Optimizing customer experience with conversational commerce

Their Story

Promart, part of the Intercorp Group, is a leading retail chain in Peru offering furniture, kitchenware, building materials and other home essentials.

The Goal

As part of a broader goal to establish itself as the most innovative retailer in the region, Promart needed to improve communication throughout the customer experience while reducing help center costs.

The Solution

Promart embarked on a digital transformation journey, with the aim of increasing digital adoption amongst customers and changing the way they make purchases, payments and seek customer support. As part of this, the home store retailer worked with Smarters, a Brazilian Artificial Intelligence agency, to set up Messenger to serve as a conversational channel that would be instrumental in engaging with people, lending customer support and driving sales.

To really drive digital adoption, the retailer had to develop a comprehensive offering that would be easy to use and improve service efficiency while lowering costs. To that end, Promart built a Messenger-powered automated experience with rich features to support customers in five main areas: order status of products, assembly and installation of services, availability of in-store products, viewing store location, and making online purchases.

The Messenger-powered automated assistant was equipped to assist customers in several ways. People could browse and shop over 23,000 products showcased in the Promart catalogue without needing to leave the platform.

With Checkbox Plugin, people can customize their browsing and purchase experience by choosing to receive notifications from four different services: price alerts, stock availability, delivery status updates and in-cart reminders. For example, customers could receive personalized alerts for products on sale, and be notified of the status of their orders at every stage of the delivery process.

Sometimes, customer care depends on a live agent. If the digital assistant could not answer their questions, the customer would be seamlessly transferred to a human agent. After interacting with customer service agents, people could be redirected to the platform so they could track their order status, product availability and identify physical stores. Finally, the application’s image recognition software allows customers to photograph specific products and find similar ones, which now makes up 20% of product searches within the app.

“Messenger allowed us to digitise our customer experience efforts, and provide people with a level of service identical to that found in our offline channels. The Messenger-powered digital assistant established a two-way communication with our customers, who in turn were empowered by their shopping experience.”

-Andrea Aguila-Pardo, User Experience and Growth Manager, Intercorp Group

The Results

After developing a communication channel powered by Messenger, Promart saw an increase in digital participation from its customers, as well as a reduction in costs associated with serving people. Promart saw the following results: