Carrefour

Delivering a reliable retail experience with Messenger

Carrefour

Client

 Alcméon Developer logo

Developer

Their Story

One-stop shopping

Carrefour is a leading multinational hypermarket headquartered in France and with retail outlets worldwide, including Brazil, Spain, Italy and Poland.

To become a more sustainable company, the retailer partnered with cloud-based SaaS solutions provider Alcméon in December 2019. Carrefour worked with Alcméon to connect the Messenger-powered automated experience to its customer relationship management system, allowing customers to receive weekly promotions. Initially, both digital and printed versions of the catalogue were offered at only one Carrefour outlet. After promising results, this practise was extended to 10 other outlets in the same area, and then to 60 outlets as testing continued.

However, the global health crisis and subsequent lockdown in France meant the retailer needed to accelerate the launch to all national outlets quickly.

Their Goal

Scaling fast

Carrefour needed to pivot its reliable and competitively priced catalogue delivery system that relied on the distribution of millions of paper catalogs to its hypermarkets in France to a digital alternative in the matter of days, and turned to its automated experience for Messenger.

Their Solution

Embracing social advertising and Messenger

Due to the lockdown in France, Carrefour suspended its printed promotional materials and accelerated the roll-out of its digital-only catalogue via Messenger from 60 test outlets to all 220 outlets across the nation.

To do this, the hypermarket company launched ads that click to Messenger on Facebook. The ads followed Facebook’s best practises for creative and featured a clear call-to-action. People who were interested in the catalogue could access it directly when they clicked on the ads. Initially, the catalogue was only available by download, but later Carrefour offered it via a built-in webview so that people could browse easily and seamlessly.

Carrefour used the Insights gained from the optimised targeting process to fine-tune the conversational process and ensure a smooth experience for customers.

Example of Chatbooks's Instagram

Their Success

Pleasing millions

Customers quickly took to the online version of the promotional catalogues and greatly appreciated the ease of the automated experience for Messenger. Carrefour decided to extend the digital concept by a year, thanks to the following results:

  • Over 8 million people reached (targeted audiences on Facebook) (March-May 2020)
  • Over 500,000 catalogues viewed on Messenger (March-May 2020)
  • 30% of customers tap to see more catalogues during the conversational experience (March-May 2020)

“The Messenger-powered digital assistant helped us overcome several challenges during the global health crisis. We swiftly transformed our catalogue distribution strategy from physical to digital at scale, and saw greater customer engagement. We have plans to expand the capabilities of the automated tool across other parts of our business.”

- Thomas Rudelle, Social Media Director, Carrefour

Products used