Ping! Top WhatsApp features PR professionals want, what's on your list?

PR lives on WhatsApp — with colleagues, journalists and clients alike. With Kunal Shah just named global head of WhatsApp, we asked the PR and corp comm community what WhatsApp features would make life easier for PR, media and client teams?

They didn't hold back.

Gina Ghosh, strategic reputation advisor and former director PR for Zee Entertainment recommends that WhatsApp thinks of adding the following useful features:

Shridevi Shetty, communications consultant and partner Eskay Constructions shares, "WhatsApp features I’d love for PR: one - show image and file size before sending. Image/file size matters because PR teams often share visuals and press assets, and knowing the size upfront helps avoid compression surprises, slow uploads, or sending the wrong version.

And two - add an AI prompt for duplicate messages. Duplicate prompts matter because follow-ups happen fast and a simple warning could prevent accidental repeat sends, save time, and keep communication cleaner."

Madhurima Bhatia, PR head, media engagement & partnerships - India and APEC for Ipsos in India recommends a feature that would, "Put all conversations by groupings. All conversation with journalists under one head, with colleagues under one head. Those who work with influencers, their conversation under one head. Right now finding information is a humongous task and we are using keywords to pull out info from archives."

Timers for follow up messages 

One of the big challenges of using WhatsApp are the constant barrage of messages, without consideration for timings. In order to add some semblance of order, Neha Mehrotra, MD at Avian We. says she would like an inbuilt "Out of office or in a meeting notification."

Such a feature would certainly help deal with the flow of pings expecting an instant response.

Moushumi Dutt, senior communications consultant concurs adding a useful suggestion, "Can follow up messages on WA to clients, colleagues or media, have an in built timer, where the receiver gets to know that this is the 2nd , 3rd or 4th reminder .. for an acknowledgement or a short response"?

Abhilasha Iyer, community manager, Asia for Team4Tech ( an accelerator for education-focused nonprofit organizations) asks for a feature where one can, "Schedule messages to be sent to clients/teams when one thinks of them so that we don’t lose track later. Would like to be able to include clickable links in photos."

Aakanksha Gupta, founder & CEO @The Other Circle & Cavalry Media agrees with need for scheduled messages and reminders. On a wry note she suggests having, "Maybe a deep breath countdown timer to help us calm our nerves after reading 'certain messages'."

And that perhaps says it all.