WhatsApp Recovery Case Study
How Big Brain Furniture uses Shop Phone (formally Scout) for 70% recovery rates on furniture
Big Brain, is an eco-friendly furniture store based in Johor, Malaysia. Big Brain started out as a bricks and mortar retailer but in May of 2017 started an online store to better reach their modernizing customer base. Since creating an online, Big Brain furniture sales in 2017 were up 60% compared to sales in 2016.
Big Brain uses videos and video chat on WhatsApp Business for product walk throughs and live 2-way video demos.
In summary of the below interview, here are three key insights about why WhatsApp conversations should be part of your sales strategy:
It creates a foot in the door for your customer to access you later.
Since you’ve messaged them and now own a small piece of prime real estate in their recent chat list, you’ve created a foot in the door for them to contact you. In a series of the images below you’ll see an example of this at play.
Other on-site chat tools don’t allow you to create this kind of deeper access, since that chat doesn’t follow your customer around after they leave your website.
Creates an unfair competitive advantage for you ahead of your competitors.
How many other online stores that sell similar products sell in such a personal manner like this? No way Amazon would do this, that’s for sure.
You can send rich media, like videos, images, voice notes, as well as just opening the video chat and doing a live product/store tour.
Live two-way conversations is the post-covid equivalent of being in store and asking staff about the product face to face. If you’re not of a fan of doing face-to-face video chats if the type of product doesn’t call for it, you can use WhatsApp to send pre-recorded videos, or create specific videos based on the customers concern.
Longer form conversations allow customers to ask more detailed and specific conversations, and gives merchants more opportunity to address the details.
More than the 140 character limits on SMS/text message), WhatsApp allow customers to write you longer texts. This is great because not all questions, problems or concerns can be addressed through 140 character limits like on text message. More importantly, it provides more “surface area” for you to gather feedback about your store/products.
In the above example chat, Marcus starts the conversation, but a few days later the customer comes back with more detailed follow up questions. Having started a WhatsApp conversation already, Marcus can be easily reached when the customer has a follow up question during the consideration stage of his buying journey.
In the above example chat, the customer can use the long-form text medium of WhatsApp to ask a question about an edge-case, like not having moved into his new house yet and needing some assurance about hassle free delivery.
Here, we have a typical example of an abandoned checkout conversation being turned into a great feedback loop. Marcus learned that this customer found him through his Facebook Ad, and a subsequent read of a customer review; he also learned he’s comparing a price with a competitor. This taught Marcus that some customers may be following this purchase journey of Facebook Post > Click-through > Website Browsing > Reviews.
And after offering this customer a discount (because why not if that customer just took the time to chat back with you and gave you an insight?) the customer agrees to the sale.
Below is the transcript of an interview between Marcus Sew, of Big Brain, and our Shop Phone team
Shop Phone:
Furniture is large, and can be expensive. Large and expensive products have a high abandoned cart rate. So when it comes to managing cart abandonments, how do you use Shop Phone to engage directly with customers and recover revenue?
Marcus:
[Shop Phone] has been really useful. [It] provides me with a call script, Whatsapp messaging script, and email script for me to approach customers. In Malaysia, we are used to keeping in touch with apps like Whatsapp, so I will copy the call script and paste it into Whatsapp message and send to customers, and continue the conversation based on [Shop Phone]’s suggestion. The [Shop Phone] script is written in a very good way, ‘I hope it’s OK to reach out, this is a courtesy message’ it feels respectful and polite. Whatsapp also allows me to send images to customers, and it’s just such a richer relationship building experience.
In the above example chat, Marcus starts the conversation, but a few days later the customer comes back with more detailed follow up questions. Having started a WhatsApp conversation
S:
It seems you sell both directly to consumers through your website, but also through your retail location. How have you balanced serving both markets, have there been any unique challenges involved?
M:
We are happy with our decision to expand our business to an Online-to-Offline (O2O) marketing model, it is a trend for our industry. We’ve gained more revenue by marketing to customers, not just relying on them to find us. Without our online store we couldn’t do this. And having an offline store gives customer’s confidence in our brand because we also operate with a physical showroom.
We are new to online business, and Big Brain is a small business. I’m the one and only person who is responsible for creating and managing the online store, communicating with customers, arranging shipments, online marketing, so it is a big challenge for a guy without IT background. But I enjoy the journey, and I really appreciate the experts who are sharing their experience and apps which help us to grow.
S:
What’s the best tool you use to stay organized with Big Brain?
M:
For marketing, it is Facebook. And for operations, Shopify backend with tons of app support works for us.
S:
Of those apps you’re using, what core tools or resources have you used to grow Big Brain that you wholeheartedly recommend?
M: [Shop Phone]
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[Shop Phone]
provides real time update when customers abandon their shopping cart, and most importantly, Scout’s call script really helps me a lot to approach customers and recover sales. Almost all customers feel surprised when I contact them, and they feel valued. When I contact through Whatsapp I recover about 70% of the sales from customers who reply.