If you lose WhatsApp tomorrow, can your business still trade?

Imagine you run a food business in Accra. You take most of your orders on WhatsApp Business. Customers send you a message, you confirm what they want, they pay a deposit by MoMo, and you deliver. Some of them have been ordering from you for years. They know your name, they know your number, and they know that when you say the food will be there by noon, it will be there by noon.

Then one morning you wake up and you can’t get into your WhatsApp account. Someone has taken it over. Your assistant is in the kitchen getting the food ready, but the delivery details are in your chats. Meanwhile, one customer gets a message from your account asking him to send the balance to a different MoMo number.

Now, what do you do? Can you reach that customer before he pays? And can you still get his food to him by noon?

KPMG’s West Africa banking survey describes messaging apps such as WhatsApp as part of everyday online activity for customers surveyed in Ghana. Ghana’s National Communications Authority took cybersecurity education to Makola Market, where it spoke with traders, MoMo vendors and shoppers about protecting their accounts and spotting fraud. It’s a good time for those of us who use WhatsApp for business to look at how we take orders, confirm payments and keep in touch with our customers.

1. Give customers one official payment number

If you take MoMo, have an official number for business payments. Put it on your invoices, on your order confirmations and on the business pages your customers use. Include the name that should come up when the customer is about to pay. Do it every time, even with the people who order from you every week. You want them to know what a normal payment request from your business looks like.

Also tell them what to do if a different number comes through. Ask them to pause and call the business using a number they already have, perhaps from an old invoice. If you change your payment number yourself, tell customers through an established channel and give them a way to check with you.

Think about the customer who is rushing to get to work and sees a message that says, “Please send the balance here.” The message has your name and your picture. He may pay before he has time to think about it. You can make that decision easier for him by explaining your payment process before there’s a problem.

2. Check who has access to WhatsApp and your email

When was the last time you looked at the devices linked to your WhatsApp Business account? A staff member may have used a laptop to answer messages during a busy period. Is that laptop still connected? Does the person still need access?

Go through the list from time to time. Remove devices you no longer use or recognise. Turn on two-step verification, and make sure the people who help you run the business know that a WhatsApp verification code stays with the person who receives it.

Give your business email the same attention. That’s where you may have invoices, customer enquiries and links to reset passwords. Use a strong, unique password and turn on two-step verification there too. If you have a team, agree on who can access which account and who will handle recovery if there’s a problem. If you run the business alone, make sure you can still recover your email if your phone goes missing.

3. Keep a simple record of orders outside WhatsApp

You can take an order on WhatsApp and still keep a separate record of it. An Excel sheet can do the job. Start with the customer’s name and number, what they ordered, when it’s due, what they’ve paid and what’s left to pay. If you work with a team, add the name of the person handling the order.

The important thing is to update it as you go. If a customer changes a delivery address or pays the rest of the bill, record it that day. Keep the file somewhere secure, give access to the people who need it for their work and check that you can open your backup when you need it.

Go back to our caterer. With an up-to-date order sheet, her assistant can see which meals need to go out first. Someone can call the customers, check payments against the business’s own records and give the delivery rider the right addresses. The owner can work on getting her account back while the team keeps serving customers.

What do you do if it happens today?

Get a message out through a channel customers already know. Call those with orders due or payments outstanding first. Tell them what happened, ask them to pause any unexpected payment requests, and let them know how to confirm their order. A short message will do. “We’ve lost access to our WhatsApp Business account. Please call our usual business line to confirm your order or payment details.”

If someone has already paid a suspicious number, ask them to contact their MoMo provider promptly and keep the transaction reference and messages. Then follow WhatsApp’s account recovery guidance. If your number has been registered on another device, WhatsApp directs you to log back in and verify your number. Successful re-registration signs the other user out.

Here’s something you can do this week. Put your phone aside for an hour and ask someone who helps you with the business to find tomorrow’s orders. Can they tell you who has paid? Can they reach a customer whose delivery time has changed? If you work alone, try doing those same things without opening WhatsApp. Whatever you struggle to find, sort that out while you have the time.

Your customers come back because they know how you do business. They know you’ll answer, you’ll account for their money, and you’ll deliver what you promised. Make it easy for them to keep trusting you, even on a day when your usual way of doing things breaks down.

Repeat business is the best form of business. Don’t lose it.

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