Engaging Tier 2 & 3 of India across Channels

Customer engagement today isn't what it used to be 5 or 10 years ago. Today’s connected customers want to be engaged by brands in real time and on the channels of their choice.

Seeing the trend, ValueFirst & P&G came together to create an orchestrated multichannel experience for its consumers. A platform (called iTrial) was developed for retail stores in tier 2 and 3 cities of India. Using Interactive Voice Response (aka IVR) and SMS, the platform was successful in distributing the product samples to walk-in customers. The one-of-a-kind solution used Missed Call service to get a customer onboarding initiated.

But, the road wasn't the smoothest when we began. Our teams were faced with multiple challenges:

• P&G has one of the world's largest retail networks. In order for the campaign to be successful, it was important to onboard about 600,000 retailers from four states of India.
• There was a strong need to execute measurable KPIs and accountability in the samples distributed.
• While sampling was free, it was important for the activity to turn into a revenue generation model.
• It was vital for the experience for both retailer and consumer to be frictionless and have no-cost at the ends.

ValueFirst put forward an incredible solution with scalability in mind.

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Phase I (Retailer Enrolment)

- The retailer gives a missed call and receives an IVR back
- IVR asks for Branch ID followed by the retailer code which is unique for each retailer
- To verify, IVR asks for the retailer confirmation
- The retailer is enrolled and registered into iTrial registration module after successful verification
- The retailer receives a confirmation SMS for successful registration
- For each wrong entry, the IVR attempts twice for confirmation before the call is disconnected

Phase II (Consumer Enrolment)

- Retailer asks the consumer to give a missed on the number printed on the Ad poster at the store
- The consumer receives an IVR back with a welcome message
- Upon successful age verification, the consumer is asked to enter retailer code
- The consumer is qualified for the campaign offers if the retailer code is verified
- Consumer listens to the offered prompt and selects personalized offerings (Note: Consumer can avail maximum of 2+2 offers a month.)
- The consumer selects the offer from the retailer and gets enrolled into the consumer database
- The system has been designed to make limited re-attempts for no entry and wrong entry scenarios

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What truly added joy to our lives was:

1. The campaign completed a sampling about about 100 Million products
2. The solution was awarded the GOLD award at the India Digital Awards organised by IAMAI India