What problems is 360Dialog solving and how is that benefiting you?
Our sales team (key account managers, or KAMs) talks to customers on WhatsApp all day, from the WhatsApp Business app on their phones. Those conversations lived only on the phones. We couldn't see them from our systems or link them to customer records, and they would be lost if someone left. 360dialog solves three problems for us.
1. Official access to WhatsApp without building it ourselves. 360dialog is our Business Solution Provider (BSP), the Meta-approved partner that connects us to the WhatsApp Cloud API. We didn't have to become a Meta technology provider or run that infrastructure. One API key per number gives us sending, receiving, media and template management, in the same request format as Meta's own API. Most of our code follows Meta's documentation directly.
2. Salespeople keep their app, and we still capture the conversations. With coexistence, a number stays in the WhatsApp Business app while also being connected to the API. The salesperson works exactly as before. 360dialog forwards every incoming message, and every message sent from the phone, to a webhook on our own server. When we connected the first number, about 9,800 messages of history, going back four and a half months, arrived the same day. We matched that history to 230 customers in our customer database. Conversations that used to exist only on one phone are now in our own database, where we can search them, back them up, and see them on each salesperson's customer timeline. Voice notes are downloaded through 360dialog and transcribed.
3. Sending approved messages from our own tools. Salespeople now send approved WhatsApp templates from inside our sales tool instead of copying text into their phones. All sends go through one server-side route. It holds the 360dialog key and checks consent, the send cap and template approval before anything goes out. We create templates through the API or in the Hub, and we check their approval status every 15 minutes, so a paused or rejected template shows up quickly. As of 22 September, all 11 of these checked sends had gone to 11 different customers and been delivered within seconds.
How that benefits us
- The customer relationship belongs to the company, not to one phone. Conversation history survives staff changes, and managers can see it.
- Salespeople didn't have to change how they work, so we had no adoption fight.
- Outbound messages are controlled. Only approved templates go to customers who have consented, and every send is logged with its delivery receipts.
- We built quickly and cheaply. It took days, not months, to get from sandbox to production sends. The cost is €49 per number per month plus Meta's message rates, billed month to month, so we are not locked in.
Honestly, the benefit is only as stable as the number itself. Meta restricted our coexistence number several times in September, and each time capture and sending stopped until we reconnected. When the number is up, it does what we need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.