How Carrefour is transforming the shopping experience with conversational retail

The retail world is changing faster than ever. Customers today expect not just great products but also personalized engagement. With the rise of technology, it’s become crucial for retailers to embrace conversational experiences that enhance customer engagement and keep shoppers coming back for more.

While creating conversational experiences helps retailers meet modern customer expectations, it also provides instant customer satisfaction. One brand that’s mastering the art of conversational experience is Carrefour, a leading retail chain franchised by Majid AL Futtaim in the MENA region.

To better understand conversational experience’s role in retail success, we talked to Bernadette Geagea, VP of Customer Care and Experience at Majid Al Futtaim Retail.

Watch the video or read on to learn how embracing conversational experiences can help retailers improve their overall customer experience, enhance customer satisfaction, and reach their long-term business goals.

However, conversational experience doesn’t only focus on problem-solving. It aims to build long-term customer relationships that result in greater customer loyalty, improved brand image, and, ultimately, more revenue.

Simply put, conversational customer experiences make it easy for retailers:

Carrefour leverages a customer-centric conversational strategy that delivers a unified and consistent customer experience across multiple sales and communication channels. 

Customer engagement in retail is increasingly driven by the integration of digital channels and personalized experiences. Retailers can lead their customers through the entire marketing and sales funnel over their favorite channels and create personalized interactions to enhance the conversational experience.

In fact, businesses that integrate messaging channels see a 50% increase in customer retention rates.

Carrefour believes that for a retailer to be successful, customer engagement must be personal and catered to every generation.

For instance, Millennials and Gen Z are reshaping customer engagement in retail through their unique preferences and behaviors. These groups are digital natives, accustomed to instant access to information and seamless online experiences.

As a result, they expect brands to engage with them through their favorite messaging channels and chat apps.

Retailers that use personalized engagement strategies and data analytics to understand consumer behavior can capture the attention of these younger audiences. For instance, messaging channels such as WhatsApp and SMS are gaining prominence in retail as they enable real-time communication and engage customers on platforms they already use.

However, delivering conversational experiences benefits not only your customers but also your employees. Having one platform for all your touchpoints and channels helps marketers, agents, and chatbots work together to deliver one experience.

AI chatbots and virtual assistants are at the forefront of transforming retail conversations. It uses a variety of technologies, such as speech recognition, Natural Language Processing (NLP), sentiment analysis, and machine learning (ML), to understand what is being asked and respond accordingly.

Retailers today use AI chatbots to chat with customers at any time of day or night, answering queries, guiding purchases, and providing product information in real-time.

For instance, Carrefour uses conversational AI chatbots to help customers choose products based on their preferences. They also use them to share their digital leaflets covering their latest products and promotions, allowing customers to start their purchase journey through a conversational WhatsApp chatbot and move on to make a purchase on their eCommerce website.

Customers seek conversational experiences throughout their entire purchasing journey. They expect the convenience and comfort of interacting with brands through their favorite messaging channels and chat apps from any location.

Implementing conversational AI chatbots comes with numerous business benefits for your brand. To name a few:

AI algorithms allow chatbots to learn continuously from interactions, adapting and improving their responses over time.

AI chatbots will automate workflows and repetitive tasks, enabling agents to focus on more complex tasks and become more efficient.

AI-powered chatbots collect and analyze vast amounts of customer data, allowing you to segment customers properly and understand their preferences, behaviors, and trends to ultimately drive sales and increase revenue.

This includes everything from personalized product recommendations and context-aware conversations to awarding loyalty points, and tailored discounts, helping in the decision-making process, and gathering feedback

Implementing an AI chatbot on your customers’ favorite chat apps is a great way to promote your products based on past purchases and behavior. You can use a customer data platform to collect data and get detailed insights into your customers’ shopping habits. Once you understand your customers and their needs, you can send the right messages and improve the chances of making a sale.

The evolution of customer engagement in retail is set to accelerate further. We’re now living in the conversational age, where two-way communication is key, and brands need to interact directly with customers on the channels they love.

However, finding the right technology provider can be a challenge. Geagea explained that Carrefour chose Infobip based on the team’s agility, flexibility, expertise, and knowledge.

Our extensive experience working with retail and eCommerce businesses and expertise in customer communications gives us an in-depth understanding of the retailer’s context, challenges, objectives, market, and solutions landscape. We can help you face the challenges of today and future-proof conversational solutions for tomorrow.  

With our platform, we can help you deliver personalized conversational experience through:

Everything can be built over your customers’ favorite digital channels, from simple use cases to the most complex conversational scenarios. And as a leading CPaaS provider, we make sure it’s simple to integrate into your communication stack to build a long-term conversational strategy.