Bukalapak + Zendesk: An Ecommerce Evolution

When people want things, they want them now and no one understands this better than online marketplaces. Bukalapak, Indonesia’s largest eCommerce platform, is now serving more than 1 million customers better by putting the focus back on providing a seamless customer experience with integrated communication channels, all built with Zendesk.

Since launching in 2010, Bukalapak has grown from helping Indonesia’s small and medium-size businesses increase their sales, to become the country’s leading online marketplace. It is currently one of Southeast Asia’s largest ecommerce platforms, valued at more than US $1 billion, with close to 70 million active users each month. As its popularity boomed, it continued to use isolated customer support channels such as hotlines and email, but none of these were set up to handle a high volume of daily customer requests.

Very quickly, outdated technology and siloed support functions meant the ecommerce unicorn was no longer able to provide sellers and customers with the seamless experience they expected. It became clear that Bukalapak needed a more sophisticated customer experience solution capable of supporting and accelerating its growth. Indonesia is widely regarded as one of the most important internet markets in Southeast Asia due to its sheer size, growing middle class, and digitally savvy population. Bukalapak’s customer support team also realized it needed to mirror the behavior of its sellers and customers, and reach them on the channels they were already using.

To deal with increasingly complex customer inquiries, as well as a big jump in ticket volume, they needed to adopt an omnichannel strategy and decided to look for smarter, more agile solutions—specifically Software as a Service (SaaS) products. As a result, Bukalapak first started working with Zendesk in January 2017.

“Zendesk was incredibly easy to implement, and the seamless automation of the customer management process was a huge benefit to us,” said Tine Ervina Effendi, Bukalapak’s associate vice president of customer satisfaction management. “The contrast between Zendesk’s suite of products and the customer service tools we used previously was very evident. With the Zendesk team’s assistance, we learned how to use the software in a way that helped us maximize our performance.”

The switch to Zendesk occurred during an aggressive growth period for Bukalapak. In 2018 alone, the company grew threefold year-over-year, and was handling a significantly larger volume of tickets.

Efficiency was of the essence, and Bukalapak quickly rolled out Zendesk Support, Chat, and Guide to begin to evaluate, respond to, and resolve tickets faster. With this package of Zendesk solutions, Bukalapak was able to implement a successful omnichannel customer experience that resulted in consistent service across all channels. As a result, the company’s CSAT score has soared to over 95%, a major improvement on the 80% CSAT score it was seeing prior to moving to Zendesk.

Bukalapak then took the step of setting itself apart from its competition by being accessible 24/7. To do this, the company added more than 11 new communication channels, four of which were social media platforms—WhatsApp for Business, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, and Twitter. All of these integrations were made possible with Zendesk.

“Other companies are not ready for multiple channels and only use social media for campaigns, not to talk to their customers,” Effendi said. “We use these platforms to listen to customer complaints and grievances, and to work to solve them as quickly and efficiently as possible as a key part of our omnichannel strategy. Zendesk helps us achieve all our social media-related CX goals.”

Today, nearly 500 Bukalapak employees use Zendesk to serve their customers better. In fact, employees across various departments—such as customer service, risk management, legal and compliance, logistics and business operations, and product management—all use Zendesk for their customer support needs. In the first quarter of 2019, an average of more than 300,000 customers were served on a monthly basis, which was an increase of more than 70% compared to the previous year. This growth has allowed the company to expand its offerings to include additional services such as connecting small local kiosks and individuals offline through its Mitra Bukalapak partner program.

“One of our main goals is to provide excellent service to our customers, and we’ve realized this can only be achieved through a solid omnichannel strategy,” Effendi said. “In 2018, we handled more than 1 million customer interactions better and faster, thanks to Zendesk. We saw a 15% improvement in customer satisfaction and doubled our headcount growth. With Zendesk’s solutions, we have been able to deliver the seamless, end-to-end omnichannel solutions for our customers that we planned for.”