Hubo receives more than 500 orders a day via WhatsApp

What do you do if you can't go to the gym, the pub, or the shopping mall and you've already binge-watched all the must-see Netflix series? Some home improvements, apparently. After COVID-19 hit the Netherlands, many people decided to give their homes an extreme make-over. Because of this, the DIY stores from Hubo became busier than ever.

Hubo started out as a small woodshop in Utrecht back in 1933 but currently has about 180 different store locations throughout the country. You can go there for all the tools and materials you need to renovate your house and you get personal advice from true professionals.

DGN Retail, franchisor of the Hubo brand, wanted to start offering their expert advice remotely, preferably via WhatsApp. But that turned out to be easier said than done. Because how can you communicate one phone number on your website, but still make sure every message gets sent to the right store location?

Desiree van den Hoogen, online marketer at DGN retail, explains how they use Trengo's location finder to make this happen.

How does Hubo use Trengo?
When we first started with Trengo, we primarily wanted to get closer to our customers. Our store locations are mostly located within small towns. The personnel often knows customers by name.

First, customers could start a WhatsApp conversation to ask for help during their home improvements. They could send a picture of the project they were working on and would get personal advice from the person they knew from the store. When the pandemic started, we quickly saw a growing number of conversations. Customers were starting to use it to place orders, which they would pick up later that day.

"A while ago, I spoke to a Hubo owner who currently gets 60% of his revenue via WhatsApp."

A while ago, I spoke to a Hubo owner who currently gets 60% of his revenue through WhatsApp. There's a full-time employee at his store who spends all of their time managing all the incoming orders through that channel alone.

How are you communicating internally?
I've noticed that we've started to use Trengo's Team Chat feature more and more. I personally use it to make announcements for all Hubo employees that use Trengo. I used to write long emails to do this, but now I can easily do this in a group chat.

What happens when a customer contacts Hubo via WhatsApp?
Customers can start a conversation by clicking a button on our website. Here, you first receive a greeting message and you're asked to tell us your name. Then, you're asked to name the location you want to get in contact with. Trengo's location finder then automatically forwards your conversation to the right location.

The different locations can't look into each other's messages in the inbox. All the Hubo franchisees are independent, so this is very important to us.

There are many tools available, why do you use Trengo?
We have researched a couple of options but we eventually decided on using Trengo. Mostly because of the flexibility of the product. Other products often require a lot of customisation, which is time-consuming and makes you dependent as a company.

To name an example, we have set an auto-reply for messages outside of our business hours. However, because every store location has its own business hours, these sometimes have to be adjusted within Trengo.

What kind of results are you getting?
At this moment, we receive about 700 WhatsApp messages a day via Trengo. Almost all of those messages contain an order or a request to make an appointment at one of our stores.

Inspired? What to do next

Ready to generate as many orders as Hubo? Take the following steps:

• Connect your WhatsApp Business number to Trengo
• Activate the location finder to ensure that messages end up at the right store locations
• Communicate the WhatsApp Business number on your website and social media