Stylish products and happy oceans, that’s what Flaske stands for. The sustainable brand sells reusable drinking bottles and coffee cups, mainly for the corporate market. Their goal is to help companies become completely disposable and plastic-free by 2024. In order to increase accessibility and connection with customers, they are going to use WhatsApp as a contact channel. We spoke about this with Ruben Peters, owner of Flaske.
Can you tell us a bit more about Flaske?
‘Of course. We sell sustainable reusable drinking bottles and coffee cups. Sustainability is important, because an average of 156 plastic bottles are used per person per year. Of these, 40 end up in the ocean. I think you can easily imagine the impact a company can make by choosing sustainable drinking bottles. In addition, you also support the Plastic Soup Foundation when you purchase a Flaske.’
‘Our products are made of double-walled stainless steel. This means that drinks stay cold for 24 hours and hot for 12 hours. The bottles are also 100% leakproof, so no leaking in your bag. You can personalize all products according to your own taste, for example with a company logo or the names of your employees.’
In their webshop, Flaske has many business customers from the Netherlands, but also from Belgium, Germany and other countries in Europe. The business webshop is getting more and more busy, and therefore WhatsApp is a very nice solution, according to Peters.
Flaske is going to add WhatsApp as a contact channel. Why did you choose this and what problem will it eventually solve?
‘Well, that’s mainly the reachability. So if we’re not reachable for our customers and we don’t keep the chat up to date, people will be gone after 20 seconds. And that’s a shame. We also have customers in Europe with time differences. And the same applies in the evening, when we also want to be available after working hours for our customers.’
‘If we are not reachable for our customers and we don’t keep the chat up to date, people will be gone after 20 seconds. And that’s a shame.’
That reachability is certainly important. WhatsApp is also one of the most popular messaging platforms at the moment, why do you think this channel could be especially useful for you?
‘The open rate is many times higher with WhatsApp than with an email. And if we have people’s WhatsApp data, we can also upsell much easier or give updates like ”we saved so many plastic bottles this month”. It just makes it easier to start sharing some more information, and maybe special deals and offers.’
‘We also have a growing assortment now, so we also think it would be nice to share a product review or something like that every month. That way people know what we sell, and we might generate sales from that.’
And what results do you hope to see eventually?
‘At the moment it’s a little quiet with orders because of the summer period, but September, October and November are really great months for us. A lot of Christmas hampers and end-of-year gifts are ordered then, so we hope to get more sales from the later moments, like between 18:00 and 20:00.’
Looking at the Conversational Commerce trend, what role do you think it will play in the future? And (how) will you make use of it?
‘It’s all becoming more and more personal. How quickly you respond to customer questions, how short your delivery time is, how good your product is, these are all things that people come back for to your shop. The percentage that our business customers order from us more than once is between 30 and 40 percent. And then they come back to our shop on their own accord. If we then also strengthen the connection with the customer, that percentage can only get higher. That is what we are going to do through WhatsApp.’
‘The percentage that our customers order from us more than once is between 30 and 40 percent. If we strengthen that connection, the percentage can only get higher.’
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