Time for On Demand Services to embrace Real Time Chat

On demand services has grown from a puppy to a strong and resilient animal in less than a decade. Unique startups with the ability to adapt and customize have mushroomed across the globe. The central reason of compounding growth of this industry is the smartphones. Smartphones have allowed humans to meet their innate desire of immediacy. Mobile apps has become the primary destination to find any service, solution, information and what not! 

Today, whether you want to book a Taxi or want to book an appointment with a doctor, or maybe you are looking to get your favourite burger delivered at your doorstep, it can all happen with a few taps on your mobile screen. With the ever growing consumer and their inclination to mobile, we see new services as well as competitive ones entering the market almost everyday.

The competition is getting fierce with startups like Uber and Ola locking horns for on demand taxi booking and Grofers and Big Basket fight it out to build their stronghold as they look to build Online Super Market for consumers. For on demand medical services we have new startups like Doctor On Demand, Call Health planning for the faceoff, while established players like Practo and 1MG are bound to feel the heat.  

We are gradually getting surrounded by such apps that intends to make our life easy. These startups are bound to grow as their aim is only to make world a better place. 

Researches have estimated that more than $9.4 billion dollar has been invested since 2010 in this industry. They have highlighted that this industry has low profit margin and high labour needs. So, ability to scale up smoothly and quickly is the success mantra but scaling up under such break-neck competition requires huge investments. Hence industry experts recommend to focus on customer loyalty while executing customer acquisition plans, so that the LTV (Life time Value) of the customer justifies the initial acquisition cost. 

The general consumer of these services are extremely time sensitive and also very particular about the specifications of the deliverable. Therefore, to delight the Customer it is very essential to deliver “WHAT” they want and exactly “WHEN” they want. Thus, seamless two-way communication between the end users is important to bridge the gap. 

We spoke to a few on-demand service provider startup founders where they highlighted that they have 24×7 phone and chat support but does it solve the purpose completely? 

We figured it doesn’t as most of the founders pointed out – there still is the communication gap that ends up leaving the consumer “not so satisfied” 

Let us explain this with an example:

On-demand Food Delivery apps, are a boon to every foodie like me. Ordering your favourite pizza from the outlet of your choice and getting it delivered at your doorstep? Well, life really is beautiful. All you need to do is click a few buttons and then sit back and relax. But, what if you suddenly realize you forgot to mention about the type of cheese to be added. You drop a message to customer support who typically replies after few  minutes. Moreover, by the time, the Customer Support Executive understands your request and tries to forward your request to the Service Provider, the order is already out for delivery. The outcome is a disheartened Customer fuming over not receiving the desired variant of the pizza.

So, how to tackle this issue?
Build a Human+Bot interaction on your apps.

Let me explain –
Users interact with AI-powered bots to start with, followed by Support agents only if bots fail to understand user’s inquiry. Chatbots can handle most of the Customer Support Workflow with its Artificial Intelligence.

As for the User, the moment they realize the mistake in their order, all they need to is open up the App and key in their Order ID into the inbuilt Chat Platform – this will populate your order. Next they can directly interact with the Chatbot and make customizations as required and the same will be communicated directly, thereby saving on the time gap caused due to the traditional queuing system based Support Chat. 

Well the possibilities doesn’t end just there, it can be extended on a larger scale to most On Demand Services. Chatbots cannot only be used to make Order Corrections, but also for making fresh orders, which customers tend to find more easy and natural, rather than rummaging through multiple drop-down menus in an app.

By integrating Applozic’s Chat Platform within your apps it is possible to enable Human-Bot interaction, via which Users of your app can directly communicate with the Chatbot at your end, and thereby ease the whole process of placing or modifying an order.  

Let us look at one more scenario:

Lunctimes during office hours had been a real pain in the past, and employees had to resort to their office canteen for dining. But food ordering apps like Swiggy and Freshmenu have addressed the problem with technology and seamless service. While these platforms offer a large variety of cuisines and dishes to order from, which no doubt is their Core Competency, collaboration still remains an issue to be addressed. Thus a team of colleagues ordering Lunch from any of these apps, have to first migrate to some other collaboration platform like Whatsapp or any other instant messenger, to decide what to order and then come back and make the order.
The result is less loyalty towards your app and there is also a likelihood that they might find the task too tedious and either go back to the good old Office Canteen or quit making bulk orders, either way resulting in a loss for your business.
The solution is pretty simple; enable a Communication platform within your app and let users interact with one another, within the confines of your app.

This will again address two problems:

• Increase User Engagement and Loyalty
• Enable better Decision Making from Customer point of view.

This apart it also allows for crunching of Chat Data to make Custom offers via In-App Messages or Push Notifications.

We at Applozic, provide a complete solution to On – Demand service providers with our Ready – to – use Chat SDK.  

• One – to – One Chat: Let Users chat among themselves or with the Service provider/Bots directly.
• Push Notifications: Get instant notification about incoming messages so that you don’t miss out on even a single message.
• Group Chat: Let your users  communicate in a group about any topic/context of their choice
• Attachments : Allow your users to share location, photos, documents, Audio, Video etc.
• SMS and Email Fallback: Backup in cases of no internet connectivity – messages will be sent as SMS and Email
• Cross App Chat: Even if you have two separate applications for delivery executives and customers we integrate them to a single communication channel.
• Tracking: Read receipts and Time Stamps allow Users to keep track of their message delivery.
• UI Toolkit: With our fully customizable UI kit, it is possible to build the way you want, to complement your Brand Identity.

Applozic supports Web and Mobile apps be it on iOS or Android. Sign Up with us, and enable your web and mobile apps with our end-to end Communication Platform.

Feel free to contact us at contact@applozic.com for any queries and we would be happy to help.
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