Ninja Van is the lesser known courier service provider in most of Southeast Asia. So how better to make a name for ourselves than by targeting our competitors’ chink in the armour, their customer service?

With a couple of short films, digital, social and outdoor media, we showcased not just our customer service competencies, but a little bit of our cheeky personality. That got customers switching over to our service—laughing as they did.

Good customer service (CS) is hard to come by. Especially when it comes to courier services. Missing parcels, damaged items, late arrivals are often met with apathy and indifference. In a survey done in 2021, 89% of respondents were seeking better customer service experiences, with 68% agreeing that businesses need to care more about their customers and become better at listening to customer feedback.

With this in mind, Ninja Van wanted to launch its newly improved Full Service Recovery (FSR) in a big way. They wanted to show customers that they were aware of the bad rep typical CS’s had, and how they were committed to being different.

They did so by leveraging on one simple human behaviour that we’re all familiar with—and maybe even guilty of; we exaggerate our parcel problems in order to win their hearts, and ultimately help, from the CS rep. The more drama we create, the more likely we are to move them to action. Drama was the answer to compliant customer service.

So, Ninja Van engaged the help of the real drama experts—Kdrama writers—to write and produce Stories for Customer Service. Each story was a tear-jerker, all centred around one main character: the parcel. Launched as short films, they served as storyline suggestions for any customer facing an uncooperative CS rep. But the takeaway was this: Just skip the drama. Use Ninja Van.

They targeted businesses, especially online shops, who were engaged with competitor shipping partners, in a bid to convert them to Ninja Van users.

They also took to social media, online forums, and feedback columns in search of customers disgruntled with the CS they received. They then replied to the complaints with a suggested CS story that consumers could use to gain sympathy. But with those replies, they also inserted links to allow users to navigate to the Ninja Van page and switch to their services instead.

The campaign ran in key markets Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand for a span of 2 months in 2022.

The 2 main films were housed primarily on YouTube and on our Ninja Van’s social media channels on Facebook and Instagram. Additional CS stories were also uploaded in response to angry comments on their competitors’ social pages, and online forums and discussion pages, driving users to the brand’s landing site.

Additional social content was created for the brand’s pages and digital assets were placed on quality targeted websites. They also created radio ads where we told our sob stories, and urged listeners to just skip the drama—use Ninja Van instead.

The two short films went viral, garnering over 13M views in Indonesia, 10M views in the Philippines, 3M views in Malaysia, and a total of more than 35M views across the region. All in just a couple of weeks. The total number of views even exceeded that of trailers of popular shows on Netflix.

Relevance and enjoyment of the ads were also evidently high with the majority of those surveyed responding that they “enjoyed the films a lot”.

Towards the brand, there was a 130% increase in consideration, and 172% surge in shipping volume.

Perceptions of the brand also improved, with those surveyed viewing the brand as able to solve their parcel problems easily, dependable, and the preferred choice to other partners.

On diving deeper into our research we found that one sure shot way to solve for our brand's negative perception with regards to reliability in these markets was to acknowledge and address the drama that surrounds delivery experience. Whether it was missing parcels, breakages, delayed deliveries, lack of tracking of parcels, etc., these were issues our audience in these markets were conditioned to watch out for. The root of the drama and uncertainty surrounding the delivery experience came down to unresponsive customer service. In fact, Forbes in 2019 called out Asia for having "terrible customer service" and parcel perform, a delivery SaaS (Software as a Service) company, said over 90% complain about their courier service in Asia.

As many of us in Southeast Asia share a love for shopping, we just as much share a hate for bad customer service. And customer service is notoriously bad in this region. It’s so rampant, most of us are familiar with the tricks to get around it to get what we want: to over-dramatise our situation. It’s come to the point where we expect not to get any help unless we shed a fake tear, or launch into a rambly sob story about why our parcel is so precious.

But while we’ve all become skilled story spinners, we have in our midst the true pros of drumming up drama: the creators of Kdrama. Binge-watched by millions across the globe, Korean drama serials are the lifeblood of many popular streaming sites in the region. And that’s why we engaged their help to write our Stories for Customer Service.