For Missguided, a chatbot was the first step in its journey to customer service automation. After its foundation, the company has rapidly grown into a multi-channel global brand, delivering more than 1000 new styles every week to millennial women.
When Scott Barker, Head of Customer Care started his position, live chat interactions were growing at a fast pace, resulting in what he describes as a “double failure”. As Scott explains, “because the customer was unable to find a solution on our website, we consider this a failure.
Eventually the unsatisfied customer would contact us, and this drove up our costs, bringing us to the second failure.” The website was hard to navigate, content was unmanaged and inconsistent, and the help page where most customers would go to find an answer merely consisted of an unstructured list of FAQs.
Download the case studyFrom a technical point of view, our chatbot solution aligned well with Missguided’s existing architecture. They were not interested in a transformational project; they wanted a quick and easy point solution which could be integrated into their existing architecture.
In just eight weeks, the virtual assistant went live with contextual answers based on the user’s location. An internal knowledge base was also launched to streamline the role of the support agents. Starting with a specific goal – to reduce contacts generated from the help page – the company introduced new metrics such as the contact-help-page ratio.
During the first weeks, engagement with the chatbot on the help page was 65%. Fast forward 11 months and engagement with the bot stands at 80%. This high level of bot engagement has resulted in a reduction in contact and costs by 14%.
In creating a brand that encompasses everything it means to be a millennial girl on the go, every decision the company makes is informed by its customers. While the results prove strong, it is the data-driven approach taken that the Head of Customer Care is most proud of “Every decision we made prior and post implementation was data-driven. If you work data-driven, results will follow.”
Given this successful automated digital-engagement strategy, Scott attributes the success to several additional factors which he advises others considering a chatbot to follow:
Firstly, in the fast-fashion industry, products become outdated quickly, as do digital engagement strategies. Missguided decided to start small and build in steps to avoid outdatedness on launch day.
Secondly, before the launch, the company dedicated a small internal team of technically savvy and operationally knowledgeable colleagues to receive training in managing and optimising the knowledge base and chatbot.
Finally, investing in new metrics and complementing the chatbot with tools such as Google Analytics has contributed significantly to tracking ROI.
Key learnings include:
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