Digiplus is going to turn Digikala customers into loyal customers and offer them special services
According to the IDEA, The DigiPlus team is a 10-person team in the DigiKala Marketing Group. Digiplus is going to turn Digikala customers into loyal customers and offer them special services. Talking about the creation of this service in Digikala group goes back several years.
The idea of Digiplus was formed in 2017 and became more serious in 2018. “Hamid Mohammadi”, who is one of the founders of Digikala, was among those who came up with the idea to form this service in 2016 and had a lot of support for its launch and development. So far, more than 1 million users have used Digiplus services. This team is currently led by “Ayla Niko”. We sat down with her to talk more about the Digiplus service, its challenges and its future.
Why was Digiplus formed and what global services were modeled in its launch?
The reason why this service was formed is due to two issues. Digikala had loyal customers and the goal we had in the Digiplus service was to be able to give a better feeling to these loyal customers; We wanted customers to get results from their loyalty. One solution for this was to deal with programs like loyalty programs, and we found two common strategies in our research: a service like clubs, when we started research, we started with this model.
At that time, there was no Digiclub, and as a result of this research, it was created. Another case was to launch a subscription service to offer special services to the customer during the sale of this subscription. In the long run, this leads to loyal customers getting better service, and customers who are not necessarily loyal can eventually become loyal customers.
In fact, Amazon Prime was the best model for us, and the fact is that when we were looking for a global model five years ago, there were not many services in this field. Amazon has managed to make many customers subscribe to Amazon Prime with this service. We made this service our model and integrated it with Iranian culture. We wanted to see what Iranian users are looking for.
What do Iranian users want more?
According to our research, the biggest concern for Iranian users is free shipping. In Amazon, 90% of users buy this Prime service because of free shipping, and in Digiplus, this number reaches 80%. The first reason to buy through Digiplus is free shipping and faster shipping. We consider a special delivery period for Plus users, and also from April 2023, we made the delivery fee for the instant delivery service free.
Were you able to make many changes in the Digiplus service?
Before Prime service, Amazon’s average shipping went from 20 days with a fee to 2 days with free shipping. There was a challenge and that was that before Plus, the average shipping time in Digikala was only 3 days, which compared to global benchmarks, 3-day delivery of orders is considered a premium service. This made it difficult for us to work in the Digiplus service to show the difference of this service.
What percentage of your users became Digiplus? Has this number aligned with your goal?
19% became monthly active users of Digiplus. This number exceeded our target and we set a record. But the reality is that the further we go, the harder it gets. Our goal in a five-year period is for 60% of Digikal users to join Digiplus users.
Why does the user have to pay nearly one hundred thousand tomans every month to have Digiplus? Think free shipping is enough?
We also believe that only free shipping is not a sufficient option for buying Digiplus; However, as we mentioned, 80% of users become Digiplus because of this issue. We launched a bundle so that users can enjoy various benefits other than free shipping; Fidibo subscription cash gift, 30-day return period, faster support, special discounts and more. Of course, we are not going to break this bundle and offer smaller packages in the future, but we want to constantly increase this bundle and its benefits.
Is there a particular difference in customer support or anything else that really benefits the customer?
In the support department, we selected more experienced people according to certain parameters. They have the best customer tone and spend more time with users (than regular users) to make them feel special. But the fact is that sometimes there are problems in sending orders that cannot be solved in the support department and the problem is related to outside this department.
We did not have the possibility to accommodate the special issue of some customers in all distribution centers, and we are currently looking for a way to have a special section in these centers as well. Digikala’s operations department is constantly evolving and we have tried various things, but we still haven’t been able to get the right answer in this field. But I believe that we can reach a correct conclusion soon.
Isn’t there a concern that the DigiPlus service will give a sense of discrimination to other users?
We did not deny any service from the normal user that we want to provide to the users of Digiplus. In Digiplus, we have given an additional service and we never intend to take a service from normal users.
Do you plan to cooperate with other companies to provide services to Digiplus customers?
We are currently cooperating with Fidibo and Digiplus people can use Fidibo’s library during their subscription period. But soon we plan to start cooperation with other services and even services outside Digikala. Of course, in this case, we do not intend to repeat an experience like the customer club again, and we intend to offer more different programs during these collaborations.
Is there a difference between High Value Customer and DigiPlus customers for you?
At Digiplus service, we make sure that we keep these customers and we want other customers to become loyal customers as well. Currently, a large part of our customers are actually members of Digiplus, but we want to offer services that will turn ordinary customers into our important customers. Now, we have reached a position where customers are willing to buy these bundles without special discounts.
Is Digiplus service different for residents of Tehran and other cities? What did you do to solve this issue?
This is one of the concerns and challenges that we are dealing with. A series of cases are no different for the residents of Tehran and other cities; such as special call center feature and 30 days return of goods. But the time intervals of sending and fast sending – which is one of the main differences between Digiplasi and other users – are different for residents of Tehran and other cities.
The fact is that there are more slots in Tehran and the shipments are faster; But we are trying to develop this feature in other cities as well. We have multiple plans with our logistics team to deliver instant same day delivery to many different cities.
What is the road map for the future of Digiplus?
As it was said, our goal is to reach 60% digitization of users. We want to become a comprehensive service like Amazon Prime that is present in all moments of people’s lives. Amazon Prime customers use this service in all their lifestyles; From watching movies to reading books and listening to music, all their activities are connected with this service. We are also moving towards this issue.
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