Watermelon - MarTech Solutions/Service Company

Watermelon: Capitalise on the Trend of Conversation

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Alexander Wijninga, Co-Founder & CEO, WatermelonAlexander Wijninga, Co-Founder & CEO
In an era where the massive amount of information on the Internet has reduced our attention span to shorter than that of a goldfish, brand anthropomorphism has evolved as a powerful marketing concept for connecting with consumers. In the same vein, brands are riding the wave of conversational interfaces to deliver a tantalising new generation of cognitive digital experiences. Conversational UI in the form of conversational assistants are everywhere, capturing the attention of brands and their eager consumers. Evidently, conversational UI is no more an impressive novelty but a trillion-dollar opportunity for brands to thrive in the existing market dynamics and take the lead in the zero-sum game. This is where Watermelon is in a class by itself.

With an immensely user-friendly conversational platform for live chat, social integrations and code-free conversational assistants, Watermelon is empowering brands to create the customer service of the future and deliver the "never seen before" levels of customer experience. Born with the singular focus on making customer service conversations faster and smoother, both for the agents and the customers, Watermelon is equipping organisations with a smart technology that ensures round-the-clock customer service. The code-free, conversational all-in-one solution from Watermelon specialises in integrating all service channels in one overview, allowing customers to contact organisations through any medium of their choice. Watermelon also brings in simple APIs or Webhooks for integration with other platforms. From the security perspective, clients can decide who can have direct access to their customer data. Watermelon and its users adhere to the AVG when using the platform.

“While customers today expect rapid and seamless service and experience, the challenge for organisations boils down to getting all the information in the right order, on a single platform. In doing so, they need to consolidate processes, information and data sources while building a conversational assistant, which usually proves to be an uphill struggle for companies that do not have this information ready,” says Alexander Wijninga, co-founder and CEO of Watermelon.

Similar was the case of The Bureau of Credit Registration (BKR)—an independent credit authority that has contributed to a financially healthy society for over half a century.

Our hybrid model helps our clients up their game in customer service or marketing


As the legal facilitator of credit registration, BKR was in doldrums when it had to manage the credit data of millions of Dutch citizens and received hundreds of questions from consumers every day. Change was needed. Watermelon helped bring about that change with its conversational assistant that allows supporting customers and getting their questions answered. Post deployment ofthe conversational assistant on the BKR website, the results have been impressive. The conversational assistant has an average of 300 conversations every day. At the end of the conversation, the visitor is asked to rate his or her satisfaction with the conversational assistant and 75 percent of customers provided positive feedback. “Convincing colleagues of the benefits of a conversational assistant isn’t always easy. You can’t expect the conversational assistant to work optimally at full power on day one. The time we spent to set up the conversational assistant with Watermelon was worth it. We could provide and manage digital contact with our customers, still staying personal and acting as consultants. That’s exactly what we wanted,” states Koen Gebbink, Digital Marketing Specialist at BKR.

Success stories as such indicate the ease of the use and deployment that Watermelon brings to the table, which, according to Wijninga, is the company’s biggest differentiator. He goes on to mention that most developers utilise template builders that are not user-friendly at all and require a lot of development to ensure they work. “On the other hand, Watermelon is solely content-based and builds conversational assistants with the right content and the right amount of information. You can easily connect our conversational assistant builder to any of your existing information or data source, which makes it reliable and easy to implement,” he adds.

Wijninga also firmly believes that the future of conversational platforms belongs to hybrid interfaces. This is precisely the reason Watermelon stands on a hybrid model—one of its core feature—to help clients build their chat robots or conversational assistant. With Watermelon, users are benefitted with the opportunity to work with these robots, without eliminating the human element. “We bring human and machines together in one conversational platform whereby clients can easily talk to their customers themselves or can let their conversational assistant do the same, all while keeping a tab on the conversations in real-time. Such a hybrid model helps our clients up their game in customer service or marketing,” says Wijninga.

As a company that was founded just three years back, Watermelon has charted success stories for numerous clients, including some large organisations in the Netherlands. The future is evidently bright for Watermelon, which has sustained high growth rates since its inception. At the core of Watermelon’s ascension to success lies its small yet powerful team of CRM experts and experienced developers. While the soaring tide of conversational UI is sweeping over the diverse industries, Watermelon is at the forefront of this trend—creating powerful customer experiences. In the near future, besides the conversational trends, the company will also focus on the marketing and sales opportunities with the aim to change the websites into conversational experiences. “Marketing is not about boasting a lot of information online, but the experience that someone has with your business. We want to build on top of this experience that they already have, but make it better and more valuable,” concludes Wijninga.

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