Personalized engagement critical to retain customers in ecommerce industry: Subramanian MS, bigbasket

The ecommerce industry undoubtedly had one of the most predominant roles to play during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the lockdown brought everyone’s accustomed lifestyles to a grinding halt, ecommerce firms stepped operations overnight to make sure consumers had everything they needed at their doorsteps. Although the COVID-19 pandemic did give the ecommerce industry the much-needed push, personalized engagement will be key to retain customers in the post-pandemic scenario. In an interview with Dataquest, Subramanian MS, head of category marketing and analytics, bigbasket, talks about how emerging technologies are helping ecommerce firms manage customer requirements, and also on trends that will define the industry in the years to come.

DQ: The pandemic has turned the tide in the favour of eCommerce firms. Do you expect the demand to remain even in the post-COVID scenario?

Subramanian: Covid pandemic caused customers to take precautionary actions that were focused on social distancing, avoiding crowds and limiting activities outside the safety of their homes. Most of these customers recognized that they could rely on ecommerce firms to help them avoid stepping out of their homes for non-critical tasks. Such customers chose ecommerce firms because these firms could help them with home delivery of essential (food, milk, non-food essentials, etc) and non-essential (fashion, cosmetics, electronics, consumer durables, etc.) needs. In addition to the convenience of home delivery, ecommerce firms also promised safety during delivery with actions such as no-contact delivery, digital payments and health precautions taken to protect delivery personnel. In the initial days during the start of the lockdown the ecommerce firms were limited by operational factors but most of the firms have bounced back to business-as-usual conditions in the past few months.

Even though we are beginning to see a fall in Covid related infections, customers recognize that for the continued safety of their families, communities and societies, they still need to continue to adopt precautionary actions mentioned earlier and rely on ecommerce firms as much as possible to meet their daily, weekly and monthly needs. In some ways for many such customers buying through ecommerce firms has become a way of life. These behavioural changes indicate that demand from such customers for ecommerce services will continue to remain high for the next many months.

DQ: How are ecommerce firms enhancing digital experiences for customers?

Subramanian: By design ecommerce firms focus on delivering superior digital experiences to their customers. The pandemic has amplified the focus on such initiatives. Some examples of actions taken by ecommerce firms to enhance digital experiences for their customers include AI driven customer engagement, use of augmented/virtual reality (VR) to replace the need for physical interaction, digital payments and more. At bigbasket we have began to use AI driven customer engagement using chat assistants during the digital journey of our customers particularly when they are looking for support and assistance. AI powered chat assistants allow our customers to get support on common issues without waiting for a customer support agent to be assigned to service their requests.

We continue to leverage advanced technological solutions such as virtual reality (VR) to enhance the shopping experience of our customers. The VR store hosted on our app helps us simulate a physical shopping experience using virtual reality, particularly for a key product category such as Fruits and Vegetables. The initial response from our customers to the VR store has been very encouraging.

During the pandemic our smart retail kiosks (called bb Instant) helped customers living in large apartments meet their immediate buying needs. These kiosks allow customers to pick products of their choice from the kiosks using the bb Instant app, make their payment from their digital wallets and walk away from a shopping experience that has become truly digital. We continue to find ways to apply technology to provide a fantastic shopping experience to our customers.

DQ: How are you leveraging data analytics, big data and predictive technologies to manage customer requirements?

Subramanian: We use data analytics, big data and predictive technologies to power growth in our business and to deliver superior shopping experience for our customers. Here are specific examples where we use these technologies to manage our customer requirements

Smartbasket / shopping list – we understand buying patterns of our customers and use this understanding to build a curated shopping list (called as smartbasket) to help our customers shorten their time to purchase but without forgetting to buy any of the required items in their to-buy list

Recommendations – we use big data analytics to generate recommendations for our customers; these recommendations reflect products that our customers most likely need but may not be buying from bigbasket

Personalized engagement through offers and communication – using predictive technologies we generate offers that are tailored to the needs of each customer and use smart and segmented communication to share such offers with our customers

DQ: Going forward, what are some of the major trends we can expect in the ecommerce industry?

Subramanian: The ecommerce industry continues to evolve thanks to smart application of emerging technologies. Some of the major trends that are likely to develop further in the ecommerce industry include 1) focus on tailored experiences for customers 2) smart retail and 3) personalized engagement with customers.

While personalization is a term frequently used in the ecommerce industry, tailored experience goes beyond personalization by recognizing each customer as belonging to a unique segment of one. This approach recognizes that each customer is unique and therefore tailors each customer’s shopping experience to reflect their preferences. A tailored experience such as this could mean that the shopping experience for the customer from start to end reflects their needs and preferences. This will be reflected in the content, offers, products, delivery options, payment methods, shown to customers during their shopping journey.

Smart retail is the next big change that is expected to revolutionize retail shopping experience for customers. Touchless, cashless and humanless physical stores and smart kiosks will change the way customers shop for their grocery needs. These stores will help customers avoid crowds within the store and at the checkout counters allowing them to complete their shopping experience without any human assistance

Personalized engagement with customers will become a critical requirement to attract and retain customers in the ecommerce industry. Given the plethora of notifications and messages that customers see pour into their phones, customer-focused ecommerce firms will recognize that personalizing the engagement with their customers at all points of interaction with the customers will be necessary to stand out in the crowd and get noticed by customers. This will take the form of smart assistants treating each customer as unique, recognizing their history of engagement with the business and learning from those past experiences to provide a frictionless shopping experience to their customers.