Business Platform
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison
Creating diverse pathways for full-service sales and service journey
Brand
WhatsApp Business Solution Provider
When Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison developed a high-powered chatbot with over 200 use cases, including a customer care function and revenue channel, the company deflected call center costs and experienced game-changing revenue growth in five months.
5X
revenue growth in a year with WhatsApp
168%
growth in monthly active users
92%
of customer inquiries via WhatsApp resolved without live agent support
40%
increase in overall customer satisfaction score in 6 months
*Results are unique and are provided by the featured business. Success story results will vary, as they depend on a variety of factors.
Their Story
Helping every customer live online
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, the most preferred digital telecommunications company of Indonesia, offers mobile phone services, as well as fixed wireless services and data plans. Through its mission to deliver world-class digital experiences connecting and empowering every Indonesian, the company promotes a “digital lifestyle” that enables people to live and work with greater ease and efficiency.
Their Goal
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Full service at high speeds
As Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison looked to reinvigorate the ways it interacted with millions of customers, from making basic call center transactions easier to developing more targeted sales campaigns, it needed a communications channel that was highly versatile and scalable.
Their Solution
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One versatile channel to meet many needs
From smartphones to online gaming and data plans for e-wallets, leading Indonesian telecommunications network and services provider Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison offers customers pathways to a fully connected, digital lifestyle. With millions of customers used to paying their bills online or streaming their favorite shows with the click of a button, the Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison team knew that staying competitive meant building the same affordability and ease customers expected when using their products into even the most ordinary customer transactions.
Accessing the company call center was a paid service, and many customers searched online or flocked to the company’s social media channels to get free help for their inquiries. As the pandemic also drove an increase in customer engagement through social media, the company’s social media channels needed the capacity to quickly handle the large volumes and diverse range of customer needs. Searching for a scalable, adaptable communications channel, the Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison team turned to IT and communications provider Infobip to implement the WhatsApp Business Platform.
As WhatsApp is among the most popular messaging platforms in Indonesia, the team researched and analyzed their own customers’ preferred channels, observing that many were WhatsApp users. Working with Infobip, the Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison team developed a powerful chatbot through WhatsApp Business Platform.
“We didn’t want to create a typical customer care chatbot, and devoted a lot of thought to the kinds of features that would help us develop ‘a new normal’ in exemplary customer experiences,” says Philip Joseph, Senior Vice President for Customer Experience and Service Operations. “Through the incredible flexibility of WhatsApp, we’ve developed simple, straightforward customer journeys, not only revitalizing our brand, but changing the game in the telecommunications space across Asia.”
The chatbot enables customers to address a wide range of common tasks and concerns, including checking their balance and remaining data quotas at their convenience. Customers can download their bills and payment records, register for value-added services, or raise a support ticket. If they cannot not solve their inquiry via the chatbot, they can easily access a live agent to support them at any time.
After Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison began promoting the WhatsApp channel via text blasts to their subscribers, as well as a paid media campaign, it soon became customers’ preferred way of engaging with the company.
“Through WhatsApp, we’ve been able to address nearly 92% of all customer inquiries via our chatbot. That number is even more impressive when we consider that we have seen a 168% increase of active users in one year.”
Philip Joseph
Senior Vice President for Customer Experience and Service Operations
“Through WhatsApp, we’ve been able to address nearly 92 percent of all customer inquiries via our chatbot. That number is even more impressive when we consider that we have seen a 168 percent increase of active users in one year,” says Joseph. “WhatsApp has cut the costs of relying on call centers for us and for our customers. Now, we’re seeing 70 percent of our users give WhatsApp the highest possible satisfaction score.”
As the Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison team continues to evolve their use cases and services through WhatsApp, customer satisfaction rates have increased by 40 percent in only six months. The company’s customer experience improvement plan has driven high customer satisfaction scores, with customers consistently giving the chatbot a high quality rating and ensuring high chatbot containment rates as well.
Inspired by customer reactions to the chatbot through WhatsApp, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison saw an opportunity to broaden the chatbot into a revenue channel. In collaboration with Infobip, the team continued to evolve the chatbot through 1,500 individual APIs addressing over 200 individual use cases.
“The high-powered Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison WhatsApp chatbot provides various paths for an improved, full-service customer experience. The chatbot serves as a care channel while generating a new revenue stream with breakthrough growth for the past year,” says Ritesh Kumar Singh, Chief Commercial Officer. “Looking forward, this powerful AI will open doors for the IM3 business in providing a world-class digital experience to all our customers.”
Through a payment gateway partner connected to WhatsApp, pre-paid customers can reload their data plans or purchase new digital content. Users will be linked to an approved third-party vendor for a payment gateway, and after making a successful payment, they’ll be directed back into WhatsApp. Giving the option to reload even small denominations of data helped drive a twentyfold spike year over year in customers reloading data through WhatsApp. Integrating popular e-wallet solutions like GoPay and Ovo into the chatbot makes it easier for existing customers to pay their bills and new customers to purchase a SIM card and have it delivered right to their doorstep. Additional revenue drivers include promotions enticing customers to buy their favorite internet packages, “hot offers” segmented to individual customers, as well as options to reload any denomination starting at just 5,000 IDR.
The team has already seen 43 times growth in revenue year over year via the ecommerce channel through WhatsApp.
“Using WhatsApp has been absolutely game changing and in only one year, revenue directly attributable to WhatsApp increased five times,” says Joseph. “The incredible flexibility of WhatsApp allows us to show a high-speed creativity that has transformed how we approach our customers.”
Using WhatsApp, the Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison team has invigorated its outreach by creating new promotions around holidays or even days of the month, such as palindrome days (10/10 or 11/11). They’ve also developed specialized campaigns targeting different customer groups, including postpaid customers who are traditionally more likely to pay their bills in-person. Through the Click and Pay campaign, the company sent links allowing postpaid customers with overdue payments that prevented them from accessing services to pay via WhatsApp, instantly unlocking their services. Once postpaid customers experienced the incredible ease and convenience of WhatsApp, they made online bill payments the second highest source of revenue for the company, right behind purchases of new data packages.
The team is tapping into the potential to deliver even more full-service experiences through WhatsApp, such as automating contract renewal and bill payment reminders. The future is endless, with plans to launch big new initiatives around emergency loans, post-paid contract plan renewal, and emphasis on natural language processing. Each of the hundreds of thousands of messages the company sends through WhatsApp every day is an opportunity to meet customers on every stage of their journeys.
Their Success
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison responded to 92 percent of customer inquiries with WhatsApp, while enjoying the flexibility of over 200 use cases to develop innovative outreach campaigns that drove an incredible five times growth in revenue.
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Surges in revenue
- 5x revenue growth in a year with WhatsApp
- 168% growth in monthly active users
- 92% of customer inquiries via WhatsApp resolved without live agent support
- 200+ use cases for chatbot powered by WhatsApp
- 40% increase in overall customer satisfaction score in 6 months
- 1500+ APIs connected for a rich interconnected ecosystem
*Results are unique and are provided by the featured business. Success story results will vary, as they depend on a variety of factors.
“The high-powered Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Whatsapp chatbot provides various paths for an improved, full-service customer experience. The chatbot serves as a care channel while generating a new revenue stream with breakthrough growth for the past year. Looking forward, this powerful AI will open doors for the IM3 business in providing a world-class digital experience to all our customers.”
Ritesh Kumar Singh
Chief Commercial Officer
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