Snapdeal stays persistent even if you play hard to get

This is how Snapdeal leverages tech and features to get new customers and keep old ones

This is how Snapdeal leverages tech and features to get new customers and keep old ones

Snapdeal started as a coupon company and turned into full fledged e-commerce company. Since then they've gone head-to-head with giants like Flipkart and then Amazon to not just survive but, also beat them every now and then in terms of technology and features.

The company now has a partnership with the e-ticketing platform, BookMyShow. Customers will now be able to book tickets for movies on Snapdeal's website and app. Earlier, Snapdeal bought Freecharge, an e-wallet company to make transactions on its site smoother. But the company over the last few months, has added subtle features to strengthen the bond with their customers.

One of the ways that Snapdeal has strengthened their connection with customers is by introducing 12 Indic languages to make it the rest of the internet users alienated by their unfamiliarity with English. Rajiv Mangla, Chief Technology Officer at Snapdeal also told HT that just translating the text on the site wasn't a solution for making Snapdeal more accessible to the speakers of Indian languages. "For words like fridge, we'd rather spell it out in Hindi rather than translate it because, people are familiar with the English word but would rather use the Hindi script," added Mangla.

However, this is only one of the ways that Snapdeal is making a connect with the customer. Their other focus is on the ability to predict what you will need by taking your shopping history into account. "If you have bought toothpaste from Snapdeal, the site will suggest the same item to you when it suspects that you might run out of it," said Mangla. Snapdeal has got so good at it, that they now ships 80 percent of their orders from warehouses as they know what to stock and when.

While these features from Snapdeal succeed in making the consumer-seller bond stronger, they can only go so far. Snapdeal or Flipkart are trumped by one of Amazon's creation that takes the personal connect further -- Echo which is only available in the US. The artificially intelligent home assistant can order food for you, book ticket and even change the TV channel. By becoming a constant part of your life, it takes control of the choices you make while buying, watching or even calling a ride.

So, Snapdeal has managed to build an efficient connect by studying their customer, being proactive in suggesting a buy and even bridging the language barrier. Also, once a customer experience the buying experience on Snapdeal, features like Freecharge integration and Book My Show partnership make a great efforts to make sure they return. But, unless they have a bot or assistant under their sleeve, Echo launching in India will be quite a setback.