What comes to your mind when you think of Instagram? Reels? Memes? Scenic photos? But even if we don’t realize, Instagram has become much more than that and has started to affect our buying behavior more than ever.
Instagram is the perfect place to start for any small-scale business. The number of active users on Instagram makes it a sheer marketing force to be reckoned with. Introducing your business to the world of Instagram can help you boost exposure, build your brand, and engage with your audience—all at no cost.
But is it possible for a small business with a limited budget and time constraints to engage with customers on Instagram while handling queries from all over the place?? By adding Instagram integration we have made it possible. Let’s consider a theoretical use case on how Katherine, a budding entrepreneur, makes the most out of it.
The rise of Lutum, a pottery company
Let’s say Katherine is the owner of Lutum, a California-based pottery company. Today, Lutum’s Instagram account has more than 60K followers and ships its craft to more than 63 countries around the world. But how did it all start?
Katherine was a housewife who got into pottery as a hobby when she joined a one-month pottery workshop in her area. Ever since, she has been practicing it and posting photos of her work regularly on Instagram. Over time, people started loving her work, and she started getting requests to buy it.
As she gained popularity, she thought of turning this hobby into a full-time profession. She named her business Lutum—meaning clay in Latin—and started an Instagram account for her page and listed her products there.
Katherine was getting a lot of queries from Instagram, but she wasn’t able to keep up with the production workload and customer queries. Slowly and gradually, she started losing customers as Katherine’s hands were all over the place and she wasn’t able to provide customers with a satisfactory experience. She realized no matter how good her products were, she wouldn’t be able to run the business if she didn’t respond to customer queries and engage with them. This was when one of her friends recommended the newly launched Instagram integration in Zoho SalesIQ.
After a seamless onboarding of the product and successful integration with her Instagram account, Katherine was able to set up a pre-chat form to capture key customer information and keep up with all her customer queries on time, during business and non-business hours. Not only that, the customer data was automatically transferred to her CRM, which helped reduce her manual data entry, eliminate redundancies, and speed up her overall process.
Automation by chatbots
SalesIQ's automation capabilities played a crucial role in Katherine's business growth. She set up chatbots to respond instantly to her Instagram audience when she was unavailable. Using SalesIQ's chatbot building platform, Zobot, basic queries, information about her products, shipping details, and even personalized recommendations could be triggered. This automation improved customer experience and allowed Katherine to focus on her art and deliver high-quality products to her customers.
Omnichannel support
As Lutum's business expanded, Katherine also created a website to showcase her products. With SalesIQ's multi-channel support, users can handle queries from websites, mobile apps, and messaging channels, including Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. In Katherine's case, she managed customer support and engagement across her website and Instagram account from a single platform. This centralized approach enabled her to provide consistent support and engage with customers seamlessly, regardless of the platform they used to reach out.
In summary, the integration of Zoho SalesIQ's Instagram integration played a pivotal role in Katherine's journey from a hobbyist potter to a successful business owner. It helped her manage customer queries, capture valuable customer information, answer repetitive questions through chatbots, and streamline her overall customer support and engagement process. With SalesIQ's assistance, Katherine could focus on delivering high-quality products and building lasting relationships with her customers, leading to the growth and success of Lutum.
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