Kali Charan Shukla is the Vice President – Marketing for Helpchat, formerly known as Akosha. Helpchat, a messenger-based personal assistant platform, an app-only platform, currently available on Android, it assists consumers in daily tasks like recharging phone, tech support, travel booking, holiday guidance, grocery or food ordering and shopping assistance, among other things.
Kali Charan Shukla is the Vice President – Marketing for Helpchat, formerly known as Akosha. Helpchat, a messenger-based personal assistant platform, an app-only platform, currently available on Android, it assists consumers in daily tasks like recharging phone, tech support, travel booking, holiday guidance, grocery or food ordering and shopping assistance, among other things.
A brand professional with collective experience in the traditional and digital brand management space, and more recently the social web & mobile, Kali has worked on consumer and media brands, and has handled all aspects of brand communication from strategy, media planning, advertising, to digital marketing.
He is an entrepreneur with a lifelong passion for startups, technology, culture, design and fitness.
In this exclusive interview with Ratnika Swami for India Digital Review, Kali talks about Helpchat’s strategies to engage with the millennials, the shift from an online complaints redressal company to a messenger-based personal assistant platform and the challenges faced in tapping into the Digital medium. Excerpts:
Q. How does the digital medium – Internet as well as mobile – figure in Helpchat’s plans to reach out to consumers?
We are a mobile app brand and hence the core focus is on the digital medium. It is the most pivotal platform for us to attract and retain customers. We also use media such as email, notifications, YouTube, Facebook and other strategic channels to acquire and communicate with our users.
Q. What marketing initiatives are you undertaking online to stay ahead of the competition in India?
We are focusing more on providing a good experience to the customer on the app. Also, the Helpchat app can be used for everyday needs and the user doesn’t need multiple apps to get their daily tasks done. Our constant focus is to drive this core proposition to the user through various media. It is essential to give your users a good reason to come to you rather than going to any other app. To drive the core value proposition of the brand we have recently initiated a campaign called “Haar Kaam Aaraam”. Soon we will be launching the second phase of the campaign across online as well as offline media.
Q. How do you integrate your online and offline marketing efforts?
It’s important for a brand owner to combine multiple marketing strategies and tactics to maximize the potential of the marketing campaign. For example, integrating print or radio campaigns with online display campaigns works well. One takes the lead and the other works as a support medium. Millennials watch more YouTube than any other network or cable channel. So using banner or video ads on YouTube is an effective way to reach out to people who don’t watch as much TV programming as others.
Q. You recently rebranded yourself from an online customer feedback platform to a virtual messaging assistant Helpchat. What was the thought process behind this?
After incepting a complaints redressal forum with Akosha, we realised that as our number of consumers grew, the nature of queries also changed. We live in a world complicated by information and choice where every little task demands time and attention. Today, people go to online forums to learn how to change their 2G plans to 3G. We wanted to create a power tool in the hands of people—one that amplifies their ability to get things done tremendously. This was primarily the idea behind the rebranding. Helpchat is a much-needed personal assistant app that helps users in all daily decision-making processes, from deciding the next big purchase, ordering a laundry service, and booking a restaurant, from tech support to locating a medical specialist, everything that is part of an everyday task list.
Q. From a branding perspective, how important is social media?
Social media plays a pivotal role in our marketing plan. We believe that the brand story needs to be told to people on a regular basis in an interesting way. Just posting on social media doesn’t help brands. It is imperative to create a meaningful communication that resonates with the audience. Helpchat wants to develop a style of its own on social media and the team is working towards developing a solid brand personality. Social media is a place to establish an emotional connection with the consumers and we as a brand completely believe in its power. However, it’s crowded out there and we always ask ourselves: Where are people spending their time and why? What are some innovative ways in which we can show up as ourselves on those platforms?
Q. What kind of analytics or social media tools do you use?
We use our own in-house product called “OneDirect” social CRM tool that has a capability of managing customer experience across all online channels. . The OneDirect Enterprise Suite has been built from the ground up to empower marketers and customer service teams to manage all online customer interactions including social media seamlessly, in a timely way to impact the overall customer experience. We use this excellent in-house tool to manage our own online and social media presence.
Q. Could you please share in brief a couple of digital marketing campaigns you find different or noteworthy?
I liked the “GEICO unskippable ads” campaign. It’s a very clever way of using the digital medium and leveraging its potential to the hilt.
Q. What percentage of your total marketing spend is on digital? And how do you maximise the ROI on your marketing spends?
Currently, we are spending almost 70% of our budget on the digital medium. We believe in optimizing each medium to its best to get the maximum ROI out of it. The best part of the digital medium is that you can keep optimizing the campaign without much extra cost.
Q. As a CMO, what are the main challenges you face, especially in being able to reach out and engage with the target market?
There is too much noise in the market at present and we need to constantly keep thinking of ways to surprise people and tell the brand story in a new way.
