In early March 2020, Indonesia announced its first confirmed case of COVID-19. Since then, there have been rapid shifts in consumers’ lifestyles, purchase patterns, and consumer behaviour as they are starting to recalibrate their budget.

One of the observed shreds of evidence is that consumers are becoming more price-conscious, which affects their channel preference. These facts are a wake-up call for businesses to adapt and reiterate their ways of interacting and engaging with their customers by reducing interactions (i.e. physical distancing, work-from-home policy, etcetera.).

During these unprecedented times, experience and trust are determinant factors for businesses to make or break.

Nielsen’s study on the COVID-19 outbreak shows what we have witnessed in Indonesia, as well as in Tokopedia, on how consumers shift their purchase and selling behaviour.

During March-April, “panic buying” was observed among consumers as people anticipated more disastrous days to come from the spread of COVID-19. Suddenly, healthcare products have a surge in sales. This phenomenon was seen by numerous irresponsible sellers as an opportunity to maximise profits.

To avoid further price discrepancy, Tokopedia took significant action by shutting down thousands of shops profiteering from COVID-19.

In early May-June, customers’ ‘new normal’ behaviours became more consistent. We started to witness higher dependency on e-commerce or digital platforms to support remote working and personal hygiene.

According to Nielsen, 30 per cent of customers plan to shop online more frequently, with more than 35 per cent of them planning to visit malls less frequently. Another research published by McKinsey indicates that Indonesian consumers have shifted their purchase of household essentials to online channels (previously purchased offline and online mostly for secondary needs products only).

Hence the shifting to online will potentially become a new normal as consumers expect to reduce in-person activities for a more extended period.

Tokopedia evolved to adapt to the big shift in consumer behaviour

Given the facts, Tokopedia plays a vital role in these times of adversity by providing an easy and convenient way for all users to fulfil their needs online. Things that were previously purchased offline are now available on online platforms with plenty of shop options, regularly updated stock and supply, and sold at transparent prices.

Also Read: 3 much needed mindset shifts to thrive in a post-COVID-19 world

To maintain economic and business sustainability, all the businesses that previously only operated offline and are heavily impacted by COVID-19, have been provided with an easy way to onboard on our online platform. Businesses that choose to open up a shop on Tokopedia will be exposed to 90+ million monthly active users all over Indonesia in only a matter of minutes, and with zero set-up costs required.

The infographic below shows the impact made by changing the way we engage with our users, and most importantly, how we endorse local brands to further secure the Indonesian economy.

Adapting to the new customer engagement strategy

As part of the changes, we have to ensure that Tokopedia keeps their promises to serve customers and can be contacted 24/7 regarding any situation. We’re all aware that more customers depend on us right now, like the end-users staying at home, either for work or school, and need to get all the essentials delivered to a home, or even new merchants with financial instability whose off-line store closed due to this pandemic.

Hence, the big shifts in strategies and prioritisation have been made to win our customers’ and employees’ hearts.

1. The big shift from channel-based to service-based customer management
The shifting to service-based management has been started since the end of 2019 as the response of the projection of the increase in customer interactions (that have not considered the pandemic condition). But then, the number of interactions increases faster than expected. There is a 40 per cent increase during the pandemic, but we’re ready to face it because the change has started earlier.

The service-based centre is beneficial for our front-liners as they are able to have more profound and accurate product knowledge.

As a result, the transformation enables us to increase productivity, improve quality, respond faster, and improve customer satisfaction, which in turn increases more than five p.p. thereafter.

2. The unthinkable success of Work From Home for the Customer Operations team

WFH was not an easy task for the operations team, where the accuracy of workforce placement and productivity target mainly requires physical presence and direct floor management. Yet, we were able to successfully deliver it in three cities within only one week of the deployment.

Being the first Indonesian technology company to implement digital customer service, we are able to run a fully work-from-home operation without sacrificing the quality of our services to our customers.

3. Automation to cater to what customers need

We implemented three-layer automation to identify and solve customers’ challenges:

• Self-Service: Users can immediately get answers to their inquiries before they ask CS. This can deflect more than 90 per cent of the shipment issues.
• Chatbot: An Artificial Intelligence that consists of 3I: Interface (having a messaging interface that makes it easy to use), Intelligence (the capability for solving issues, not only inquiries), and Integration (with the system by API). It can deflect more than 60 per cent of chat sessions.
• Gandalf (API-Integrated Email Response): System that replies users’ tickets based on a set of condition rules and gives suggestions or actions. This is rear protection and still able to deflect 30 per cent of email tickets.

These become important due to the new normal of the traffic while the increase reaches 400 per cent during a big promo period. Minor alteration on the system was done to adjust to the pandemic situation.

4. ‘Proactive and Protective’ customer engagement and education
Beside proactive engagement to educate users and reduce the number of customer complaints, protective actions are taken by sweeping the platform for sellers who are setting the price of a product way over the market price — which frequently happened during the COVID-19 pandemic — as the demand for masks and hand sanitisers surged.

Also Read: The new communications playbook for the new normal

Nevertheless, this protective action is done regularly, from sweeping the platform for prohibited goods to taking down items that do not comply with the Food and Drug Monitoring Agency’s (BPOM) regulations.

5. Liven up the voice of customer monitoring through customer engagement hub
Customer Engagement Hub is a one-stop command center to monitor the voice of customers, operations performance, and transaction status in real-time. Tokopedia realized that what we see in the channels is just the tip of the iceberg.

Around 80 per cent of issues faced are not submitted to the channels and, in most cases, they criticize the brand to others through social media or to their friends/families.

To tackle this issue, Tokopedia strives to stay one step ahead to see things from the social universe. Hence, we can make informed decisions and take mindful actions to arrive at the most appropriate solutions.

In conclusion, COVID-19 has ignited new lifestyles and new behaviors that carry tremendous challenges and learnings in the area of customer engagement and experience.

Adaptability and agility are certainly at the core of businesses facing unexpected circumstances such as a pandemic.

We must learn to learn faster, change more quickly, and understand the new normal to continue winning customers’ hearts.

In a business of trust such as Tokopedia, especially in times of adversity, the role of Customer Excellence as the company’s front-guard, and the closest to the customers, is now more essential than ever.

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Company transparency can seem like a scary thing for entrepreneurs, especially if they’re trying to get their startup off the ground and making a profit. What if investors get cold feet and pull out? Maybe employees will become worried that the money is running out and jump ship?

Divulging a company’s weaknesses might seem like it could hinder success, but the opposite is true. After all, if the people in your company are left in the dark, then they can’t very well contribute to their fullest extent in making the business run better, can they?

In today’s competitive startup market, it’s not just a good business practice for emerging (and established) companies to embrace transparency, but a critical one.

Social media has made people more transparent with their lives more now than ever, and at this point, it’s expected for businesses to follow that trend.  

The benefits of being transparent far outweigh any worries about the negative. 

Employees shouldn’t be kept in the dark

Matthew Bellows, founder and CEO of Yesware, Inc. made waves in a 2014 New York Times article titled A Leader Struggles To Sell Software Meant To Aid Sales. Bellows’ transparency and the conversations with his team later led to Yesware meeting 96 per cent of its revenue goal. 

Also Read: Why trust and transparency are the answer to concerns about digital assets

If your company’s leadership team handles every decision in a boardroom with the door closed and the blinds drawn, it’s a safe bet that your employees will be nervous. “The things people make up about what’s going on are always worse than what is actually going on,” Bellows said.

When people are kept abreast of how a startup is performing and the changes that are being considered, they’ll feel that they’re part of the team and have the motivation to keep working forward.

Buffer, a social media engagement company, lists “default to transparency” right at the top of its core values on the company’s website. Buffer’s co-founder Joel Gascoigne, said that embracing transparency has “increased the level of trust” with his employees. 

Transparency fosters investor support

While a startup’s investors might not be rolling into the office each day to actively put the work in, they have put their money in and deserve to know what’s going on.

If a company gives its investors incomplete information, they’re shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to the chances of success. 

Forward-thinking entrepreneurs don’t look at transparency as a bad thing that reveals a startup’s struggles to investors, but as a way to build a stronger business.

Also Read: Trusted leaders practice transparency in these 5 ways

If you want your investors to get behind your decisions in a scalable way, then it’s imperative you provide them with all the available information.

A company culture of secrecy won’t bring in new investors and it certainly won’t help keep investors for the long-term. If a start-up can provide a detailed report of the challenges ahead and how it plans to overcome them, then it will be more likely to have continued support. 

Build upon customer loyalty

Just as a company needs to have strong trust with its employees, the same goes for its customers. Keeping customers in the loop with multiple aspects of a startup’s operations from emerging industry trends to important issues that may affect goods or services helps to maintain loyalty and trust.

It also provides some peace of mind that customers are getting a good return on their money.

PPC Pro, an AdWords management firm, boasts that it provides a “100 per cent truly transparent” experience for its customers with a minute by minute log of how their employee’s time is spent on a particular project.

This practice unquestionably helps in establishing trust between the brand and its customer base and reassures them that adequate attention is being given to the task at hand.

Furthermore, businesses that embrace a model of transparency will find that customers are more likely to stick with them when they’re upfront with bad news.

Also Read: Why trust and transparency are the answer to concerns about digital assets

After all, nobody likes handing over their money to a business when they have feelings of suspicion or anxiety. 

Transparency in practice

As for putting a culture of transparency into practice with a startup, entrepreneurs should remember that it starts at the top. This means having leaders who are willing to be vulnerable and honest, not just about the wins, but the challenges. 

One way of promoting company transparency is by disclosing company financials. This doesn’t mean sharing raw numbers and leaving employees, investors, and customers to decipher what numbers or data mean.

Leaders should provide context, as transparency without the right information could do more harm than good. It’s key that company leaders provide the background for any financial information — good or bad — and how it relates to the current state and future. 

Other companies take an even more transparent approach and share employee salaries. While employee salaries may seem like sensitive information to share, it could also help eliminate such issues as a gender pay gap and even incentivise employees to work harder.

We live in a time where transparency is mainstream than ever before, and the startups that embrace it will have a greater chance at long-term success than those that stay in the dark.

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My fascination with social startups began while on a volunteering trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia, back in 2017.

We had embarked on this trip with the intention to educate youths there on the understanding of basic financial concepts and explore how the principles that underpinned a healthy relationship with money could be translated to meet the needs of their community –and positively impact their lives.

Volunteer experience

The 10 days spent teaching those youths would turn out to be the most insightful week in my 12 years of formal education.

As a fresh-faced college student in his late teens living in the urban concrete jungle that is Singapore, each day spent teaching these youths opened my world up to the privileged society I had lived in with great governmental and financial systems in place to support and grow our wealth.

Unfortunately, that was not the case in Cambodia.

Unbeknownst to them, I learned way more from them than they did from me. While I was educating them on the basic financial terms and resources such as interest rates and deposit accounts in banks, they were teaching me so much more about the power of dreams and responsibilities placed on them at their age.

Also Read: Lessons from a student entrepreneur on building a successful startup

The mere fact that they could attend the village school meant they represented the hope of their family. They were expected to be the future breadwinners for their siblings, parents, and even their extended family.

However, they were not weighed down by those responsibilities. Instead, the pressure placed on them motivated them to work even harder and strive to do their best in spite of the difficulties presented. There was a genuine desire to learn and increase their knowledge.

This was most evident when they constantly tried to ask me questions using their elementary command of English. They were not deterred by the fear of being embarrassed and even sought ways to solve the language barrier by asking their local teachers to assist in translations.

This burning quest to learn only served to increase my desire to help them as I sought to explore different ways, such as through illustrations or role play, to explain the relatively difficult financial concepts to them.

Over lunch with the students in the classroom introduced yet another new perspective for me. The power of dreams. Back in Singapore, college students like myself all have similar materialistic dreams along the lines of getting a top degree and earning big bucks in a corporate job.

However, through chatting with the students, I realised how seemingly small dreams are equal, if not larger, than the big dream of making big bucks. For many of my students, their dream was simple. It was to own a motorbike.

They reasoned it would make their commute to school shorter and thus maximise their time in school. To put things into context, the village school served numerous villages in the vicinity, and commuting to school could take up to 45 minutes of walking per direction. This really opened me up to the things in life we take for granted back home.

Also Read: How do you raise VC funding as a student entrepreneur? Find out the answers here

The age gap between us dwarfed in comparison to the difference in our daily lives and privileges. The evidence provided paint a chilling prospect. Research by The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has shown that Cambodia is home to one of the lowest financial literacy rates in the world.

A land of opportunity

On the flight back to Singapore, I thought about how a future startup could solve this problem that has plagued Cambodia for generations and these were the few solutions I could conceive.

Adopting a bottom-up approach to solve this problem, we would start at the root cause, the mind-set that the youths have towards finance and the lack of financial education in the education system in Cambodia.

Educational startups promoting financial literacy could enter the education framework in Cambodia with the intention to build up the basic financial literacy of youths.

Their aim should be to equip them with sufficient financial knowledge to effectively utilised the financial tools and resources that will be available to them in the future when they transit to adulthood and earn an income.

Research by KPMG in 2017 showed that Cambodia is home to the lowest banking penetration in the region at just five per cent. This is where fintech startups could enter the scene and provide sustainable digital financial solutions for these youths to apply their financial knowledge garnered during their educational years.

Also Read: How do you raise VC funding as a student entrepreneur? Find out the answers here

These startups should utilise the uptake in technology to reach out to the youths living in rural areas, where conventional banks are unable to provide mainstream banking infrastructure such as setting up a physical bank branch.

Utilising technology will be the most effective means of bridging this geographical challenge and the tech-savviness of the youths should aid in connecting them to financial solutions that will better protect and grow their income.

While the above solutions involve full-scale startups with significant resources and full-time entrepreneurs leading them, students and youths of today have a role to play too.

Student entrepreneurs form an important part of the startup ecosystem in raising awareness of societal issues. With the power of social media today and the presence of young digital influencers, youth have widespread access to issues on the ground that would have previously gone unheard of. Upon learning of these issues, they can utilise social media to champion for action to solve the problem.

Therefore, they would form the link between the problem and future start-ups that are on the look for future problems by being the voice for these issues and championing the cause for budding start-ups to enter.

Therefore, startups should look for these young entrepreneurs as a sense of what issues the community faces and connect with them to find the relevant solutions for the problem.

In essence, student entrepreneurs should form the first level of a startup ecosystem as they represent the first touchpoint between the issues in the community and the startup industry.

Also Read: Why should universities teach blockchain to students?

It is my goal as a student entrepreneur to get involved in social fintech startups that aim to reduce economic disparity and disempowerment in the region.

Startups play a very important role in the business ecosystem in that they aim to disrupt the societal norms and in the process, solve problems that bring about value for people in the community.

My trip to Cambodia certainly opened my eyes up to the issues faced by youths in the Cambodian community. By raising awareness of this problem and sharing my opinion of the potential solutions to solve it, I hope startups with adequate resources can enter and tackle the problems.

Ultimately, they can positively impact the lives of Cambodian youths and give them the chance to lead more financially comfortable lives filled with opportunities for them to succeed.

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Jendela360, which seeks to connect clients, landlords and property agents under one platform in Indonesia, has secured US$1 million in a funding round led by Beenext.

Prasetia Dwidharma, Everhaus and several unnamed strategic investors also co-invested.

With the money, the company is looking to “provide a more efficient and effective way to approach property transactions from start to finish”.

“We will also use the funding for recruiting more talents, creating an academy or training system that can create a professional and standardised real estate agent for overall brand awareness and good customer experience,” said Kiki Guzali, Co-founder of Jendela360.

The startup was founded three years ago by Guzali (COO), Ade Indra (CFO), and Daniel Rannu (CEO). It was the first to introduce 360 virtual tours in the Indonesian proptech scene.

Also Read: Here are the new services launched by startups in Indonesia this week

Jendela360 will now focus on its O2O (online to offline) strategy in the property scene. “We need to look at the user experience, not only to strengthen our online presence but also to answer the need for the offline, physical and human relation side of the whole process,” added Guzali.

Indra believes there’s little innovation made in the property industry in Indonesia.

In 2018, Jendela360 made news when it collaborated with Blibli to launch an apartment rental channel. This enables users to search for apartments on the platform, contact property agents for appointments, and do transactions using Blibli InStore app.
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Picture Credit: Jendela360

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Hospitality startup K Hotel raises S$2m in seed funding

K Hotel, a Singapore-based hospitality firm, has raised S$2 million (US$1.4 million) in seed funding led by private investor Noel Neo, according to an SGSME report.

Several other individuals with a background in the real estate industry also co-invested.

He has also joined the startup as its CFO.

The seed funds raised will be used to acquire new hospitality projects (including hotels and hostels) on master lease terms for two to six years, as well as capital expenditure for such properties.

Also Read: How student entrepreneurs can tap into the fintech ecosystem in Cambodia

The company also plans to secure S$5 million in Series A.

Thailand’s central bank announces digital currency prototype

The Bank of Thailand (BOT) has announced the project to develop the prototype of the payment system for businesses using Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), which will build upon knowledge from Project Inthanon.

According to a Fintechnews report, the project scope will include conducting a feasibility study and developing a process to integrate CBDC with the business’ innovative platform.

The BOT recognises and supports the important roles of financial innovation and technology in enhancing the competitiveness and readiness of the business sector entering the digital age.

In recent years Thailand’s central bank has been displaying leadership in driving the adoption of distributed ledger technologies and CBDCs.

Milk Mantra secures US$10M US firm

Milk Mantra, an Indian startup that procures, packages, sells and delivers milk and other dairy products, has raised US$10 million in a new debt financing round, says a TechCrunch report.

U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) has committed a US$10 million loan to Milk Mantra.

In total, the firm has raised about US$35 million in equity funding to date.

Headquartered in the state of Odisha, Milk Mantra has built the entire value chain for servicing dairy products, said Srikumar Misra, founder and chief executive of the startup, in an interview with TechCrunch.

MedTech Innovator to select 20 startups to participate in its APAC Showcase programme

Align Technology has partnered with MedTech Innovator, a nonprofit startup accelerator in the medical technology industry, says a report

The Los-Angeles based MedTech Innovator matches healthcare industry leaders with innovative medtech startups for mentorship and support.

Also Read: Indonesian proptech startup Jendela360 secures US$1M led by Beenext

This year, MedTech Innovator will select 20 startups to participate in its Asia Pacific Showcase programme and will award over US$300,000 in cash prizes, scholarships and in-kind services to its participants.

Align will work with MedTech Innovator Asia Pacific to mentor and foster the growth of promising early to mid-stage companies selected for the 2020 Showcase programme and provide financial support to the accelerator.

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