AI chatbot to ease firm's engagement with farmers

Infobip, a global cloud communication company for businesses has deployed an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven chatbot platform dubbed Answers, over WhatsApp to aid agric-tech start-up Twiga Foods' operations.

Infobip is also a leader in omnichannel - sales, marketing and customer engagement.

Twiga Foods runs a mobile-based business-to-business (B2B) food platform that supplies fresh fruits and vegetables sourced from farmers to small-and medium-sized vendors, outlets and kiosks countrywide.

The company has been leveraging the latest technology and the ubiquity of mobile phones combined with modern distribution and logistics.

Over the past eight years, Twiga Foods has been using field marketing agents, who engaged directly to sign up vendors across Kenya but using AI Chatbot has been a cost-effective way to activate vendors.

Twiga Foods Product Manager, Social Commerce Stellah Njeru said the company needed a hassle-free onboarding process for vendors on the Twiga Foods platform.

"We needed to seamlessly scale the onboarding of small and medium-sized vendors within the region through a preferred communications channel," she said.

Njeru said the answers chatbot solution provided by Infobip has helped the company drive meaningful, personalised and scalable engagement with existing and new vendors across the country.

"We have significantly improved the onboarding process, through self-registration; 40 per cent of vendors across the country are fully registered and KYC via Twiggy on WhatsApp within less than three minutes."

For the development team at Twiga, Infobip's Answers chatbot building solution saved them numerous hours as it's easy to build on, supports integrations with their internal backend services and most importantly can be securely deployed to multiple social channels as they scale.

With the company supporting customers round the clock through WhatsApp, their satisfaction and retention have improved.

"We are transforming African retail with an alternative system that eliminates inefficiencies and generates the same results as the modernisation of retail in more developed markets," said Njeru.

Infobip's Emma Mugo said chatbot solutions are altering the way many businesses operate since AI-driven bots can engage with customers more effectively and efficiently "while also giving an organisation a greater understanding of its clients".