To remain relevant and capture a wider market, the F&B franchise slid right into customer DMs, combining WhatsApp marketing with chatbot automation to create an effective order system.
Challenge
Pizza Hut was already processing orders through their website, third-party apps, and call-ins, but they realised the need to match the pace of their customers’ changing online behaviour. In the last decade, consumer consumption of online platforms has shifted from web-based to mobile and most recently to messaging apps. Data suggests that 63% of Malaysian netizens use mobile mes-saging apps such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram.
F&B companies in particular have established presence on third-party food delivery apps, brand-specific apps, or even messaging solutions like WhatsApp. Dedicated brand-specific apps, though useful, come with acquisition costs as high as USD5-10 per user installation in Malaysia. By com-parison, messaging apps like WhatsApp are free to use, more personal, and already have an exist-ing user base, making them a more appealing choice for customer orders
Solution
An official Pizza Hut WhatsApp channel was created that deployed a bot to process food orders. The WhatsApp chatbot interacts with customers, takes food orders, and updates customers on the status of their order. In-app payment processing is available to facilitate a seamless transaction and data analytics provides valuable insights on approximate customer geolocation, order channel, and order history. This solution complements their existing order system on a channel frequently used by Malaysians, through which Pizza Hut can reach and capture customers where they are spending the most of their time while meeting a demanding service request volume.
Outcome
More than 15% of Pizza Hut customers converted from web or mobile ordering to WhatsApp order-ing, with the numbers still growing at a double digit rate every quarter. The WhatsApp channel pro-cesses thousands of orders a day with frictionless brand interaction. The enormous reach potential of WhatsApp chatbot for customer orders is in the numbers, and Pizza Hut is able to capture its share by getting ahead of the messenger marketing curve.