Instant chat messaging’s popularity is gradually increasing in Indonesia. eMarketer reported that in 2014, the recorded number of chat messenger users in Indonesia reached 37.6 million users. The amount is predicted to increase to 91.6 million users in 2019. This rapid enhancement affects the change of Indonesian’s customer behavior, who expects that services and products should be accessible digitally and on-the-go.
This change in customer behavior has affected many industries, including the e-commerce industry as it tries to provide features to keep up with customers’ expectations. In a dynamic situation where 900,000 orders could be made digitally per day, the industry is expected to be able to manage customers’ needs and demands to access everything digitally. One innovation that has been very welcomed by customers is the in-app chat feature which allows buyer and seller to interact in real-time and hasten the transaction.
The Benefit of In-App Chat
Techfunnel.com explains that a chat feature can be one of various options companies can use to convert visitors to their pages or app to customers. By implementing a chat feature, the rate of conversion could increase by up to 45 percent, since the chat feature enables quicker responses to visitors’ queries more quickly than other communication channels.
Aside from that, by applying a chat feature, companies can personalize their responses to match their corporate personality and character. The nearly-immediate response also helps to create a connection with the customer. In this case, even if the visitor does not turn into a customer, the presence of the instant chat still enables the company to collect valuable information about them.
Lastly, the chat feature can add a competitive element since customers can assess that the company is providing a more helpful feature than other enterprises. The always-on service also could benefit the company and increase Returns of Investments (ROI) because 71 percent of customers tend to recommend a particular brand to others if they receive exemplary customer service via digital platforms.
The In-App Chat Situation in Bukalapak
Bukalapak, one of the Indonesian unicorns in the e-commerce sector, has always been familiar with this situation. As a C-to-C online marketplace, Bukalapak aims to be the first Indonesian digital marketplace, which empowers participating Small and Medium Business Enterprises (SMBEs)throughout Indonesia. Thus, the company works hard to meet customer expectations through several ways, one of them being a chat feature to facilitate direct communication between customers and sellers.
Unsurprisingly, the chat traffic in Bukalapak is high. The company needs high capacity servers to maintain the traffic so that the chat app can run optimally. However, considering the growing number of chat users, this situation would cause a swell in its operational costs, mainly if the issue is left unsolved.
The company is unable to neglect the situation since the chat app is vital for the e-commerce sector. The chat platform itself also becomes the key to success for the seller to serve its customers effectively.
How Qiscus Helped Bukalapak Improve its In-App Chat Feature
Considering the situation, Bukalapak turned to Qiscus to optimize its chat feature. The optimization was then carried out by redesigning the back-end chat architecture and migrating to a new service to improve server capacity. The migration itself was successfully done without any hassle and downtime for the customers using the chat application.
By applying this solution, Bukalapak does not need to consider the option of adding new servers, which would affect its operational costs later on. Preferably, the company can focus on optimizing its current server instead.
Using the same amount of servers, the chat maintenance could be optimized to 30 times more than its current efficiency. In the end, Qiscus does not only help Bukalapak to optimize its infrastructure capacity but it also provided a solution to reduce Bukalapak’s operational cost in maintaining its chat app capacity as well.
Qiscus Proudly Supports the Indonesian E-Commerce Sector
As an Indonesian expert in RTC technology, Qiscus proudly supports the local e-commerce companies such as Bukalapak through our expertise in providing the chat Software Development Kit (SDK) and messaging Application Programmed Interface (API). We believe that our help in optimizing chat contributes to promoting Indonesian SMBEs because it is aligned with Bukalapak’s vision and mission of empowering local SMBEs.
This experience brings us an understanding that we can do more to advance the Indonesian industries by developing the business using current technologies such as the chat app. Qiscus will continue to bring our expertise to other sectors as well, especially those which require engaging end-customers at scale.