KBC Groupe : participates with Sparkcentral in Early Access Program for WhatsApp Business

Sparkcentral Invites Companies to Early Access Program for WhatsApp Business, Launches With Leading Consumer Brands

• ● Sparkcentral is an official WhatsApp Business Solution Provider, one of the first to launch

• ● Companies can engage with Sparkcentral now to safely introduce customer care over WhatsApp at scale, to improve customer experience, reduce cost, and streamline customer care operations using one consolidated agent dashboard

• ● KBC Bank & Insurance, citizenM Hotels, utility company ENGIE Electrabel, information analytics company Elsevier among the first to launch

SAN FRANCISCO-August 01, 2018-Sparkcentral, the leading enterprise messaging customer service platform company, today announces official support for the new WhatsApp Business solution and invites enterprises to gain early access to the program that opens with limited availability. WhatsApp Business and Sparkcentral enable enterprises to improve customer experience, streamline customer care operations, and reduce cost to serve by using asynchronous messaging -- rather than traditional voice, email, or live chat channels -- to communicate with the over 1.5 billion users of the highly popular messaging app. People in over 180 countries use WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends, family and businesses, anytime and anywhere.

KBC, a leading Belgian-based bank and insurance company serving over 11 million customers worldwide, is pleased to be one of the first financial institutions to offer this superior service experience to its customers. "Since 6 February this year, KBC customers have been able to message with KBC via WhatsApp," says Karin Van Hoecke, General Manager for Mass Retail at KBC's Belgium Business Unit. "Our customers make enthusiastic use of this opportunity and appreciate the fact that we help and speak to them through their favorite channel. To now scale and offer WhatsApp Business to all our customers, we are pleased to work with Sparkcentral and their enterprise messaging customer service platform. That WhatsApp welcomes us to be among the first to set up a pilot with WhatsApp Business demonstrates once again that we are a leader in our sector in terms of offering innovative and customer-focused solutions."

"Leading the way by innovation in the hotel industry is an important part of the citizenM culture and this includes the way we communicate with our citizens," says Jeremy Walder, citizenConnect manager at citizenM. "WhatsApp is definitely the right channel to enable us to offer this type of intimate service. Together with our partner Sparkcentral we will be leading the way in how we manage conversations via Whatsapp and our other existing messaging channels at scale."

Utility company ENGIE Electrabel agrees: "This extension of the Sparkcentral platform to WhatsApp Business will increase our contact channels to the benefit of our customers while reducing their effort and providing them quick and excellent service" says Jan De Smet, Head of Customer Service at ENGIE Electrabel.

With changing consumer communications preferences, businesses now need mainstream messaging solutions to interact with their customers at scale. Sparkcentral leads the way by providing a centralized routing platform for all social and messaging channels, providing a consolidated messaging queue and agent dashboard that aggregates and consolidates data from any channel into one view with integrated reporting for workforce managers.

WhatsApp Business helps companies and customers connect quickly and easily, yet businesses need an efficient messaging tool to communicate at scale. "More communication with customers is better -- there is no question about that," says Joe Gagnon, CEO at Sparkcentral, "and with the right strategy this can be done without increasing cost. More engagement makes customers more 'sticky' and loyal and enables self-service. Customer engagement is a goldmine for businesses," he adds, "it just has to be executed properly."

Use cases can span from simple outbound notifications (booking or purchase confirmations, order receipts, delivery notifications, payment or appointment reminders, two-factor authentication, ...) to customer service and support (billing inquiries, product updates, engagement with personal advisors, customer onboarding activities, handling of urgent issues, …)

For more information, and to sign up for early access, visitwww.sparkcentral.com/product/whatsapp-customer-service,reach out atwww.sparkcentral.com/contact, or use WhatsApp to message Sparkcentral at1-866-559-6229.