Christabel Chika, the founder of Designer Fragrance Oil, started her business at home. In 2017, she started producing body perfumes and room fragrances  with very little capital of 5,000 Naira. Currently, she sources her raw materials from France, makes the products from home, manages inquiries and orders on WhatsApp, and relies on local courier services  to deliver the items to her customers.

Can you describe briefly what led to the creation of Designer Fragrance Oil?

It was a result of passion and the need for financial freedom. For as long as I can remember, business gave me the tick. I have always known that I could turn my passion into a profitable venture. I wanted to do something legitimate and because I love perfumes (I hope I never find my perfect perfume because I like the thrill of the chase so much) and I understand the perfume oil industry even though I am not yet an expert in the business. But I keep working to improve myself in that aspect. I started Designer Fragrance Oil with the goal  of making premium fragrance oil accessible to everyone.

For the WhatsApp Business Insights Program, you were identified and shortlisted as one of the finalists from Sub-Saharan Africa, who are using WhatsApp for their business growth. How does that feel?

I feel recognized and this makes me value the potential of my business much more. Meta recognized me as a business owner amongst various businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa. I feel good about it.

As a perfume brand that sources raw materials from France, do you use WhatsApp to engage your supplier and which feature of WhatsApp Business has helped you connect to your customers the most?

Oh yes! I use WhatsApp as my preferred communication channel to engage not just my suppliers but also the end users on a daily basis.

The ‘Business Profiles’ feature has helped me to connect with my customers the most, because  it offers a unique, fully-branded business identity for my brand. This has allowed me to provide specifics like email and phone contacts, social media links, store addresses, website URLs and suitable business details.

Another feature that has helped me to connect with my customers the most is the Catalogue feature. Everytime, our customers (old and new) want to know more about a product variant amongst our collections and more that we offer. The catalogue feature  helps minimise the need for having the same conversations with multiple customers since they can get the details they need from there.. From sizes to variations, prices and website links, it’s all captured there.

The ‘quick replies’ feature saves me the stress from typing one sentence I need to convey to a specific set of customers requests over and over again. I just tap and send.

The ‘label’ feature is a good one. Once I label a client’s conversation according to priority, I easily don’t miss out on follow-ups and customer engagements.

The custom ‘away replies’ feature has helped with more effective customer engagements for my business especially for clients who are far away in different parts of the world with a different time zone

When did you embrace WhatsApp as a tool to connect to your customers and how are you leveraging it for your business growth?

The moment I figured there was an emergence from the regular WhatsApp to WhatsApp Business in 2018, I switched. In today’s business trend, customers want to engage with businesses and have real and secured conversations with them. These two-way conversations that normally take place in a physical store location which now happens online, for me, leveraging on coding and decoding these communications takes the conversation to the next level to support exceptional customer service experience from product sorting to sales closure. It just gives that feeling of contentment knowing that the business still remains competitive and genuinely connects with customers.

WhatsApp just concluded a virtual educational webinar, what aspects of the training have been most enlightening and transformational for you?

Gaining more insight into the WhatsApp business policy was most enlightening for me. Prior to the webinar, I’ve had situations where a product on the catalogue was declined from being updated after verification. I figured there were certain terms, not just products that are prohibited by WhatsApp. Also, the WhatsApp Web extension is transformational for me especially when I am working on a PC or laptop. The fact that I can move my business documents from my system to my contact using the platform is beautiful.

What do you think about Meta’s efforts in empowering SMBs like yours?

 It’s laudable and it shows Meta’s belief that the real contributors to economic growth are the SMEs like us. It also gives entrepreneurs room to grow and explore more business opportunities.

Any advice to other SMBs using WhatsApp to connect to their customers?

 I would advise them to explore the WhatsApp platform more because it will give them room to enhance their soft skills as well as technical skills in the course of running business operations.

How important is it for SMBs to embrace the use of WhatsApp for their business growth?

I’d say it’s very important to embrace the use of WhatsApp daily for business growth. Take for instance the feature of WhatsApp calls, businesses can automatically organise a teleconference between partners, clients, stakeholders and staff which is brilliant. For businesses to become savvier about generating sales through effective communication and providing customer support, the platform automatically adds value to the business strategy.

On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate WhatsApp’s help to your business growth?

I’d say 8. Because I believe Meta can do more in terms of enabling payment transactions/payment gateways for sales closure for users in Africa and also identify more social economic classification targets/consumers for a rapidly growing business audience. They can auto generate more contacts or leads for business in WhatsApp ads manager.