Elkjøp (known as Elgiganten in Sweden and Denmark, and Gigantti in Finland) is the largest consumer electronics retailer in the Nordic countries, and their customer center processes 4.8 million queries each year. In 2019, they decided to extend the opening hours of their customer centers in order to become more available to customers.

However, they needed a viable solution to help them fulfill that pledge and maintain an expected level of customer service. Their in-house customer support team had a limited number of agents and resources. The solution was an e-commerce chatbot, which quickly became their front-line support that handles recurring questions.

By extending opening hours, Elkjøp gave customers more flexibility and opportunities to ask questions. While that’s great for customer satisfaction, that can easily overload even the most experienced customer support team and add additional costs for their working hours. So they needed to find a solution that took over some of the burden from the customer support team without having to hire additional support personnel. Here is precisely where a e-commerce chatbot was the ideal solution.

Since its launch, "Elbot" has helped facilitate over 2.3 million customer interactions per year. In Norway alone, it handles around 3,000 conversations daily, and of these, 50% are fully automated, meaning that the customer never requests a transition manual chat. In fact, Kent Hafskjær says that these numbers exceed what they envisioned when setting up the business case. He also points out that they are working to find the perfect balance between good customer service and optimization.

When asked if he has any tips for those considering an e-commerce chatbot, Hafskjær says: "Go for it!"