BukaBantuan’s Humanist Touch in the Era of Digital Customer Service
Digitalization has become an inevitable era. Bukalapak is also a product of the digital era that we currently live in. The digital world has shortened distances, interactions, and forced everything to be faster. However, there is one real drawback of digitization to the customer service industry: the lack of a human touch. At BukaBantuan, we don’t want to lose the essence of serving our customers, namely human interaction, when serving our beloved customers. The story I want to share here is about the way BukaBantuan maintains a humane service without being robotic.
Personalized Customer Service
Providing a personal experience when serving customers may not be a new thing, but unfortunately there are still many who have not implemented it properly. Personalizing customer service isn’t as simple as putting the customer service agent’s name at the end of a reply. Of course, this is indeed one of the ways to interact with customers, but if the way we chat with customers still seems robotic, they will not understand what that means. Today, customers have experienced many behavioral changes regarding the choice of how they are served. Casual chat is more in demand in the digital era, because it feels more like chatting with humans compared to overly formal chats which are considered inhumane and like talking to robots.
On BukaBantuan social media, we do not apply the practice of mentioning our agents’ names, but we use the personas known as Billy and Bella. The real name of the serving agent is only the initials at the end of the reply. We implement this so that customers feel close and get to know us better through Billy & Bella.
Of course, we also always mention the customer’s name in each of our replies, this is an attitude to show that we know our customers. Also, don’t forget to show that we understand the customer problem by providing an outline of the problem at hand, thereby giving customers confidence that we are listening to their problems carefully.
The Groove Project
After providing a personal touch when serving customers, the next big step by BukaBantuan is through the Groove Project. An essential project on BukaBantuan social media that focuses on how to respond in a fun and relaxed way, which is related to the slogan on BukaBantuan’s social media “To make it fun of the problems of life that are sometimes not fun”. In line with the slogan, the content provided is certainly not only rigid content about customer service but also talks about nowadays trending topics and sometimes memes! Showing that Billy & Bella not only could be contacted about Bukalapak’s transactions, but also open to any topic.
Curious about the result? The Groove project managed to intensify our relationship and engagement with customers through social media. Billy & Bella are not only known as BukaBantuan’s customer service representatives but also friends that could be talked to anytime. Billy & Bella are always there for Bukalapak customers.
A Special Letter from BukaBantuan
This is a postcard that was specially sent by BukaBantuan’s agent to our beloved customer. BukaBantuan agent directly wrote the letter to customers who have interacted directly with them. The content is an expression of our pleasure that we could help solve their problems. We also thank them for being a loyal customer and maintaining the relationship by giving discount vouchers or simple gifts. The customer response was very good, many of them voluntarily posted the letter on their social media, feeling happy and special that they were remembered by BukaBantuan.
This initiative is a small effort, but it makes a big impact in terms of winning customers’ hearts. They remember and know Billy & Bella as their special friends who are ready to help whenever they have problems with transactions at Bukalapak.
I believe that technology is important to our live and customer service industry as well, however BukaBantuan’s taught me that to make it exceptional, a personalized service and humanist touch is needed. Many more innovations on the way from BukaBantuan, we commit to always listen to our customers and give the best services, today and in the future we always focus on Bukalapak’s customers.
