When Jumia first entered e-commerce, our call centres were overwhelmed with calls from consumers with questions. Jumia continued hiring more call center agents but it was difficult to keep up with demand. When we hired an even bigger team to handle email inquiries, they also soon became inundated. Customer satisfaction is Jumia’s highest priority - so we had to find a better solution.
The tech experts at Jumia challenged themselves to solve the problem. When customer service agents explained that they spent the majority of their time answering a relatively small list of repeat questions, the technology team identified an opportunity for efficiency. A collaboration between the team members who interfaced with the customers and team members who could identify the best technical solutions yielded Jumia’s first Chatbot and live chat service.
As technologists began to build the service, our experts examined customer data to identify patterns in the questions that consumers were asking:
How do I make payment?
When will my order be delivered?
If I am not happy with the goods I received; can I return them and get a refund?
The Chatbot was designed to easily answer those most frequent inquiries. By November 2020, the Chatbot was handling close to 50 percent of all the inquiries that used to be directed to Jumia’s call centres. The introduction of the Chatbot led to reduced telephone costs for customers, as well as convenient and timely response to their concerns.
An unintended consequence of the Chatbot launch made Jumia even better: The agents we had hired to answer the millions of telephone calls from across Africa found they had more time to proactively anticipate consumer needs and began working on different projects to improve overall consumer experience on Jumia. They became better at collecting, collating and interpreting consumer data, which has improved our capacity to address consumers’ pain points. The process helped us learn to value consumer feedback as a way to learn and improve our services.
Our new process still includes “human touch” at critical times. When consumers have a burning question that is too complex for our Chatbot, they will still be directed to Jumia’s call centres, where they can speak with someone directly. For those who still prefer to send an email, that option is also still available.
Not only is our new system intuitive, but our data shows we are helping our consumers make payments and track their deliveries better. We invite you to try it out and give us feedback. Our dedicated team monitors the data so that we can constantly improve our Chatbot and make it more responsive to your shopping needs. ********************
Priyanka Koribilli
Chief Product Officer
Priyanka Koribilli has a demonstrated history of working in the Internet industry and has been with Jumia since 2016. As a Chief Product Owner, she enjoys the responsibility of managing every step of the product development journey from Product Vision to Concept to API design to Go-to-Market planning to Impact Ownership. In a fast-paced company like Jumia, she oversees multiple projects at any given time. Priyanka holds an M.B.A. focused on Product, Operations & Strategy from the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, India.