Instacart

Taking the Inconvenience Out of Grocery Shopping

Everyone has to shop for groceries. That might be a daily trip after work or part of your weekend errands; going to the grocery store means dealing with crowds, waiting in lines, and likely forgetting something from your list. In 2018, the average U.S. household made 1.6 grocery shopping trips per week.

lnstacart, founded in 2012, took the inconvenience of grocery shopping and completely flipped it on its head. Now shopping is easier, more efficient, and effortless, all due to the convenience of the lnstacart app. Instead of spending valuable time at a store, consumers can order groceries wherever they are and get back time for things that matter like family, friends, and more.

As a part of the on-demand industry, lnstacart is giving people the opportunity to supplement their income. lnstacart consumers order groceries, schedule deliveries, and communicate with Shoppers all through its mobile app. The company utilizes part-time employees and contractors to fulfill all of those orders.

lnstacart has contributed to on-demand services popularity. During its seven-year history, lnstacart has grown into a grocery delivery powerhouse, servicing over 4,000 cities in all 50 U.S. states. lnstacart is accessible to over 80% of all households in the U.S. and over 70% of households in Canada. Repeated successes lead to a $7 billion valuation, with its latest round of funding in November 2018.

Order with lnstacart and over 100,000 Shoppers help deliver these orders on-time. Shoppers are an essential part of lnstacart's business. Receiving orders, picking up products, and delivering within specific time windows requires both streamlined processes and intelligent planning. Any disruption can cause delays for customers. lnstacart realized that Shoppers required a reliable customer support experience.

Instacart + UJET – Faster Service Leads to Happier Shoppers

Cloud-native, mobile-focused, and multichannel customer support is at UJET's core. lnstacart understood UJET's commitment to mobile customer support and saw an opportunity to leverage the in-app voice and chat capabilities of the UJET customer support platform.

UJET's mobile SDK would integrate with the lnstacart Shopper app without altering the company's brand or user experience, creating natural, and organic in-app adoption. Shoppers would be able to contact lnstacart Support in the app and have a seamless experience from order fulfillment to any necessary support communications.

Instead of relying on a general IVR menu, lnstacart would use customer data reports, supplied by the UJET platform, to create user segmentation. Segmenting by urgency and routing IVR calls to dedicated queues quickly would decrease total call resolution times and increase Shopper satisfaction by solving high priority issues in less time.

Support agents would be able to aggregate Shopper information before connecting to the call through its CRM integration. This would help reduce resolution times because important Shopper information would be available before connecting calls.

lnstacart recognized that its customer data could improve its support strategy. Leveraging this data to create reports would uncover previously unseen trends. And with customized real-time reports from the UJET platform, managers would be able to react to support request variables with better solutions.

With many support requests, customer issues, and agent interactions, lnstacart had to create workforce management (WFM) strategies for efficient operations. It couldn't find success by operating on a case-by-case basis, but by using data to help its customer support strategy. 

Both companies saw huge potential in a partnership. lnstacart's large scale customer support operations would need features as different challenges were discovered. It required a partner that could iterate quickly and help build the foundations of a true mobile-focused support organization. Rather than wait for a company to build a needed feature, it wanted to actively discuss feature viability with a knowledgeable partner.

The UJET platform was designed for multichannel support with a mobile focus. Integrating the SDK into the Shopper app would help improve the SDK rapidly with Shoppers using it daily. UJET could use that usage information to optimize the mobile SDK.

Uniting to offer the best customer experience with modern customer support technology would enable both companies to build the blueprint for mobile-centric customer support.

lnstacart implemented the UJET customer support platform in October 2018. IVR was deployed with UJET's intelligent routing engine to improve customer experience in the voice channel. lnstacart integrated the UJET mobile SDK into the Shopper app, enabling voice and chat for the first time.