Executive Summary
Greyhound, one of Ireland’s leading waste collection and recycling companies, partnered with Engage Hub to modernise customer communications through WhatsApp integration. The rollout has delivered measurable results:
- Cost savings: communications delivered for cents per message vs. €2+ for peers
- 90%+ delivery and read rates across WhatsApp campaigns
- Higher response and review capture compared to SMS and phone-based campaigns
- Campaign volumes scaled from 2,000 to 63,000 messages in a single rollout
- Seamless and secure data collection without manual intervention
- Expanded use cases including compliance notifications, skip deliveries and personalised bin calendars
By replacing manual, high-cost processes with automated, interactive campaigns, Greyhound has created a scalable, future-ready channel that enhances customer experience, streamlines operations and sets the foundation for continued innovation.
Based in Dublin, Greyhound is an award-winning household and commercial waste collection and recycling company with a 40-year heritage. Providing bin and recycling collections, along with skip hire, it leverages the latest technology to deliver a simpler, cleaner and better service.
Challenge
Boost customer engagement and interaction
Since 2019, Greyhound has been using Engage Hub’s AI-powered journey automation platform for SMS campaigns – enabling the organisation to adopt a cohesive approach to customer communication, eliminate data siloes and deliver a more personalised customer experience.
However, Greyhound was keen to boost customer engagement in other campaigns, for example by encouraging customers to leave a review after a positive call. To achieve this, they were searching for a richer communication channel – one that incorporated buttons as well as the ability to gather feedback – to improve response rates and interaction.
Greyhound approached Engage Hub to extend its communication service to encompass WhatsApp as a proof of concept.
Solution
Seamlessly integrated WhatsApp messaging
Greyhound was already using Engage Hub’s Synapse technology for outbound SMS campaigns. As a result, much of the necessary infrastructure was in place. Using the same APIs and service logic, we extended their existing SMS services to incorporate WhatsApp.
One driver behind the spike in campaign activity was Greyhound’s legal obligation under waste collection laws and permits to supply customers with brown bins. Many customers had previously refused them, so this campaign created a simple, cost-effective way to collect responses in one outbound push. By using WhatsApp, Greyhound avoided the need for calls, unnecessary bin deliveries or extra stock costs – ensuring compliance at scale with minimal operational burden.
Waterfall approach to maximise customer contact
Our solution incorporates smart fallback functionality that enables a waterfall approach to customer communication. Therefore, if a message does not reach the customers, messages are automatically sent via an alternative channel, in this case SMS, to ensure the highest possible rate of contact.
Incorporating WhatsApp has therefore enabled Greyhound to enhance customer interaction flows, including incorporating reply handling and button-click responses. The automated solution also streamlines customer input processing by collecting email addresses and opt-out preferences without any human in the loop
Results
Increased delivery and customer engagement rates
Greyhound has launched several successful WhatsApp-based campaigns – one ongoing campaign encourages customers to leave a Google review following a conversation with an agent.
One key benefit of the rollout has been a significant increase in delivery and read rates. In campaigns with SMS fallback, over 90% of messages are successfully delivered via WhatsApp, demonstrating a strong user preference for this channel. In addition, WhatsApp campaigns have received higher response rates when it comes to gathering feedback, obtaining reviews and capturing data.
A personalised customer experience
By enabling Greyhound to act faster on customer input, improve data quality and enhance campaign responsiveness, the introduction of WhatsApp is further improving the overall customer experience.
Leveraging rich interactive functionality, Greyhound has introduced buttons to WhatsApp messages to simplify collecting and collating responses. For example, its Brown Bin opt-out campaign – encompassing thousands of customers using WhatsApp messages – includes 3 buttons for customers to indicate whether they have a brown bin, compost at home or bring their compost to an authorised facility.
And thanks to Engage Hub’s Conversational AI ability to facilitate fully automated conversations on WhatsApp, Greyhound’s campaign to encourage customers to add an email to their account allowed them to reply directly and receive an immediate confirmation, creating a human-like real-time experience.
“Our partnership with Engage Hub has been pivotal to the transformation of our outbound campaigns. Building on their AI-powered journey automation platform for SMS campaigns, their seamless WhatsApp integration is enabling us to achieve greater reach and stronger customer engagement. And the ability to scale these interactions with ease has been a game changer, allowing us to operate more efficiently and deliver an enhanced customer experience.”
Paul Mulhall Communications & Digital Marketing ManagerGreyhound
Moreover, Greyhound is increasing personalisation and delivering valuable services via the use of dynamic WhatsApp campaigns, for example, offering customers the option to download their personalised bin calendar with their account number.
Streamlined operational efficiency
As Greyhound was already using Engage Hub’s platform for SMS, incorporating WhatsApp involved minimal technical lift. These automated solutions streamlines management processes, saves internal resources and reduces reliance on external support.
Enabling scalability and future growth
The volume of WhatsApp campaign messages shows a clear trajectory at Greyhound. Early campaigns averaged between 700 and 2,000 messages. However, a single May 2025 campaign incorporated 63,000 messages – demonstrating the success of WhatsApp as a communication channel for engaging Greyhound customers.
By using WhatsApp, Greyhound can easily launch and promote new services, including its bin collection reminder. Launched recently, this campaign is steadily gaining momentum, with around 2,300 messages sent in the first week alone.
Ultimately, the WhatsApp roll-out has increased Greyhound’s ability to send targeted, streamlined campaigns that resonate with customers. The proof of concept confirmed WhatsApp as an effective tool for achieving the company’s operational and customer engagement goals, providing a strong foundation for future innovations and enhancing customer service across the organisation.
Following this success, Greyhound has expanded its use of WhatsApp into new areas – from personalised bin calendars and skip delivery confirmations to the latest communications on Camera Detection Systems. On that last campaign, industry peers highlighted how costly similar outreach would be for them – upwards of €2 per communication. By contrast, Greyhound achieves the same outcome for just cents per message through Engage Hub’s automated solution, proving both the scalability and cost efficiency of the approach.
Ready to harness the WhatsApp advantage in your campaigns? Get in touch today to start enhancing your outbound strategy.