Got a leaky pipe? Message my plumber !
A few weeks ago, I came home to water dripping from the ceiling and creating a big mess. To make matters doubly worse it was a Friday evening on a bank holiday weekend so finding a plumber was a nightmare. I do not understand why voicemails have not been banned for all trades as they are inevitably full or will take a tradesperson till the end of time to get through all their voicemails and listen to garbled incomprehensible descriptions of some problem or other. I did finally get a plumber out for 150 Euro call out charge just to shut off the water. I would have to wait 10 days to get the problem fixed with a new water tank. I now have a leaky tap that needs to be replaced and I am still shell shocked from my last experience and delaying calling out a plumber. It got me thinking how much a better experience for the customer and for the plumber (save them from their full voicemails) if we could have used conversational commerce.
Message do not call the plumber !
Most customer engagements with a plumber or plumbing firm starts with a google search of the local plumbers. Most plumbers will not have a website and will advertise a business number for the customer to call. For a small plumber with 1-2 plumbers, it is usually a call to the business owner at all hours of the day. For a bigger plumbing business there will be a service desk or secretary that handles the inbound customer call and arranges a call out for one of their plumbers. There are some more digitally savvy plumbers that might handle this on a website, which usually triggers an email.
Calling plumbers is often a terrible customer experience. A lot of plumbers are small operations and are usually on the job and cannot answer their phone immediately. If the customer cannot reach a person or reach only voicemail, most customers will just assume that they will not get a call back leading to a missed opportunity for the busuness. Also leaving voicemails and describing an issue they do not really understand is difficult for most ordinary folks. If the plumber does call back, they invariably ask you to describe the issue as they could not understand or did not bother listening to voicemail further frustrating the customer.
Now imagine the same engagement, instead of calling a plumber, the customer could message the plumbing business and engage with a messaging chat bot that could take a customer through a structured journey, discover or get the customer to describe their issue, book a call out, digitally pay any call out charges and then be notified in near real-time of when the plumber will come to fix the issue. After the issue is fixed, the customer could pay any outstanding charges again through their phone and rate the experience. The next time the customer wants to engage a plumber, they can simply go back to their messaging conversational history and start over again.
How can Payemoji conversational commerce help plumbing businesses?
Plumbing businesses can benefit from Payemoji conversational commerce through messaging apps in many ways from customer support to allowing customers to order and pickup.
- Local mobile number: Every business will get their own local mobile number that can be used on Google, website, social media, or business cards to engage the plumbing business. We also provide QR codes to provide a quick way for customers to scan and launch a message to the business.
- Structured menu: Each plumbing business through the Payemoji portal will setup a menu and this is presented to the customer when they engage with the plumbing business.
- Customer Support: Simple chat bots can answer basic customer questions like opening hours, location, or provide simple tips or how to guides on common plumbing issues for example.
- Personalized service: When customers need a more personal touch, it is possible to handover conversations from the chat bot to a human.
- Shared inbox: For businesses with more than one plumber, the customer engagement through messaging can be easily viewed by different employees and understand the history of engagement with a customer providing a better experience and saving time.
- Book a call out: Customers can book a call out from available and digitally pay using their Credit card, Apple Pay or Google Pay.
- Free up time and save labour: This can free up precious time by allowing automation to engage with customers on simple repetitive tasks, and this will allow the business owners to focus on a more personalized service.
- eCommerce store for plumbing supplies and services: Each business gets an eCommerce store and allow their customers to order and pay, ensuring higher revenues and higher sales closures.
- Digital payments: Customers can pay with their credit card or using their phone with Google Pay and apple pay. No need to handle cash or share your bank account.
- Loyalty: As every customer will engage with their phones, plumbing owners will now have the phone number of every customer that engages with them and understand new versus repeat customers preferences.
- Receive customer feedback: Allow customers to rate their experience of the service.
- Promotions: Once the plumbing business owners have the phone numbers of their customers, conversational commerce can be used to send messages of special deals and promotions (e.g., 20% off leaky taps).
- Simple integration into existing apps: Just use the phone number provided to integrate into any app.
- No Apps to download for customers: This is critical as many consumers do not like to download Mobile Apps for small businesses and this can be an unnecessary friction. No one is ever deleting their favorite messaging app like WhatsApp from their phone.
