percent after the change. AiSensy also reports engagement increasing roughly threefold, and that around 10 lakh (one million) enquiry approvals per month are processed through WhatsApp. AiSensy does not state a publication date, so these figures carry no dated context and should be re-verified.

An Indian SMB should first ask what baseline these percentages sit against and over what period, since AiSensy gives no dates. Confirm whether the 33 percent and 60 percent movements are like-for-like against the previous calling process or against a different cohort. Then check template approval: enquiry, confirmation and shipping messages are distinct utility templates that each need Meta approval, and rejected or paused templates break the flow.

Inspect opt-in and category rules. WhatsApp Business pricing and messaging policy distinguish utility, marketing and authentication conversations, so map each IndiaMART-style message to a category before assuming cost neutrality. Confirm you can capture and log consent at the point buyers share numbers, and confirm applicable rules, consent, retention and escalation design with qualified counsel or compliance owners. Finally, ask whether your team can staff live escalation when a form-based approval stalls, because automation that cannot hand off cleanly simply relocates the bottleneck.

IndiaMART operates at marketplace scale, and the reported one-million monthly approvals reflect a volume where template automation amortises across a vast catalogue and buyer base. A smaller distributor sees far fewer enquiries, so per-message fixed effort in template design, approval and monitoring weighs proportionally heavier and the same percentage gains may not materialise on thin volumes.

The workflow also assumes buyers already expect WhatsApp contact and that enquiries are structured enough to fit buttons and forms. B2B negotiations with bespoke pricing, credit terms or specification back-and-forth resist templating in ways a marketplace's standardised approvals do not. The complaint-reduction figure may reflect faster acknowledgement, not resolution, so a copying SMB should not assume messaging removes the underlying reasons customers complain.