Sharwa is an Egyptian social commerce platform founded in early 2022 to combat the effects of inflation in the region. It allows customers in Cairo and nearby cities to purchase household essentials like groceries at wholesale prices by placing bulk orders as a group with their friends and families.

Customers can place their orders on Sharwa’s website or via WhatsApp. Sharwa works directly with local suppliers and manufacturers to obtain great deals and coordinates deliveries with a fleet of drivers. It aims to expand its service nationwide in the near future.

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The Problem

As a new business, Sharwa had to establish communication channels with its key stakeholders: Customers and operational staff such as vendors and delivery drivers.

It needed a platform that could support multichannel communication with chat automation to maximize the capabilities of its small team. It also required an analytics component to monitor agents and track conversation trends.

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The Solution

Sharwa evaluated four business messaging solution providers. It chose respond.io for its automation flexibility, scalability for multiple users, sleek and intuitive user interface and experience. These translated into the following solutions.

All Teams were Onboarded onto respond.io to Streamline Communication

First, Sharwa organized its teams into 3 Workspaces on respond.io. The separate Workspaces for customer support, operational support and a test space for its tech team gave each team the autonomy to implement its own strategies.

A dedicated WhatsApp number was connected to each Workspace while Facebook Messenger and Instagram were also connected to the customer support Workspace. This gathers messages across channels in their respective inboxes so no message goes unnoticed.

Chat Automation was Implemented for Efficient Customer Handling

Sharwa uses respond.io’s Workflows automation builder to route customers by the nature of their inquiry. Its customer support team has three core functions: Product inquiries, complaints and order placement over WhatsApp for less tech-savvy customers.

At the start of a chat, customers choose a support function via a chat menu. The Workflow routes them to the respective team on shift and assigns them to an available agent. Agents use canned responses to answer common questions quickly so they can handle more complex inquiries or escalate them to the right agent.

Sharwa also uses an order placement Workflow that sends customers a product catalog featuring items on sale before taking their orders. Finally, an order-tracking Workflow obtains customers’ phone numbers so agents can use them to track an order’s progress in their fulfillment system.

Operational Support can be Coordinated in Minimal Steps

While the customer support Workspace handles inquiries, the operational support Workspace enables agents to provide live support to vendors and drivers via a dedicated WhatsApp account.

Common vendor inquiries include steps to becoming a supplier and troubleshooting issues for specific products. Driver communication includes coordinating drop-offs and liaising with customers.

Vendors and drivers just have to identify their roles at the start of a conversation. They are then routed to the vendor support or driver support teams accordingly. Automation ensures they reach an available agent in minimal steps as drivers, especially, are often in a hurry.

WhatsApp Push Notifications are Used to Retarget or Reactivate Customers

As WhatsApp boasts high user and engagement rates in Egypt, Sharwa sends WhatsApp push notifications with its latest offers to retarget recent customers.

Meanwhile, inactive customers are identified by the date of their last purchase. They are sent “We miss you” messages over the channel in an attempt to reengage them.

Finally, customers who request out-of-stock items are segmented by Tags and sent restock alerts when the product is available.

Conversation Trends and Agent Performance can be Tracked and Measured

As a start-up, Sharwa wants to meticulously track its agents’ performance and customer behavior to make informed decisions on resource allocation and service standards.

Strategies include ascribing categories to customer inquiries, tracking conversation and performance metrics via respond.io’s Reports Module and exporting conversation data for analysis to identify areas of improvement.

“Over 60% of Egypt’s population are WhatsApp users. We want to be accessible to both digital natives and non-natives alike. Respond.io allows us to cater to both with the flexibility of its solutions. It also helps us optimize what our team of just 8 users can accomplish, from enhancing our chat response trees to enabling us to scale with more users, channels and automation as needed.” — Mohamed Hanafy, co-founder and CPO

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The Results

Onboarding all teams on respond.io gives managers an overview of team and individual agent performance to develop improvement strategies accordingly. As a result, first response times are now 60% faster and conversation resolutions are 40% faster.

The effectiveness of its revamped strategies and subsequent training for customer handling is evident in customer satisfaction scores. Improved response and resolution times as well as higher quality responses have increased CSAT scores from 70% to 85%.

As a result, a solid 50% of its customer base is now regular Sharwa customers. Retargeting campaigns over WhatsApp also succeed in securing an average of 40% of conversions.

In the meantime, Sharwa is studying conversation trends to determine how to better balance agents’ workloads and increase productivity. It also plans to widen the scope of its chat automation for a more seamless customer experience on WhatsApp.

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