Businesses do not necessarily need to order a comprehensive business processing outsourcing bpo service to increase their profitability. Sometimes a small but professionally done analytical work is enough to get results.

When Evendo Consulting GmbH first started its activities, the company communicated with clients almost exclusively by telephone. Typically, call center employees dealt with 3 types of calls:

• Calls from those wishing to purchase this or that item, that is, not yet clients, but already ready to become one;
• Calls from existing customers who have made a purchase and want to clarify any related issue or report a problem;
• Service calls made by the employees themselves within the database for the sake of possible additional sales.

The first and second options bring profit much more often than the third. However, a manager employed in the latter niche cannot pay attention to the first two, negatively affecting his sales. In addition, a service call is extremely rarely the only one. Almost always call center staff have to engage in more or less lengthy communication, ask the client to send, for example, a photograph confirming the presence of a defect to the store’s email, or ask for his email address to send detailed instructions for the product, then make a call again to solve the problem eventually, or maybe, and more than once…

At some point, management came up with the idea of an outsource contact center, and they contacted us to solve this problem. However, as it turned out, everything was not so simple.

When the client first asked if he could receive the necessary documents via WhatsApp rather than by e-mail, his request was politely declined. However, over time, such offers became more and more frequent, and the owner of the company asked us whether it made sense to master a new messenger, and how to approach this problem.

We proposed conducting a simple experiment by transferring one of the operators to WhatsApp and analyzing what was happening. The experience was a success! The employee increased his productivity by almost a quarter compared to the time he spent working on the phone. The reason turned out to be simple: he was able to “keep several clients on the line at once, using pauses in one conversation to support a second or third. It seemed that everything was fine, the new messenger needed to be adopted!

Of course, the bpo consulting cannot be limited to one successful solution. Further analysis of the situation revealed new difficulties began to arise because only one operator could use the web version of WhatsApp at a time. It was possible, of course, to make a separate number for each operator, but such a decision seemed ridiculous, because it was physically impossible to convey 11 numbers, and as the company grows, there will be more numbers be used to reach potential clients. Plus, this risked causing problems when transferring a client from one operator to another.

The solution was the relatively young, but very interesting service wazzup24.com, capable of combining WhatsApp and CRM. Its huge advantage was that after integration, all operators could simultaneously correspond with different clients through an externally standard CRM interface, while for the buyer, communication took place in the familiar and convenient WhatsApp.

The second advantage was open correspondence, which, at any time, can be rewinded to the desired episode and clarified this or that point if doubt arose, or if the operator received a client from one of his colleagues and did not know the full conversation. Additionally, the staff was freed from copying correspondence into CRM, which gave them an extra hour and a half for calls and communication. So, the problem was solved, bpo outsourcing was limited to analytics and the organization of a call center within the company. All that remained was to convey information about the new messenger to customers, and the changes were not long in coming. By the end of the year, the old method of communication – telephone – accounted for no more than 15% of all calls to operators.

This is the result we expected, and here’s why:

• Firstly, WhatsApp is widely used in Germany. Approximately 81% of local residents who generally use instant messengers prefer it. Secondly, many people find written communication much easier than “live” communication. Moreover, in this case, the subscriber does not have to wait for the operator to pick up the phone – he simply presses the “Send” icon and continues to go about his business.
• Thirdly, there is no need to take photographs of the product that has raised questions and send the pictures by email. Again, everything can be resolved by clicking a couple of icons.
• Yet, one serious mistake was made. When trying to place in the product catalog a QR code, which would directly lead a potential customer to a WhatsApp chat once scanned, the average age of the store’s audience was not taken into account. Since these were people 55-60 years old, and not very friendly with new technologies, it was not surprising that they were not able to cope. I had to give clear step-by-step instructions.

The successful experience of service calls prompted management to move the reception of orders to WhatsApp territory. How it happened before:

• Evendo sent catalogs to its customer base.
• People studied them and, if they wanted to buy something, cut out an order coupon from the catalog and filled it out.
• Many may be surprised, but the completed coupons were sent to Evendo via regular mail, which seems almost ridiculous nowadays. But life in Germany is still quite leisurely, and the Germans are very traditional, so this is the norm here.

With the transition to WhatsApp, the coupons began to be sent in the form of photos, which was convenient for both the client and the company, and also saved a lot of time.

As a result:

• The call center remained with all operators, who are employees of the company, and received significant relief and the opportunity to devote free time to sales.
• Each manager increased his or her performance by 28-34%.
• Customers were satisfied with the innovation, which is confirmed by the increasing number of positive reviews and the positive growth dynamics of the customer base. Approximately 1/3 of the customers who dealt with the store via WhatsApp brought new customers to Evendo through the referral program, recommending the store to friends or acquaintances.

As far as I know, management is currently trying to repeat its success with Viber, but because the app is less popular in Germany, the performance is not yet up to par.

If your business involves sales and regular communication with clients, I hope the Againagain.agency experience will inspire you to try using one of the instant messengers for your company. I will be glad if my story is useful to you.