CHALLENGE

Leverage the conversational capabilities of WhatsApp to support an end-to-end customer journey

As the leading eCommerce business in Kuwait, Taw9eel (Tawseel) relies on continuous innovation to stay ahead of their competitors. 

To serve a customer base that is increasingly mobile-centric and with WhatsApp enjoying a 90% penetration rate in the region, incorporating the app into their marketing, customer support, and sales workflows was always going to be vital. With over 70% of the country’s population comprising expats, being able to provide a service in both Arabic and English would also be key. 

With a relatively small in-house team, they wanted to leverage conversational AI to support their team to provide a fast and efficient service to a customer base that expected immediate support, real-time notifications, and convenient buying journeys.

Going further, they had a vision to offer their customers a new level of convenience by enabling them to browse and buy the products they needed without leaving WhatsApp.

This would be a first for the region and make them a pioneer for Meta’s global expansion into AI-driven social commerce where product discovery, AI assistance, and seamless checkouts can be accessed directly from their apps.

To achieve these goals, they needed a unified and cost-efficient solution and a technology partner that matched their appetite for innovation.

Co-creating conversational journeys on a single platform, from discovery to post-sale support

After reviewing over 200 Meta partners, Taw9eel decided to partner with Infobip. Our unified conversational experience platform, professional services expertise, and regional presence gave them confidence that we would be able to support their innovative vision.

Practically, our platform could be easily integrated with their existing marketing automation solution, and we could handle the migration of their existing WhatsApp Business Platform account with no service downtime.

The overall solution included:

• Our customer data platform to help unify customer data to provide personalized offers and support.
• Our AI chatbot builder that would be key to accessing the benefits of automation. 
• Our cloud contact center solution to manage all customer interactions and automated conversations. 

First steps: Marketing and support

To start with, the Taw9eel team looked at how they could incorporate chatbots on WhatsApp to support their marketing and support functions.

Working with our professional services team they designed a secure and compliant flow that could support the multilingual requirements of their customers.

• Once the customer opts in and initiates a conversation over WhatsApp, they’re asked for their language preference and demographic details.
• This data is captured by our customer data platform, which automatically updates the customer profile and enables Taw9eel to begin personalizing the experience in English or Arabic.  
• The experience is refined further as first-party data provided by the customer is consolidated with conversation and purchase history, enabling the chatbot to send better targeted offers.
• The chatbot has also been designed to answer FAQs and resolve simple queries, with the option to hand over to a human agent for more complicated issues. The agent gets all customer context and conversation history, ensuring the customer doesn’t need to repeat themselves.

Taw9eel went live with these use cases on WhatsApp for two of their platforms, Taw9eel.com and Sheeel.com, and later implemented them on Instagram Direct Messages and Messenger.

This approach proved to be particularly effective for seasonal campaigns during Ramadan and Eid when there is a spike in shopping activity and associated support calls.

Smart shopping workflow

Once the support and marketing workflows were live and producing extremely positive results, Taw9eel moved onto the next step in their plan to enable full conversational commerce via WhatsApp.

The key to this would be to replicate the key actions from their website, enhanced by the native benefits of WhatsApp.

• Product discovery via search and catalog browsing
• Product selection and basket management
• Checkout, payment processing and delivery options.

By enabling these options within WhatsApp they could capture the attention of people while they were on the app and be able to progress and finalize sales that they might otherwise have lost.

From a customer perspective the flow couldn’t be easier.

1. They can search for a product using keywords in both English and Arabic or through a more conversational form of discovery, for example ‘Wireless headphones suitable for running’.
2. The chatbot then returns browsable results or asks clarifying questions to help the person refine their search.
3. The person can then select products to build their cart and submit their order.
4. The order is then processed by a Taw9eel Customer Support agents who sends a payment link in the same thread to finalize the transaction.

Taw9eel has recently rolled out their Super Express one-hour delivery service across the whole of Kuwait. This has been supported by the speed and reliability of notifications sent by WhatsApp to ensure that customers get real-time updates of the exact delivery time, or if they are away from home that the order has been accepted by a member of their wider household.

20x increase in ROI, a reduction in operational costs, and a dynamic new sales channel

After the initial rollout of the customer service chatbot there was a significant decrease in the number of tickets logged by agents, as AI was able to handle a high proportion of FAQs.

This led to a significant 20x increase in ROI.

For targeted marketing messages, the open rate has averaged an impressive 30% as people have become familiar with receiving B2C messages on the new channel. Conversion rate through coupon code usage is steady at around 2%, which proves the long-term viability of the channel for these types of promotions.

The number of product purchases made via WhatsApp has increased steadily and is particularly popular amongst older demographics, who traditionally ordered by phone. Taw9eel expects further growth as the process is refined and friction points are removed.

The success of the project consolidates Taw9eel’s status as a market leader in a region that has shown an appetite for innovation and AI adoption.