Locobuzz Elevating Consumer Experiences

The global customer experience management market is evolving and growing leap and bound. According to the latest report, the market was valued at $10.11 billion in 2021. Further, this market is projected to grow from $11.34 billion in 2022 to $32.53 billion by 2029 at a CAGR of 16.2 per cent in the 2022-2029 period.

Additionally, the rapid digitisation and changing buying patterns of consumers have prompted businesses to adopt omnichannel strategies for their customer experience management. Now businesses are focusing on advanced CX management solutions that improve customer loyalty and reduce customer churn rates. 

Tell us the story of inception. What is the business model like?

I along with my co-founders -Shubhi Agarwal and Nitin Agarwal conceptualised Locobuzz in 2015. It leverages technology to provide end-to-end CXM solutions to its clients that eventually help plan robust business and marketing strategies. Initially, the idea was to utilise the potential unstructured social media data and use it effectively with the help of the right technology. 

It led to the creation of Locobuzz as a tool for monitoring and analyzing social engagement. However, the company has evolved significantly over the years. Today, it is an end-to-end customer experience platform that empowers brands with real-time data analytics, consumer experience automation consumer insights and social media management, including publishing, listening, analytics, and engagement.

What are the unique key points of Locobuzz? How are you different from the existing competitors?

Locobuzz is a unified customer experience platform for all the customer-facing functions. Our powerful unified CX platform is built on top of new-age technologies such as AI, ML, Big Data and advanced analytics that empower brands to automate and manage their entire customer experience journey. 

As thought leaders in our industry, we strive to help brands better understand their competitive landscape, consumer insights and more. What makes Locobuzz stand out is the quality of its software—its simplicity and innovative features—which has helped it remain one of the easiest software to work with.

What is the funding status and monetization model?

We were a bootstrapped startup until last year. In May 2021, we raised Rs 9 crore in a pre-Series A round from Maharashtra State Social Venture Fund of SIDBI Venture Capital Limited (SVCL) to fuel our business expansion and growth. Additionally, we infused raised capital to enhance our platform's technological capabilities, scale up teams across functions, and sales and marketing efforts.

We are a SaaS-based product company and offer a monthly subscription model where brands and agencies provide a monthly retainer for accessing the platform. Our pricing is based on product deployment and its uses, the volume of mentions, number of profiles to be tracked across channels, competitive benchmarking and customizations required for a given brand.

What all challenges are you facing in running your business?

Data security and isolation are two of the biggest challenges when dealing with third-party platforms. In order to safeguard client data, we use a multi-tenant architecture that separates client information from one another. 

Finding great technology resources is another challenge that Indian start-ups face. A company like ours which is headquartered in Mumbai initially found it difficult to onboard them. However, we solved it by offering them an opportunity to work from anywhere.

How Locobuzz helps clients with marketing strategy and build a stronger relationship with their customers

For a brand, customer experience is the heart of its marketing strategies. It gives them a real understanding of the customer perception of brands and the customer experience stats leave no room for doubt—the more positive customer experiences, the better your bottom line.

An omnichannel customer experience strategy can help businesses meet and exceed customer expectations by providing actionable plans to improve customer experience and measure it. With Locobuzz brands get a competitive edge to listen to voice of the customers and derive actionable insights. The platform also enables them to gather brand intelligence, competitive benchmarking, event or campaign tracking, online response management, real-time conversation, and alerts across the digital touchpoints. With the real time intelligence, brands are able to understand their customers better and offer more personalised and engaging solutions. All of these not only enhance the customer experience but also helps the brands to forge stronger relationships with their customers.

What are the traction details (users, reach & other achievements of the company)?

Locobuzz is a trusted technology partner for nearly 200 businesses including Fortune 500 companies’ and marquee brands across multiple industries. We have a 95 per cent client retention rate, which demonstrates the trustworthiness of our services. We work with a diverse range of clients spanning from the largest telecommunications company to the largest bank or retail chain, to new-age commerce platforms. We have also partnered with some of the largest BPOs, SIs, and technology companies. These relationships help us to innovate and reach more customers throughout the world.

What are your future plans?

We are gearing up to reinforce our roots in the existing seven countries -India, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, South East Asia, the UK, and the US. Not only will we be expanding our team, but will also be adding more clientele from across the peripheries.

As we evolve in our capabilities, we are continuously innovating and adding more features to our product. We are working on new upgrades that completely transform the customer experience and level up the game for brands. We will be launching it in the next phase of our business.

What has been the biggest learning so far?

The biggest lesson is the scale and gravity of the problem that we are solving. In this ever-evolving digital age, a good customer experience makes people feel heard and appreciated. This minimizes friction, maximizes efficiency and maintains the human element. We understand the role of machine learning and are investing heavily in it. In fact, we leverage both AI and ML extensively in almost every task at Locobuzz.