Expert, a Netherlands-based company founded in 1967, has an expansive network of +5,000 consumer electronics and appliance retailers in 22 European nations.

Each of its stores is owned by an independent, local entrepreneur, which allows Expert to provide customers with expert advice and personal service from someone they know and trust. Expert’s agents built lasting customer relationships with one-to-one conversations.

Challenge

Expert’s personalized, one-to-one interaction between stores and customers was not translating as well as anticipated to digital communications. The buying experience felt fragmented and not on a level with what local store owners delivered.

Expert understood that customers had questions and needed help while browsing for products on their eCommerce store, but were not able to reach out to local store experts for advice. For example, when a user is browsing online with the intention to purchase a big-ticket item such as a speaker, questions might arise that need to be answered directly by an expert. That’s the kind of personal service Expert’s customers have come to expect.

As Expert’s customers gravitated more toward their online store for purchases and chat for communication, Expert decided it needed a way to carry the warm, inviting, in-store experience to its messaging channels — especially in WhatsApp.

Expert might have had to hire an army of developers to find the solution. Instead, they turned to Bird for a fast, simple-to-implement, easy to manage, “no-code” way to integrate WhatsApp into their online buying experience and leverage its 225-plus agents to continue building personal connections with their customers.

Solution

‍To meet its new challenges and create an experience that was personalized and relied on its agents’ expertise, Expert added a WhatsApp button to the Product Display Pages throughout their online store. 

With the assistance and guidance of Bird, Expert built a new concierge service so that each customer could get personalized and expert advice real time from one of Expert’s 225-plus agents. When customers click the WhatsApp button, customers get the same advice as in a store.

“Adding a WhatsApp button on our webshop — with the quick engagement to the stores — really helps Expert retain its customers, differentiate itself, and refresh its brand image” said Expert business process analyst Micha van den Akker.

Bird’s tools were the key to bridging the gap between online shopping and WhatsApp.

Flow Builder allowed Expert’s team to build routing rules to direct customers to one of its 225-plus agents so that they could get the right expertise and help. The added automation helped reduce manual response times, and the delivery and order process can now be done via WhatsApp.

Communication dashboards were centralized through Bird’s Inbox. All customer communications are now organized into single customer threads — regardless of whether a customer reaches out by email, phone, Messenger, WhatsApp, or LiveChat.

And finally, Chat Widget was added to their website to give customers browsing products a quicker way to engage with agents.

How it looks

“When our customer clicks on the button, it opens WhatsApp for them with a predefined message, and when they send this message, it’s routed to the right store,” said van den Akker.

And with these conversations taking place on WhatsApp, Expert was able to transform the in-store customer experience into the familiar and personal context of a chat. An individual store can now easily reengage the customer on their preferred channel to provide the personal advice that sets Expert apart from its competition.

Results

Working with Bird to meet the challenge of adapting its in-store experience into online and messaging channels, Expert found a fast, simple way to give its 225-plus agents the tools they needed to continue communicating with their local customers in a way that felt personal through WhatsApp.

The outcome was a conversion rate of 80% to sales on inbound leads from product pages. In addition, Expert’s team manages around 50,000 WhatsApp messages from customers initiated every month.

As consumers' communication preferences evolve, Expert will continue to seek ways to leverage the versatile platform provided by Bird.

“Adding a WhatsApp button on our webshop — with the quick engagement to the stores — really helps Expert retain its customers, differentiate, and refresh its brand image.”

Micha van den Akker, Business Process Analyst