Online courses have been getting increasingly popular. This case study explores how one of India’s fine Edutech companies that focuses on fashion, jewellery, stitching and other manufacturing courses ended up solving their lead management issue by automating their workflow using WhatsApp.

Why the need for automation?

Before automation, the Edutech company proactively carried out SMS campaigns targeted towards reaching students that would be interested in such courses. Interested customers could enrol/know more by calling up the number provided in the SMS, which would redirect them to agents in a call centre.

With time this process became outdated and proved to have a lot of holes in its functionality. Leads were being lost due to lack of follow up, for instance; if a customer calls and hangs up due to high wait time, his/her lead was not being recorded. There was also a lack of transparency in this system which made it difficult for upper management to oversee the interactions on an individual level. Overall the process was heavily dependent on customers calling the number provided in the message, and as we all know, millennials no longer prefer conversing over the phone. This process was cumbersome on the employees, as at any given point, one employee would be required per customer.

The Edutech company was looking for a more effective, easy to monitor solution for managing leads that could improve their current operations rather than entirely replacing it. Their primary concern was the need for efficient allocation of leads to agents, and hence they decided to turn to automation for a viable solution.

Why WhatsApp?

Research shows that 75% of millennials prefer texting over calling, which means that switching from a call based approach to a text-based one would automatically help in improving conversions. As WhatsApp is one of the leading messenger services in the market with over 2 billion active users daily, the Edutech company decided it was the most suitable application to go ahead with.

How did the automated solution work?

Using WhatsApp as the face of the automated solution, the Edutech company entirely automated the process of lead management with the help of Quickwork. Automation allows you to build hybrid solutions. This means that you don’t need to go back to the drawing board for a solution; you can find a solution by building upon what a company already has to provide them with a solution.

The Edutech company continued with its SMS approach to target customers. However, the messages were edited to include campaign-specific links instead of phone numbers. Upon clicking on the link, customers would be directly transferred to a WhatsApp chat with the company. The moment a customer sends the first message, Quickwork  platform connects the customer with a prespecified agent who deals with their queries and takes the conversation forward.

All agents have access to a dashboard with messages from the customers assigned to them through the Quickwork platform, the dashboard allows them to view and respond to messages at their convenience, and directly sends their responses to the customer on WhatsApp. This allows multiple agents to be connected to a single WhatsApp number.

How did WhatsApp help improve lead management?

Automation helped the company develop a sustainable and seamless workflow. Here’s the overall impact that the company saw after implementing this solution in their daily system:

Higher efficiency: Shifting to a text-based platform allows each agent to handle multiple customer requests at one time. This allows for higher efficiency.

Systematic allocation: Since the allocation is done automatically, the lead allocation became more systematic, as they were automatically assigned to certain agents based on the campaign differentiation.

Dynamic workflow: This setup is very flexible and can be easily scaled to include multiple campaigns.

More structure: Since the conversations moved to text, the system became easier to overlook. Managers can directly access the dashboard to view individual interactions and agent progress and productivity.

Increased lead conversion: Shifting to an automated text-based last form allowed for all leads to be captured systematically; this meant more timely follow-ups and prompt service. The company managed to increase their conversion rates by 50% thanks to the shift to automation.

Building automated journeys with Quickwork

At Quickwork our aim is to simplify the work process for all our clients. We understood that the EduTech company was looking for a quick and easy to scale model to deal with managing leads. Working together with them to come up with a model that uses Quickwork platform to integrate WhatsApp with a backend dashboard connecting representatives with customers using a single number.

Automation can help integrate and streamline your workflows in various ways. Get in touch with us to know more about building automated journeys.