Survey: 76% got more pesky calls, SMSs after WhatsApp Business interaction

Around 76 per cent of respondents of an online survey have claimed to have noticed a rise in pesky calls or SMS based on their conversations with WhatsApp Business accounts and their activity on Facebook or Instagram. All three are owned by Meta.

According to the survey conducted by online survey firm LocalCircles between February 1 and 20, 95 per cent of WhatsApp respondents in India indicated that they get one or more pesky messages each day, and 41 per cent claim to get four or more such messages daily.

A Meta spokesperson said on Wednesday (February 22) that WhatsApp has inbuilt systems that make it faster for it to suspend a business from sending messages when people provide negative feedback. “If a business receives excessive negative feedback, we may limit or remove a business access to WhatsApp,” the spokesperson explained.

Also read: SC directs WhatsApp to publicise pledge to govt on 2021 privacy policy

Blocking doesn’t stop calls

LocalCircles said the purpose of the survey was to understand whether users were having a negative experience based on the privacy policy changes. To quantify the magnitude of such instances, it asked respondents if they were seeing a rise in unsolicited commercial messages on WhatsApp based on their conversations with WhatsApp Business users or activity on Facebook or Instagram.

“Nearly three-fourth or 76 per cent of the 12,215 WhatsApp users who responded to this question stated that they are seeing an increase in pesky or unsolicited commercial messages based on their conversations with WhatsApp Business accounts and their activity on Facebook/Instagram, the platforms owned by Meta in addition to WhatsApp,” the survey report said.

The survey claims to have received over 51,000 responses from citizens located in 351 districts of India. LocalCircles said the survey findings indicate that most of the WhatsApp users surveyed use the tools available to them, such as blocking or archiving, and yet the spam messages continue, indicating that the senders also switch numbers or there are too many of them.

Also read: WhatsApp in 2023: Get ready for many new features

“The majority or 73 per cent of the 12,673 respondents to this question indicated that they exercise the option to block the numbers from where the unsolicited commercial messages come,” the report said.

Meta cites users’ choice

The Meta spokesperson said the user’s choice is key and the platform gives them the option to block a business account. “We would like to share that at WhatsApp, users’ choice is at the core of what we do. Messaging is the new way to get business done and it is better than SMS, e-mail, and the phone, which have become overloaded and spammy. Our rule is that whether people want to talk to a business or not, the choice is that of our users,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson shared that the platform constantly works with businesses to ensure messages are helpful and expected. “We allow businesses to only send a certain number of messages per day… We’ve recently added the ability for businesses to create a simple way for customers to opt out of receiving certain types of messages right within the chat,” the spokesperson said.

(With agency inputs)