How PepsiCo’s Largest Global Franchisee Streamlined Dealer Support with WhatsApp

Overview

Varun Beverages is one of the largest franchisees of PepsiCo, and a prominent player in the beverage industry, operating in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Besides manufacturing and distributing carbonated soft drinks, non-carbonated beverages, and packaged drinking water, the company manages a vast network of visi (or visible) coolers, a type of refrigerator designed for storing beverages at optimal temperatures. It partnered with Jio Haptik to streamline the maintenance and troubleshooting of its visi coolers, allowing restaurants and outlet owners to easily raise complaints and resolve issues through WhatsApp-based conversational support.

14,000
Avg. monthly conversations
71%
End-to-end automation of support requests
60%
Dealer satisfaction score

Haptik is a fantastically committed team. They truly understand their business and they go really deep to understand their customer's issues.

mvs murthy
MVS Murthy,

Head – Marketing & Digital

Challenge

With outlets relying on visi coolers to keep beverages at suitable temperatures, it is paramount for Varun Beverages to ensure smooth operations through efficient maintenance support. However, managing support across thousands of locations, spread over multiple regions, poses significant logistical challenges.

 

  • To fulfill the maintenance needs for visi coolers, it sought a solution capable of handling high volumes of support requests from multiple outlets.

  • The company wanted to automate the process of capturing serial numbers, scanning barcodes, and identifying the asset owner to minimize manual errors and delays in resolving problems.

  • Upholding the highest standards of service accountability was a key goal for Varun Beverages.

Solution

Varun Beverages collaborated with Haptik to increase WhatsApp adoption among its distributors. Through WhatsApp, Haptik enabled a direct and automated channel for distributors and outlet owners to report issues instantly. The bot handles an average of 14,000 monthly conversations, and facilitates the timely resolution of support requests. The alliance enabled distributors to maintain maximum uptime, ensuring the bot had little to no downtime.

 

  • With the WhatsApp chatbot, the process of creating support tickets was seamless, allowing for faster resolution times and more efficient coordination of mechanics.

  • The solution enabled outlet owners to quickly raise complaints and receive maintenance support, significantly reducing downtime.

  • Varun Beverages implemented a 4-digit CSAT code system on WhatsApp, shared between the outlet owner and the mechanic, to verify that issues were satisfactorily resolved.

VB-Case Study
PLATFORM
WhatsApp
USE-CASES
Dealer Support

At Varun Beverages, we take pride in streamlining maintenance and troubleshooting for our distributor network’s visi coolers. By ensuring optimal cooler performance, we help maintain the quality of our highly sought-after beverages, minimizing downtime and ensuring they are always stored at the right temperature. Haptik's WhatsApp chatbot has helped our distributors achieve 71% end-to-end automation, allowing for faster issue resolution and seamless communication with thousands of outlets.

Siddharth Vaish
Siddharth Vaish

GM - Business Applications, Varun Beverages

End Result

Varun Beverages’ proactive role in identifying the challenges faced by its vast distributor network, helped build a comprehensive solution. By joining forces with Haptik, the beverage industry leader defined the right use cases for the bot, developed and deployed on WhatsApp by Haptik’s AI experts. The notable improvements in Varun Beverages’ dealer satisfaction scores are a reflection of the positive impact of timely maintenance on business operations. The collaboration demonstrates the power of blending cutting-edge AI solutions with the user-friendly WhatsApp platform, raising the bar for dealer support in the beverage sector.