Stop Losing Leads: Connect WhatsApp Business to your CRM (and watch response times drop)

According to Meta’s Indonesia Country Director, Pieter Lydian, at the WhatsApp Business Summit 2025, nearly 9 out of 10 Indonesian consumers use WhatsApp to interact with a business at least once a week—that’s 88.8% of the entire population! Over 100 million Indonesians are already using WhatsApp. But the question for business owners is, “Do you have a WhatsApp Business? Have you connected it with your CRM?”

Are you treating your CRM only as a contact list?

From SMEs to enterprises, businesses rely on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools to manage and store customer details. If you’re still treating your CRM only as a contact list, you’re a million steps behind your competitors! CRMs, like monday.com, are connected to your email, allowing you to send outreach, follow-up, or even break-up emails directly from it.

Okay, that’s email. What about WhatsApp? Can you send WhatsApp messages from your CRM? Some CRMs support it out of the box, while others need an integration

Let’s take monday CRM as an example. The platform offers hundreds of apps and integrations, allowing you to easily select the one that best suits your needs, like the WhatsApp Business Integration we launched last year. Once integrated, you can send both emails and WhatsApp messages directly from monday CRM.

Building strong relationships via WhatsApp

The business environment has become increasingly competitive with the growth of digital communication. The key to standing out from the competition lies in offering a top-notch, memorable experience. Effective communication is fundamental to building a strong, positive experience and creating a loyal customer base.

WhatsApp provides direct communication between companies and customers, enabling real-time interaction that can improve satisfaction and loyalty to the brand. With its easy access and quick responsiveness, WhatsApp Business can influence customers’ perception and behaviors when choosing a product or service. Whether you’re using it for contacting leads or customer support, it can be concluded that customer engagement through WhatsApp Business significantly increases the number of consumers.

Cold-calling is dead, WhatsApp is on the rise

Not only does WhatsApp affect customer satisfaction and loyalty, but in this particular LinkedIn post by Saleh Nabil, he wrote, “In London, a cold call is 'Hustle’. In 2026 Jakarta, a cold call is ‘Terror’." Is it really?

If you’re counting the “Couldn’t agree more”, “Accurate”, “Valid”, or “Very true” from this post, you’ll just get lost in it. An International Sales Specialist commented on the post, stating that written communication is preferred at the early stages, where salespeople can share catalogs and product information, allowing customers to review the details. Phone calls are deemed more intrusive than written communication, and are only effective when customers express their interest and trust has been established.

Why businesses need to adopt WhatsApp Business

In 2024, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reported that Indonesian consumers increasingly choose messaging as their preferred mode of communication with businesses. They found that pure messaging (i.e., WhatsApp, Telegram, and other internet-based real-time text, voice, and media sharing) and social media messaging (i.e., Instagram Direct, TikTok Direct Messaging, and other direct multi-media messaging within social media platforms) come out on top, surpassing traditional channels like email, in-app chat, and SMS, in popularity. Over 80% of businesses reported successful outcomes from using pure messaging or social media messaging in one or more stages of the sales cycle.

For businesses to remain at the top of their game, adopting and enhancing their messaging strategies is non-negotiable. This will allow them to meet consumer expectations and foster deeper engagement.

Integrate your WhatsApp Business with your CRM

We understand the importance of continuously adapting to the ever-changing business environment. You will find the 5 key success factors that BCG introduced to help optimize business messaging helpful, if not a revelation. Based on these five factors, integrating WhatsApp with your sales CRM will help your team work seamlessly and more efficiently, as the need to switch between apps is eliminated—everything can be done in one platform—while also breaking down organizational silos, creating seamless customer journeys, and enhancing data security.

The WhatsApp Business Integration for monday.com is intended to automate WhatsApp communication directly within monday CRM. This way, your team can connect tasks with WhatsApp messaging, empowering your organization to streamline workflow and increase productivity. Those chat histories that get lost in time or those spreadsheets you manually input for performance tracking are no more.

Escalating issues in customer support, gathering customer feedback, or managing sales pipeline can all be done through monday CRM once the integration is set up. Imagine how efficient your team can become!