Continuing with its bid of aggressively expanding into the food delivery domain, Zomato is today introducing a new, real-time chat feature on its app. As a result, you can now initiate a chat with Zomato’s customer support centre and ask questions or share feedback at any stage of the order process.
The chat feature has been integrated through a partnership with Konotor, a mobile-first user engagement platform.This feature is currently available for users in India and UAE. Users can currently message the contact centre anytime between 9am and 11pm(Indian Standard Time) across all cities in India and UAE where Zomato’s online ordering service is available.
The instant nature of the messages enables real time and direct line of conversation for users. Users can track their orders, get information on promos, cancel orders and/or check the refund status for a rejected order.
Talking about this latest development, Tanmay Saksena, Global Business Head – Online Ordering, Zomato said,
We aim to simplify the online ordering process and give users the option of a faster, more efficient, and reliable way of getting food delivered, with the introduction of this feature.
He further tells me, that over the past 6 months, Zomato has built a solid online ordering product and are constantly working on improving user experience. With this update, the upstart is focused on improving and simplifying the communication flow between users and Zomato during the order process.
In fact, if you look at a few measures taken up by Zomato in the recent past, it is pretty much clear how the company has shifted its focus towards more revenue generating avenues. The company has started to initiate lay-offs in its original business — restaurant listing and has started pulling off certain services from select territories to reduce losses.
In fact, in a recent investor call which Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal held within the company, he acknowledged strategical changes being made within the company towards making the business profitable and a lower investment business in long run.
Goyal said that the company was aiming to turn profitable in atleast 8 out of the 23 markets where it has its presence out of which six of markets were expected to break even in November or in the first week of December, primarily driven by ad sales. It is also eying revenues of about 200 crores or $30 million in this fiscal which is double that of the 2014 fiscal where it earned revenues of 100 crores( about $16 million).
Goyal further admitted that India and the UAE markets which had broken even earlier are no longer profitable since they started the food ordering services in these markets. However, he added that the ad-sales part of their business was still profitable in these regions — thus making it clear why the new chat feature too has been introduced in these two markets first.
