Respond.io alternative for businesses in Malaysia and Singapore

Social messaging apps are now granting businesses the power to remain competitive. Without chats, businesses are bound to lose an enormous amount of exposure. Other than cultivating customer loyalty in the long run, chatting with customers help businesses build real connections and drive sales by transforming conversations into conversions.

Many use chats on a daily basis; in fact, 3.09 billion smartphone owners access messaging apps for communication. As people grew fond of chatting online, they use it not just with families and friends, but also with businesses. This is proven when 51% of mobile messaging app users claimed that they prefer contacting brands via mobile messages, as shown in a study by Kenshoo. This has led to the rising popularity of messaging platforms such as respond.io where businesses unify customer communication to ease work operations. Nevertheless, to maximise revenue and minimise expenses, business owners must always explore other options available on the market. If you still don’t know where to start, here’s a Respond.io alternative as your starting point!

Respond.io vs SleekFlow: what we offer

Respond.io and SleekFlow have a significant number of similarities in terms of the services and features provided. Respond.io focuses on a unified medium for businesses to market, sell, and support through communications while SleekFlow offers an omnichannel platform to accelerate sales, boost conversions, and reinforce customer support with seamless workflows.

So, what are the features that make the two comparable? Read on to examine the differences. 

Official WhatsApp Business API

As of May 2020, WhatsApp is found to be the favourite messaging channel for 98.7% of Malaysians. Similarly, in Singapore, 87.1% of its social media population back in 2020 used WhatsApp, making it the second most popular social platform right after YouTube. There are now 30.25 million social media users in Malaysia and 5.33 million in Singapore. Logically, WhatsApp messages sent to businesses just continue to grow each day.

This further emphasises the significance of WhatsApp Business API. SleekFlow has foreseen the need to scale businesses and push sales through WhatsApp, providing clear step-by-step guides, documentation, a help centre, videos, and even consultation for the whole application process. For customers of SleekFlow, a bulk pricing option as a certified Twilio partner is also provided. Alternatively, applications can also be made on 360dialog, another Business Solution Provider (BSP) for WhatsApp Business API. The same goes for Respond.io.

Find out why businesses should integrate WhatsApp Business API here.

A plus point for SleekFlow is that they include WhatsApp consultation in their premium plans as they understand the hassle of going through complicated steps for applying WhatsApp Business API. While both have local customer success managers in Malaysia or Singapore, some Respond.io users have left negative reviews regarding the speed of resolving support tickets.

Assigning conversations to multiple users

Contacts can be assigned to one agent on Respond.io, and each agent can own a conversation at a time. On the other hand, SleekFlow users are able to have up to 5 collaborators aside from the owner, ensuring that each customer receives necessary assistance and accurate information as soon as possible as relevant departments or employees can attend to enquiries whenever needed.

Besides that, SleekFlow has incorporated handy little details such as displaying agent names in chats for the ease of customers, scheduling messages right in the reply section, setting your online status to ‘active’ and more.

Customer contacts

Depending on the size of your business, choosing the appropriate plan is critical to optimising the budget for a higher ROI. Companies with a larger client base should always go for a premium solution for highly efficient operations. Stronger commitment will definitely bring forth highly promising results with maximised revenue carried forward by sales and conversion, no matter for online or brick-to-mortar stores.

Having the number of customer contacts restricted to 100 is common for the free plans, but SleekFlow has pushed open doors to assist businesses by allowing 2,000 and 10,000 customer contacts for pro and premium users. As for Respond.io, they supply 1,000 and 5,000 contact slots for the equivalent tiers.

Flexible automation and workflow

As shown on Respond.io’s website, the number of automated rules for their starter plan, pro plan, and business plan are 1, 3, and 15 workflows respectively. As opposed to that, automated rules accessible on SleekFlow are 5 for startup and pro plans and unlimited for premium plans. 

Find out how businesses like Pizza Hut Malaysia and RinggitPlus use WhatsApp Chatbots for a seamless workflow.

Comprehensive analytics

The analytics dashboard on SleekFlow is super organised and demonstrative as it displays the overall sales performance over time. This is a plus point as it is highly constructive for assessing marketing strategies, the efficacy of current workflows, and even the productivity of each salesperson.

Respond.io users can also review the activities of their agents in terms of replying to customers and sending out messages, but most of their reports are components related to the sources, opening, and closing of messages. SleekFlow analytics contains all of those elements, accompanied by other additional metrics such as delivery rate, bounce rate, read rate, and reply rate for the campaigns created. You can even compare two segments at a time!

Integrations

Available social channels on both Respond.io and SleekFlow include Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, Telegram, LINE, and Viber.

Other integrations offered by Respond.io include Dialogflow, Zapier, and Google Sheet. They also provide the installation of a live chat widget for websites created on WordPress, Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace, which is also conveniently accessible for free on SleekFlow.

On top of that, SleekFlow offers extra advantages with the native integration of Shopify and Facebook Lead Ads other than Zapier and Twilio. E-commerce store owners can then view a wide variety of customer information in their profile right next to the chat, including order history, last ordered item, payment status, and more, apart from the existing personal data such as name, email, phone number, birthday, and so forth. After integrating your Shopify store, sending out personalised abandoned cart reminders will also be as easy as just a few clicks.

Since Facebook Leads Ads are frequently used these days, SleekFlow has also introduced its integration free of charge!

Data security

Enterprises that have integrated SleekFlow are now owning the privilege of having contact information masking. In this case, they don’t have to worry about salespersons leaving the company along with the customer contact and bringing them to their competitors. It also guarantees more privacy and safety for its customers as they promote its products and services to the general public.

Pricing

At first glance, you'll be able to see that the premium plan on Respond.io is slightly cheaper. However, if you dive deeper into the evaluation of features and try exploring our services, most will realise that SleekFlow actually offers some additional detailed functions and strong customer support. Companies that opt for SleekFlow can even choose to add on user logins as the size of the business grows over time. 

Think about it. For businesses and enterprises to thrive, it is always better to get a long-lasting solution that is worth every cent to present consistently satisfying services to customers. Make success-worthy decisions. Always give alternatives a chance.

What makes SleekFlow special?

As shown clearly in the comparison above, SleekFlow offers an extensive range of comprehensive features that are practical and highly beneficial for accelerating sales, especially for enterprises and retail businesses.

Known for excellent customer support, SleekFlow users will never have to worry about not having their questions or issues solved. English, Chinese, and Malay-speaking representatives are trained to assist you through the simple learning process and complete the tedious steps of the WhatsApp Business API application.

How to use SleekFlow for your business in Malaysia or Singapore

Enterprises such as ZENXIN Organic and PSB Academy have incorporated SleekFlow for their sales-boosting strategies. From retail and e-commerce to beauty salons and more, you can customise your marketing and sales strategy with SleekFlow. Out of the library of advanced features, here are a few main functions that might be useful for businesses in Malaysia or Singapore:

A centralised platform to facilitate communication

Hundreds of thousands of customer enquiries can be settled with fewer team members on SleekFlow’s all-in-one platform. In the present world, social media users often chat on multiple social media apps at the same time. On SleekFlow, businesses can keep up with the trend and attend to messages coming in from WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and more all at the same time, with multiple logins for different users.

Personalised broadcast messages

Almost all Malaysians and Singaporeans have WhatsApp on their phones. Businesses can fully utilise the WhatsApp Business API to send out personalised broadcast messages to connect deeply with customers. Through these meaningful interactions, customers are more likely to trust your brand and contribute higher spending in their purchases. It’s just like how we’re more likely to buy products from a friend!

Convert prospects with accelerated speed to lead

Consumers are now expecting an almost immediate response when they contact a business. If the response time is slow, they are very likely to give up altogether or make purchases from your competitors instead. Automated responses are surely useful to reduce the loss of leads and drive conversion as customers are provided with the answers at once. And as we all know, happy customers share their experiences with others. That’s free marketing!

Switch to SleekFlow without losing your WhatsApp Business API number

Many customers have tried other platforms similar to SleekFlow without getting the desired results. They have then transferred to SleekFlow with the assistance of our professional team. Be rest assured, as you will not have to lose the existing WhatsApp Business API number. Chat history and customer contacts can be imported as well.

Visit SleekFlow’s YouTube channel or blog posts for more detailed guides.

Get started with SleekFlow today and see the results

We understand that businesses need to weigh the pros and cons of every decision made. It is only reasonable to have doubts before starting something new. This is why SleekFlow has the free trial version with no expiration for businesses to explore what’s right for them.

From the campaign analytics included, marketers will also be able to see the results generated from using SleekFlow. Experience the convenience and find the best solution for your business.

Social commerce is the new trend. Don’t lose out.

Further reading: A comparison of SleekFlow vs. ManyChat