Maria Dobreva, Queen’s: Anyone Can Implement a Chatbot into Their Brand’s Marketing Communication

Timbark Bulgaria is part of the Maspex Wadowice Group – one of the largest food and beverage companies in Central and Eastern Europe. One of the company’s most popular brands in the juice segment in Bulgaria is Queen’s. A favorite juice of Bulgarians, the Queen’s brand was established in 1996 it is preffered by a large number of customers and can even be found in Bulgarian stores in Europe and North America. According to NielsenIQ research for 2021-2022, the brand is #1 in terms of sales in the segment of natural juices – 1 liter carton in Bulgaria. Queen’s is a brand with traditions, with flavors and packaging for every consumer and every occasion. Queen’s is also an innovative brand that always strives, in addition to investing in new technologies, to be close to its users.

The marketing team behind Queen’s trusted Umni to create a very special chatbot, CapBot, in 2019. If other chatbots created on the Umni platform are all about customer service: they answer frequently asked questions, accept requests, and provide information, and can be used for marketing and sales, the CapBot is a purebred marketing chatbot and has another mission: to entertain users, inspire them every day and be 1 click away when they want to have a casual chat with someone.

With CapBot on the phone, fans of the brand in Bulgaria start their day with a smile – with a good fortune saying from the chatbot: “Go for it!”, “Believe in the impossible!”, “Choose your path”… and when there is a little more time, they can easily take a cool Studio Queen’s quiz or chat with the chatbot. For those who want to connect with a real person, it is just one click away – the chatbot will provide a form for contact.

The Queen’s Lucky Cap is super popular! Good fortune saying caps have been sent to fans of the brand more than 880,000 times, with the biggest fans of the bot being the ladies. CapBot’s fans don’t leave him for long: ​​he can only “nap” between 3:00 and 6:00 in the morning, when even its most passionate fans are asleep, and on its busiest month it reached over 700,000 interactions with fans!

It’s time for a talk about Queen’s chatbot with Maria Dobreva, who has spearheaded the work on the chatbot project since day one. Maria has been involved in marketing for 9 years. Since 2019, she has been a brand manager at Tymbark Bulgaria, she is entrusted the Nestea brands for Bulgaria and the children’s brand TEDI. For Queen’s, she is associated with large digital projects, such as the chatbot and the largest branded YouTube channel in Bulgaria – Studio Queen’s.

– What is the functionality of the chatbot that you like the most and why?

The ability to have a predefined conversation that creates the complete illusion of artificial intelligence. Every time I come across a chatbot, I test it to the limit if it has this functionality.

– What was your opinion of chatbots before using one?

I had pretty high expectations of the technology as I was new to it. I didn’t realize that for the chatbot to work so intelligently and create the feeling that there is an artificial intelligence on the other side just like in Sci-Fi movies, there are actually many hours of work, planning and understanding the audience that will use the chatbot. I now have more respect and admiration for the teams behind each chatbot.

– What are your thoughts about the chatbot technology after 3 years of working with it?

When time can be taken to properly set up a chatbot so that it can cover all possible scenarios of questions and actions of its user, its usefulness can exceed expectations. Despite the limitations that the technology itself has, the end user can be left with very positive emotions and impressions after using it. The chatbot is definitely the technology that would be useful for many businesses.

– Do you think chatbots have potential in your industry?

Anyone can find a way to implement a chatbot into the marketing communications for their brand, as there is virtually no limit to the scenarios that can be put into place. The more a brand knows its audience, their needs and interests, the easier it is with this interactive tool to find a way to connect with them.

– With the help of a chatbot, are you more competitive than before?

Queen’s is a modern brand that is also perceived as innovative by its customers. We build this image first with excellent products and then with communication mix that “find” consumers at all points of communication that they use. We must not forget that the most important thing is not only to be part of the daily life of users, but to be there to make their daily life easier, to give them something more. In the case of chatbots, we give them the ability to have fun, find daily inspiration, or even just casually chat with ‘someone’.

– How are Queen’s customers accepting the chatbot?

The users of the Queen chatbot or as we call it CapBot (cap, and bot – from chatbot), are mostly teenagers who spend a large part of their time on a mobile device.

As the bot was created to be part of the Queen’s brand marketing strategy, it features the Queen’s Brand Hero, namely the cap with inspirational messages underneath. And this is the main reason for the daily use of the chatbot – for users to read their daily fortune, which they love and are looking for.

The chatbot is designed to shorten the distance and it is another touch point with them. From this point of view, users have the positive experience with which the bot fulfills its goals.

– CapBot has various functionalities. What are customers most looking for in it?

In our chatbot, our cap is placed first, under which in the real bottle there is a fortune saying, and that’s exactly what users are looking for. They log in every day to read the daily fortune saying. Of all the opportunities we offer, the good fortune message that appears once every 24 hours is the most reviewed. Thus, users only receive one daily lucky message, and this is a reason for them to return the next day and open their new one.

– How does the chatbot help solve problems and achieve Queen’s goals now?

We want customers to be as close as possible to the brand, to have continuous contact with it. By giving them the opportunity to interact with it, even when they don’t have a physical product with them, we create that sense of closeness, of dialogue and most of all, of emotional connection. So, we are there for them at every moment of their daily life.

– What else would you like the chatbot to be able to do?

Going back to my first encounters with the technology, I think it would be great if it could be “smarter” without costing us the effort of creating hundreds of scenarios. What if the chatbot had a voice!