Esprit Barbecue is a French company founded in 2010 by two young people from Lille. The company started its activity with a 300 m2 store in Bondues, north of Lille. Its specialty is in the sale of barbecues, planchas, and braziers. Two years later, the brand tripled its sales area and launched its e-commerce site to become the reference in its market.
As a pioneer in internet barbecue sales, the company touts itself as an expert in its market. It places a lot of importance on the quality of its products and its service. Indeed, the brand puts humans at the heart of its business by offering premium customer service and an impeccable experience. It is one of the best-rated brands on Avis-vérifiés in France!
Over the years, Esprit Barbecue's product line has extended from the traditional barbecue to the tasty plancha, including the brazier or smoker. It now offers over 3000 products on its website, to the delight of barbecue enthusiasts and professionals. Ordering from Esprit Barbecue means giving yourself a better chance of winning the French barbecue championship.
A business marked by strong seasonality
Esprit Barbecue's activity is naturally seasonal as it specializes in outdoor cooking. Spring and summer are unsurprisingly the favorite seasons of the French for barbecues, which reflects in the brand’s sales and activities. As proof, the number of unique visitors on the brand's e-commerce website is five times higher during summer.
This seasonal spike in activity is accompanied by a significant flow of requests to customer service representatives, who must provide quick and relevant answers via email, phone, or live chat. To improve the management of this time-consuming system for support agents, the company required a simple and easy-to-use solution with 24/7 availability.
A hybrid approach for better customer service
Despite an initial reluctance to use chatbots, Esprit Barbecue eventually tested Botmind. After extensive research, the company chose Botmind, whose hybrid approach keeps humans at the center of the customer experience. They were also delighted by its "fair and consistent" pricing compared to competing offers.
Integrating the hybrid agent on the e-commerce site was simple. It automated frequent and time-consuming questions swiftly. The customer support representatives were able to handle the high value-added requests from the hybrid agent in the form of complete tickets. Thanks to this approach of blending human and artificial intelligence, the company can leverage the best of both worlds in the chat channel. It also allows the company to improve the average response time while maintaining high-quality responses for all types of questions: frequent and time-consuming, or complex, and with high added value.
Quick impact and a great customer experience
In just a few days, the brand noticed the impact of the hybrid chatbot on its customers' experience and the work of its customer service advisors. The number of frequent and time-consuming questions received dropped considerably, freeing up time for the advisors who can now handle other issues. As proof, during April 2021, the hybrid chatbot Botmind saved Esprit Barbecue's teams over 38 hours of work!
Customers now enjoy a smooth and problem-free experience. With Botmind, customers can now access large amounts of information related to the automatic tracking of the order, delivery, payment, etc., simply and in real-time. According to the data reported by the virtual agent, order tracking and delivery information are the most used paths by visitors. Thus, they can access the status of their delivery, the different modes, times, countries, and costs of delivery in no time.
Customer advice: an essential issue for experts
Beyond after-sales support, the hybrid chatbot also intervenes during the pre-sales stage to support and advise visitors. Thanks to triggers (small notification bubbles displayed by the virtual agent), it can attract customers' attention and engage them in the sales tunnel. Like an in-store salesperson, it pre-qualifies the need and advises visitors on products to help them make the best purchase decision, whether it's for a barbecue, Plancha (or both 😁).
The advice functionality is essential to Esprit Barbecue because it wants to differentiate itself from traditional retailers through expertise and premium service. According to Samuel, who’s in charge of the e-commerce website, "What's good about Botmind is that we can do a lot of things with it. We don't just stop at answers to frequent and time-consuming questions, we can also set up guides, triggers, product paths, etc." The company can now relaunch visitors who arrive on the Shopping Cart page and help them complete their order. This is one of the most popular triggers for visitors to the site.
Keeping humans at the heart of customer support
By using Botmind, Esprit Barbecue has a solution capable of automating its customer service while keeping the human element at the heart of its business. The virtual agent provides follow-ups and continuous help to site visitors, while advisors focus on other tasks and high-value-added customer requests. Hence, each customer can benefit from a specialist’s guidance to choose the best product for their needs.
At Botmind, we are delighted to support Esprit Barbecue to automate its customer service. We especially appreciate Esprit Barbecue's warm welcome and friendliness (you can ask Victor, our CTO, who has been training for the next French championship after buying his barbecue 😎).