How many times has Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan greeted you as you began shopping on an e-commerce site?
At Flipkart, Bachchan greeted customers and engaged them in conversation, in the avatar of a virtual assistant, during the year’s biggest e-commerce sale, the Big Billion Days (BBD) sale, thanks to Mumbai-based global marketing technology firm Netcore Solutions.
Instead of relying on the tried and tested marketing channels such as email, mobile push notifications and social media during the sale, Flipkart resorted to a virtual assistant modelled on the persona of Bachchan to chat with customers, Kaun Banega Crorepati style, on WhatsApp. This resulted in nearly 1.3 lakh users engaging in over 9.8 lakh interactions with the Bachchan virtual assistant over a span of seven days.
The total time spent by users on the WhatsApp virtual assistant was upwards of 20,000 hours, with an average session lasting almost seven minutes.
How it worked
Targeted users who viewed Flipkart ads on Facebook were encouraged to interact with its WhatsApp Bachchan chatbot by clicking on ‘Send Message’. This immediately launched a chat window with Flipkart’s verified (green-ticked) account on WhatsApp. The user had the option to add Flipkart as a contact and save the number and then initiate conversation with the AB chatbot.
The virtual assistant offered customised category-specific offers on various products based on the audience’s performance in an engaging quiz played in the Kaun Banega Crorepati format.
By sending an emoji, customers received real-time updates on products under that category. Audiences could purchase products, apply for shopping loans, or view video messages from various celebrities who were part of the BBD sale promotional campaign. These video messages were unlocked on progressing to different stages of the interactive game.
Netcore developed the chatbot with conversational flow in English and Hindi, which helped Flipkart reach a larger target audience from tier 2 and 3 cities. Bachchan was one of the brand ambassadors for the BBD sale campaign.
WhatsApp chatbot
“Flipkart wanted to experiment with a new channel to reach out to first-time and repeat customers. They asked us to develop a custom chatbot on WhatsApp based on Bachchan’s well known conversational style, ” Kedar Parikh, Head, Product Management and Machine Learning, Netcore Solutions, told BusinessLine.
Vikas Gupta, Head of Marketing at Flipkart, said: “Given WhatsApp’s large footprint, we wanted to leverage it to connect deeply with our customers. And that’s why we created the Amitabh Bachchan WhatsApp virtual assistant.”
Source: The Hindu
