CDEK: 59% less notification costs

CDEK logistics service operates in 67,000 cities around the world, processing 300,000 shipments daily. The service has over 1 million active users.

The company used to send all automated notifications of payment, order status and delivery to the pickup point via SMS. If something needed to be coordinated or clarified, a call center operator would have to call the customer.

Given the great number of orders, CDEK had very high expenses for maintaining the call center and SMS mailing services.

SMS messaging was expensive, so CDEK decided to use messenger apps to send notifications to customers. However, not all users use the messengers chosen by the company. That is why we introduced cascade mailing.

When ordering a delivery, users leave a phone number. Messages are sent to this number in every messenger app in turn, starting with the most affordable one. If the system recognizes that the customer isn't registered in any messenger apps using this number, they are sent an SMS message. All mailing is automated.

In the case of CDEK, notifications are first sent to VKontakte, and then to Viber. If the customer can't be reached in either, the system sends an SMS message. All customers get notifications, yet they are way less costly for the company.

We then put up some bots to coordinate the delivery better. Before that, the date and time of every delivery was set up by call center operators who had to call the customer. Now customers simply receive a message with a preliminary time and date of delivery (for example, "Friday from 11 to 13"). There is a Change Delivery Dates button under this message so that customers can set a convenient time using the bot.

CDEK stores all data on orders and customers in a custom CRM system. It is connected to the Flomni platform via API.

Adding bots to messengers didn't take long, as the Flomni platform provides a ready-made builder.

Bots have almost completely taken on the coordination of delivery times, the most frequent scenario for outgoing requests. This reduced the contact center workload. Messages in messenger apps are delivered instantly, and the company receives 80% of customer response in the first 1–2 hours.

If necessary, chats can be handed off to human operators. Operators use Dialogs to communicate with customers. Messages from all communication channels, like the website, messenger apps, and mobile apps, are received there. Chat handoff scenarios are easily customizable for every company. The entire history of the customer's interaction with CDEK is stored on the platform; operators can see the delivery information and the customer's chatbot communication history.

Today, 60% of all CDEK notifications are delivered to Viber and VKontakte. Only 40% of all messages are delivered in SMS format. The costs of these 60% notifications are now 2.5 times lower than before. In total, the company has managed to reduce costs by 36%.

In the case of Viber, once a customer has interacted with a bot in a notification, they become a subscriber to the company's bot account. All future notifications — for example, notifications that an order is ready for pickup or that delivery terms changed — will be sent there at an ultra-low cost.

Messages in messenger apps win over SMS not only in terms of cost efficiency. There are a number of extra features that messengers can offer:

Our team implemented the project on a turnkey basis: CDEK was not engaged in setting up nor solving technical issues, but they received effective working tools to communicate with customers, ready for use.

We also track the final conversions. Our experts frequently audit the user journey and other business processes to strategize and suggest ways to improve. All this work is supervised by a personal project manager.

Once the outgoing message processing was automated, CDEK were satisfied with the results, and in a few months the company decided to automate the processing of incoming requests as well. This is covered in the second part of this case study. (ссылка на второй кейс, проставить после публикации)