Despite the massively restricted population mobility and the overall anxiety caused by the pandemic, 2020 had an arguably positive repercussion: the shift to e-commerce being accelerated by five years due to many consumers truly embracing the convenience of online shopping.
However, not everything is peaches and cream for online retailers: according to PwC, 32% of consumers say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience. Brands also face the additional pressure of recreating that in-store experience online. Customers still demand the personalised service and ease of transactions offered by physical stores.
To meet all these expectations, it is vital to simplify the buyer’s journey by using efficient, secure, and trusted communications channels.
Supporting your customer’s journey with Viber
Thanks to the versatile array of functions, Viber allows brands to accompany their customer throughout their entire journey, from the initial contact to order and delivery confirmation to post-sales support.
Viber is one of the most popular instant messengers, boasting an audience of impressive 1.1 bln users in over 190 countries, being most present in MENA, SEA, CEE and CIS regions (32%, 49%, 73% and 76% MAU respectively).
Maintaining authenticity
Marketing messages can be quite strictly regulated by both local and international authorities and the messaging app’s internal policies. And Viber is no different, since User privacy is one of Rakuten Viber’s top priorities. Sending spam (unauthorised bulk messaging, advertising included) from private accounts is prohibited by the Viber terms of use.
Thanks to Viber Business Account, however, clients can be sure, that your messages are the real deal. A verified account makes the brand more recognisable by communicating via an official channel. It includes Viber service name (e.g. GMS), the brand’s logo, and business info (or Chat screen information) such as contact information, address, and business activity profile.
An authorised Viber business account is also marked with a Blue Tick in the user’s chat list. This way, the user can be sure of the authenticity of the messages received from the brand.
Attracting client with promotional messages, stickers, and ads
When it comes to attracting your client, everything goes. And luckily, Viber’s got your back with three tools that shine both solo and in synergy. These tools are promotional messages, stickers and ads.
Promotional messages can contain up to 1,000 characters, as well as emoticons, links, image and/or button. This makes them ideal for communicating important information to your customers, introducing your audience to special offers, loyalty programmes, and promos. The promotional messages can be further enhanced by the introduction of chatbots.
Ads help brands get their message in front of users in the form of Post-call, Video, and Chat list ads.
Stickers offer a great way to get your brand in front of consumers. Bright, funny, witty, useful — stickers attract the user’s attention easily and set a friendly tone for communication using the brand’s identity. Enterprises get the opportunity to become part of how messenger users communicate with each other, positively distinguishing stickers from traditional forms of advertising thanks to their interactivity. Sticker packs are an easy way to grow brand awareness natively and organically, with 300 thousand stickers shared by Viber users every minute.
An international mobile food delivery marketplace foodpanda used all three tools in conjunction to drive brand awareness and engagement for their recent campaign launched in Bulgaria. The brand released two sticker packs and allocated a media budget to promote them, targeting Viber users via ad placements. In addition, their chatbot provided customer care, facilitated food orders and offered personalised messages.
This combination proved to be extremely efficient, resulting in 3.1M+ exposed users in total, 556K+ sticker packs downloaded, and 700K+ weekly interactions recorded within foodpanda’s chatbot. The total number of impressions reached over 12.8 M
Sealing the deal
Once you have successfully engaged with your client, it is time to seal the deal. Viber Business messages allow the customer to discuss their order details (i.e. colour, quantity, delivery time, address and date) with either brand representative or a chat bot, proceeding to pay for the goods by following the checkout link.
Viber also allows users to purchase your products and services directly on your chatbot through a seamless conversation, ending with a checkout. This new payment channel is currently being tested on the Ukrainian market, with noticeable examples being the national railway operator Ukrainian Railways, and Foxtrot — a Ukrainian chain of electronics and home appliances stores. As of now consumers can pay for their orders using Google Pay and Apple pay.
Make it easy for customers to do business with you
Transactional messages can be used for balance or delivery status updates, as well as for sharing other non-advertising information. The purpose of a transactional message is to deliver useful information to the user, avoiding any display of marketing content. These messages may contain plain text or hyperlinks (also added as plain text).
Considering the fairly short delivery times, Viber can be used to provide your clients with near-real-time updates and reminders or deliver OTPs.
One of the best applications for the transactional messages is dealing with the abandoned online shopping carts. Using Viber Business Messages for abandoned cart recovery, COMFY, Ukraine’s first multichannel retailer of household appliances and electronics, has increased the turnover for this trigger by 10% over 7 months.
Customer service and retention via Viber
Commencing a dialogue via a messaging app is a great value offer for consumers and brands alike. Texting is much more convenient for the customers since the personal consultation in chat does not require appointing a meeting to a specific time and can be initiated from and continued on any Viber-compatible device. On the brand’s side, a single support agent can handle multiple conversations simultaneously, making this channel considerably more efficient than one-on-one calls or personal meetings.
Once again, a chat bot can help you further improve the efficiency of your support. Since customers tend to ask fairly similar questions, like your opening hours, product information, special offers available, etc., such requests can be quickly processed by a robot. This serves two purposes: while the timely replies greatly enhance customer satisfaction, the “living” agents have much more time to handle the more complicated issues or take over the dialogue if the bot is incapable of answering the consumer’s request.
And don’t forget about the other aspect of post-purchase relations: maintaining loyalty. You can also use Viber to conduct polls and surveys, deliver individualised special offers and notifications on the loyalty programmes participation, discounts/escrows available and many more!
In conclusion
Keeping your consumers happy is no easy task, but Viber Business Messages can help you achieve your goal, either as a primary communication channel, or as a part of GMS Business Communications Suite. Contact GMS experts and enhance your customer engagement with Viber today!