Gati-KWE riding the digital wave

If an adjective were to describe our age, no word would be as apt as ‘digital’. Almost all our processes are enhanced by digital technology. The kindle is our new reading companion, and fitness bands lets us know how fast we’re running, how we’re sleeping at night and how many calories we have lost, while voice-based virtual assistants such as Alexa can do just about anything you ask of her. In this digital world, logistics, an industry that is heavily dependent on physical labour and manpower has been slow to adopt technology. But Gati-KWE, one of India’s premier leading express distribution companies, is changing this trend by taking sure and steady steps to digitalize and be future-ready.

Digitalization is a key part of Gati-KWE’s strategy of business transformation. The adoption and integration of digital technology to drive efficiencies is seeing clear progress with each new digital tool and platform that is being implemented to enhance the Gati-KWE experience.

Digitalization – the future of logistics

Global logistics is already seeing a steady shift towards digitalization, with the pandemic only increasing the rate of adoption. And the further growth of e-commerce is only going to accelerate this trend. As per estimates, e-commerce will dominate more than 95% of all purchases that will be made by 2040. Astoundingly, the digital buyers amount to around 2 billion – that is 1/7th of the world’s total population. Another market research estimates that the global Smart Warehousing Market size will grow from USD 14.8 billion in 2021 to USD 25.4 billion over the next five years, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.5%.

The future of business therefore is clearly digital and to tap into this vast potential, logistics companies need to accelerate the pace of digitalization – like how Gati-KWE is doing.

Digital Gati-KWE

The latest in a series of digital tools and technologies at Gati-KWE is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool Drishti, powered by Salesforce, which will drastically augment efficiency to deliver value for customers. It enables the sales team to automate each and every process right from identification of new customers to on boarding, and also allows them to instantly share dashboards with existing customers leading to swifter outcomes.

The adoption of the CRM is coming on the heels of two other digital transitions that took place this year, both of which have been very well-received and increasingly adopted by customers.

The first one is Gati Genie, the WhatsApp chatbot. Considering the extensive penetration of WhatsApp among India’s vast population, it was the natural choice of platform to host a chatbot for Gati-KWE, owing to the company’s extensive reach into the hinterlands of the country. Now businesses can check PIN Code serviceability, register for pick-ups, calculate the rate and transit time of the prospective cargo movement and track and trace it as it makes its way across India’s many highways, and even address concerns and queries, all on WhatsApp. Needless to say it has delivered unparalleled ease to businesses who partner with Gati-KWE for their logistics requirements.

Further, improving customer service are the digital upgrades to the call centre. The automation of processes has reduced human intervention in the process, significantly enhancing the customer experience.

“Now when customers call asking about their dockets, their queries are responded to almost instantly, significantly improving our response time. The entire digital upgrade was implemented with the sole aim of customer satisfaction and there is no better motivation for our team than a happy customer,” says, Safdar Ali Khan, Head of Customer Service at Gati-KWE.

Customers now stand to make significant gains with regard to their time and efforts, and can utilize the time saved on other aspects of growing their business, while Gati-KWE gears up to deliver services par excellence and enhance its offerings even further.

Conclusion

In line with its customer-centric approach, along with its website, the CRM, the WhatsApp chatbot Genie and the digital upgrades to the call centre, Gati-KWE is on track to becoming a digital-first, agile company that stops at nothing to deliver the gold standard in logistics to its customers.