Foodtech is one of the most challenging industries in the world. Fast-moving SKUs with incredibly short shelf lives and high stakes support means that the industry needs all the help it can get. Below, we’re going to talk about WhatsApp Chatbots for FoodTech can help it achieve –

1. Higher customer satisfaction and net promoter scores
2. Lower ticket turnaround time
3. Higher bot deflection and resolution
4. Decrease in first response times
5. Easier scaling for support
6. Lower dependency on human agents

To start off with though, what constitutes as foodtech? To answer that, we head to the folks at DigitalFoodLabs.

97% of the Indian investments between 2011 and 2018 have been made in the delivery sector, so that’s where we’ll be focusing too.

The Opportunity

Foodtech were one of the first industries to be affected by the lockdown. They were also one of the first industries to be a part of the solution.

As evidence poured in that food delivery was in fact safe, companies in the space actively made moves to fill the supply-demand gap.

Grocery e-tailer BigBasket said new customers on its delivery platform have risen 84% during a seven-month period – January to July. The startup also claimed the retention rate of customers grew 50% during the period.

Companies like Zomato and Swiggy have seen an incredible amount of goodwill and trust too – from investors and users alike.

At the height of the pandemic, Zomato raised $195M in funding from 6 investors, as its valuation touched $3.6 billion.

As for Swiggy, more than 200 cities it serves in have reached 90 per cent of their pre-COVID gross merchandise value (GMV) levels, with more than 70 cities seeing a full recovery to their pre-COVID levels.

Both companies have seen double-digit growth over the past month as the unlock progressed and consumers’ fears around the transmission of COVID-19 infection through food slowly dissipated,

“It continues to grow back steadily to pre-COVID levels, with the overall sector clocking over 85 per cent of pre-COVID GMV (Gross Merchandise Value), up from 75 percent+ last month.”

Deepinder Goyal, Co-founder and CEO of Zomato

Problem Statement

Foodtech companies face three primary blockers when it comes to delivering excellent support, exasperated by the lockdown. We’ll talk about these problems and then discuss how WhatsApp Chatbots for Foodtech can help tackle these issues.

Surge and Dips in Volume

On a day-to-day basis, foodtech companies process hundreds of thousands of orders a day. And as they scale rapidly. they will often double or triple their volumes over the course of several quarters.

When the pandemic struck, a lot of these companies saw their volumes fall straight to zero – and stay that way for several weeks on end. As the lockdown lifted, volumes would slowly pick back up – eventually returning to regular volumes and in some cases going beyond them.

This places an incredible amount of stress on the human-powered support team that has to grow and contract based on this fluctuating demand.

Unequal Distribution of Tickets

An unequal distribution of demand is more than a macro-level problem – it also exists on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis. Consider a company like Swiggy or Zomato – a majority of their orders will come around the hours of lunch or dinner. This means that while support teams are slammed in the afternoon or evening, they’re left largely unworked otherwise.

Curfew timings around the lockdown also complicated this process. If a city sets 8 pm as its curfew, the orders that would’ve otherwise been spread across a three hours range of 8 pm-11 pm are now jammed into a much smaller slot.

This creates a much higher peak of order and conversely, support tickets.

Remote Support

The most challenging ordeal though, undoubtedly, was the sudden move to work from home. Support teams went from working out of a central location to being spread out across several cities and towns.

This combined with the erratic demand made already-slow support processes even slower, as bloated teams struggled to make the requisite changes while also keeping up with the flood of new users.

Solution – WhatsApp Chatbots for Foodtech

Order Updates

Since a significant portion of all support tickets are order-related, a good bot should be able to handle such queries with ease.

With WhatsApp Chatbots for Foodtech, you can –

1. Inform customers of where an order is
2. Troubleshoot any problems related to it
3. Provide tracking information in real-time

Incorrect Order

What if someone’s gotten an incorrect order?

A bad refund experience often ruins a company-customer relationship. Inversely, great refund experiences cement customer loyalty and improve retention rates.

With deep integrations, you can automate refunds for high-trust customers with ease.

Update Address

Changes in account details no longer have to be tedious or complicated. A simple text interface makes this commonly asked query as easy as pie.

WhatsApp Chatbots for Foodtech empowers customers to self-service and reduces the burden on your support team.

Feedback

Collecting feedback is the pillar of any customer-driven organization. But the efficacy of the feedback is only as good as the channels you use to collect it.

However, collecting this data poses a significant challenge. Customers rarely respond to traditional means of outreach like Email or SMS.

Suggested Reading: Announcing CSAT on WhatsApp and Facebook

Summary – How WhatsApp Chatbots Help Foodtech Industry

1. Chatbots reduce support costs by automating low-level queries.
2. Better customer experience because quick, contextual help that increases CSAT and NPS
3. Lower turnaround time and first response time.
4. Remote-friendly, autonomous support.

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