NewsUC&C1 Nov 2018 · 2 min read

WhatsApp: Now More Popular than Office 365

Use of WhatsApp business is beginning to outstrip Microsoft Office 365 use according to research by CCS Insight. Here's the latest news.

Rebekah Carter

WhatsApp overtakes Office 365 popularity

Would your employees prefer to use an app like WhatsApp for their business interactions, or a productivity suite like Microsoft Office 365? According to recent information from a report, the answer may well surprise you.

The initial survey which came with a relatively small sample size of around 672 employees across Western European and US businesses, revealed that around 30% of respondents preferred to use WhatsApp as their most common tool for business communication and collaboration. 29% claimed that Office 365 was their preferred option.

Though the difference between the number of people using Office 365 and the number using WhatsApp Business may not be astronomical, CCS Insight believes that the survey shows how important the launch of WhatsApp Business has been to the corporate world.

What Does This Mean for WhatsApp Business?

The CCS research emerged only 12 weeks after Facebook published the API for their business clients. This means that Users can run a WhatsApp Business solution either via Amazon Web Services or on their services, with the option to deliver up to 15 messages per second to their clients. These messages cost anywhere between 0.5 and 9 cents to send, depending on things like location.

As WhatsApp continues to roll out innovative and scalable solutions for their Business customers, it seems likely that the tool will become more popular within the corporate space.

Additionally, the results from the CCS Insight survey indicate that employees generally prefer to use applications that they've grown familiar with in their consumer life in the business world too. At the very least, it seems that we're drawn towards things that feel similar to the tools that we use every day.

Discussing the Findings in the CCS Survey

Interestingly, the CCS study also revealed that around two-thirds of respondents aren't concerned about the privacy that they can access at work because they feel their employer keeps their information secure. However, if an employer does attempt to increase monitoring in the workplace, or change something about the security standards, they can expect to meet resistance. Around 74% of employees in larger companies said that they object to being forced to install specific pieces of software on a personal device for work.

These findings arise at a time where companies are beginning to rely more on monitoring tools to determine employee behaviour and productivity. Other results in the study included:

60% of respondents said that they feel nervous that artificial intelligence will take their jobs
Employees believe that digital assistants are on the way, with nearly half expecting to see them in the office within the next 12 months
Microsoft is the brand that employees trust most to protect their data (45%)

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