Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the key role of WhatsApp as WhatsApp-customer relationship management (w-CRM) for strengthening the relationship in the education sector. The paper is exploratory in nature. Design/methodology/approach: A self-administered questionnaire was developed with 20 items for four latent constructs. The data were collected from the undergraduate and postgraduate students of Sri Sri University, Cuttack (Odisha), India, based on convenience sampling. The hypotheses were tested through regression and correlation analyzes. Findings: The findings of the study unveiled that the relationships between students and teaching staff, students and non-teaching staff, and teaching and non-teaching staff can be strengthened by the adoption of w-CRM. Practical implications: WhatsApp can be an inevitable tool to emerge with traditional CRM system to facilitating the advance implementation of w-CRM in the service industry. Originality/value: Although the present study is limited to one of the service sectors, i.e. education, it unfolds the scope of implementation of w-CRM in different services. Especially, small and medium enterprises can implement this tool hand to hand to maintain strong relationships with customers.