How Parfumado personalised their customer journey through automation

We interviewed: Martijn van Rooy, Founder of Parfumado and Sanne de Ruiter, Customer Happiness Manager at Parfumado. (pictured are Martijn van Rooy and Floor van Rooy)

After working for a small perfume brand, Dutch entrepreneur Martijn van Rooy started his own company, Parfumado, 4.5 years ago. His equally entrepreneurial sister Floor van Rooy soon joined as a co-founder.

Brother and sister started Parfumado with the idea of turning the perfume world upside down. What they saw is that choosing and buying perfume could be much more dynamic and personal. Because customers showed a need to want to try scents in a low-threshold way and experiment every month with new scents.

That's why Martijn and Floor chose an online subscription model. Where customers can choose and receive a perfume every month for only 14.95. This business model however, also immediately presents the challenge. Because they first need to make the online selling of perfumes a success by setting up personal customer journeys. Lucikly, they can do this via WhatsApp Business in combination with Trengo.

The challenge: creating personalised customer experiences through preferred channels

Selling perfumes online is tricky and everyone immediately understands why. Customers cannot smell what they are buying through the screen. And this is exactly where Parfumado's challenge lies. How do they offer customers the experience that wins them over? How do they create personalised customer journeys online?

Martijn: "That's why customer service plays a very big role. We really focus on creating personal experiences. We create perfume quizzes, for example, and seek personal contact through different channels."

"And then there comes a certain moment when you have to look for a solution that helps the team to streamline that personal experience and provide it to your customers."

The solution: Trengo, including WhatsApp Business integration

Sanne: "Personal communication is the way for my Customer Happiness team to win over customers." It ensures that customers have the experience needed to choose the right perfumes. And a crucial part of that is: "customers can reach us in the way they want. That's why with us they can do that through socials like WhatsApp but also through email and phone," Sanne said.

Personalised communication ensures that customers bond with the Parfumado brand, and that they have a great experience going through the entire customer journey. To enable this personalization, it is essential for the company to meet customers on their preferred channels. This is why Parfumado connects all major communication channels, including WhatsApp Business, to their Trengo inbox. With Trengo, the Customer Happiness team provides customized customer journeys.

How Parfumado increases productivity and decreases response time

Sanne: "All our customer channels come together in one central place and that is Trengo. With the largest team within Parfumado, we have been using Trengo for over 2 years now. So that we can have 4,000 to as many as 5,000 conversations a month with customers."

Productivity-boosting data insights

With so many customer conversations per month, it's important for Parfumado to focus on team productivity as well. Consolidating channels into one inbox increases customer contact, and the reporting function in Trengo supports the team and gives them direction. For example, Sanne states: "The reports give me great insight into the targets we have and meet. I look at the productivity of our employees but at the same time also at what type of customer communications are coming in."

“Because of Trengo features such as labels, we currently have good insight into all incoming inquiries and complaints. For example, we see that 30% of the conversations are about delivery. And so we can manage this and prioritize, for example, this label and make certain improvements for the company." - Sanne

Automation wins time

When the Customer Happiness team knows what they need to respond to, they can focus and further streamline communication with automation features. Sanne: "We've set up 6 new flowbots and connected them to our webshop and social channels. They mainly answer frequently asked customer questions and this way we expect to receive 20% fewer conversations in our Trengo platform. Plus focus on our new markets Denmark and Sweden."

Sanne uses automation of frequently asked questions to reduce her team's workload. 20% of the conversations are easy-to-answer questions that the flowbot can handle on its own within minutes without the help of an employee. Making it easy for Sanne to dramatically reduces response time.

"What we see is that 17% of all incoming tickets are through the Flowbot. And that from all Flowbot tickets, 42.5% is completed successfully without ever reaching our inbox."

Sanne: "The other 36% of Flowbot tickets are picked up by our Customer Happiness team. They already have all the information needed from customers and that contributes to our average resolution time. Our average resolution time dropped from around 24 hours to +/- 14 hours."

Personalized WhatsApp communication results in longer lifetime value

Sanne: "Whatsapp is a very important channel. After all, we make very personal contact with the customer and therefore also see the opportunity to link relevant marketing actions to conversations."

One of the most successful marketing actions has been done via WhatsApp. Sanne: "Customers are invited to contact with us via WhatsApp through a QR code. We ask them for a screenshot of their perfume calendar. And after they send it they receive an automatic link immediately with a form to fill out. This way they will receive perks! Because of this WhatsApp marketing campaign, we see that the customers with whom we have contact have a longer lifetime value."

“Because of Trengo we at Parfumado have personal contact with the customer in the most efficient way. And not in the least we saw our resolution time drop, as well as our employee costs!" - Sanne