How to add a bot to telegram. Bot “Vkusville” – Telegram also feeds! Telegram hut

The VkusVilla office looks very simple: containers for separate waste collection, green. The only decorations are paintings on the walls. In one of them, boxes with the logo of a retail chain are loaded into a rocket. On another, the company’s founder, Andrei Krivenko, is bending over a map of the Galaxy, and behind him, in a room reminiscent of a mission control center, the employees’ desks are arranged in the same way as in a real office, where almost all the network’s office workers sit.

Since 2013, the VkusVill rocket has really managed to fly high. In Moscow alone, it has 600 retail outlets, and total monthly revenue exceeds 5 billion rubles. The Village found out what is now happening to the favorite store of many townspeople, why customers trust it more than the inspection agencies, which have found something to complain about.

"VkusVill"

600 retail outlets in Moscow

More than 600 customers in each store daily

1,650 different product names

Average check - 500 rubles

Network turnover - 5 billion rubles per month

One store a day

The business of the former financial director of the fish chain Andrei Krivenko began with Izbenka kiosks. In 2009, he himself toured the surrounding factories in search of good milk. In 2013, he began opening healthy food supermarkets, which at first were visited mainly by health professionals and parents concerned about proper nutrition. But over time, the audience began to grow and expand.

Every day VkusVill opens one new store. “The network has always grown, it’s just not visible at small volumes. Instead of one point there were two, we have doubled in size. Then instead of two there were four, but this is also not so noticeable, and when instead of 100 there were 200 stores, instead of 200 - 400, everyone paid attention,” says information manager Valery Razgulyaev. There are already 600 retail outlets in Moscow, there are metro stations where four VkusVillas coexist perfectly near the four exits.

At first, outlets opened mainly in residential areas, but now they have appeared on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, Ostozhenka and in the Stalinist high-rise building on Krasnye Vorota. The first central “VkusVill” opened on Bolshaya Spasskaya. At first, the company could not afford to pay a million rubles a month for a small space, but now it is possible. All the stores in the center are very different: in one, mothers and children shop thoroughly, and, for example, in Arbat, the receipt will only have a couple of items - a bottle of water and a chocolate bar.

The company calculated that Moscow needs about a thousand VkusVill stores. If you open more, then not enough people will come into them, because there is another chain store nearby. Unprofitable outlets are closing: this happens to 6-7% of stores.

In addition to Moscow, VkusVill operates in the Moscow region, Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Tver, Tula, Kaluga, Ryazan, Bryansk, Nizhny Novgorod. Two stores recently opened in St. Petersburg, and the first immediately achieved a turnover comparable to the most successful Moscow outlets. By the end of summer, three more St. Petersburg VkusVillas should open. For now, stores are supplied from a single Moscow center: cars with goods leave the warehouse first and drive along toll roads, but perhaps St. Petersburg will soon have its own warehouse.

All outlets have the same ascetic design. No frills office and shops - this is the principled position of management. “We are against expensive interiors, because we understand: the buyer, in fact, pays for all this beauty, and we don’t want him to overpay,” explains Valery Razgulyaev. Typically stores need an area of ​​150 square meters. But not all areas of the city have such premises; sometimes representatives of the network agree to 80 square meters. “And you can squeeze in there,” says Razgulyaev. This is how stores appear, where the buyer immediately stands in line at the checkout and, while moving towards it, puts goods in the basket. Having your own brand also saves space: all products are sold under the VkusVill brand - there is no need to put several types of milk or pasta on the shelves.

Suppliers without flies

One Muscovite bought frozen stuffed peppers at VkusVille, heated them up and found poorly peeled seeds in the filling. She sent her feedback to the company, and now at a seminar for employees of another large retailer, this situation is analyzed in detail by Evgeniy Shchepin, the manager of the experience exchange project.

“Based on just one complaint, we cannot write off the entire batch, but there were as many as five complaints about this item,” he says, “and the product manager began to have doubts. Then we simply called customers who had recently purchased this product.” 49% confirmed that the peppers were indeed bad - with seeds, limp, even dirty. But 37%, on the contrary, said that they really liked the peppers. “The picture is clear: the supplier simply could not cope with the volume. He was ready to prepare good peppers, which 37% of buyers ended up with, but he decided to earn more money, collected raw materials wherever possible and somehow stuffed minced meat into the peppers, explains Evgeniy. “This is not a mistake, but malicious intent, and after this we will not work with the supplier.”

There are metro stations where four “VkusVillas” coexist perfectly near the four exits.

VkusVill already has more than 450 suppliers. If previously technologists had to travel to small production facilities, now enterprises offer their products themselves. The website has a questionnaire with the requirements for getting on the shelf: individual packaging, a suitable price, willingness to work under a single brand and the absence of certain components. The products must be natural, but, for example, in fish gastronomy the use of sorbic acid is allowed. “Of course, we are against extending shelf life by changing the composition, but we don’t want to poison anyone,” says VkusVilla brand manager Tatyana Yanysheva. The network is fundamentally against paying for getting on the shelf.

Both large factories (like the Novgorod Lactis) and individual entrepreneurs work with VkusVill. But among them there are no typical farmers who raise chickens on their plot. “Our suppliers are regional manufacturers who once turned to online retail and got burned,” says Valery Razgulyaev. - There were cases when we simply saved a manufacturer from ruin. It’s already on its last legs, it’s going to close today or tomorrow - and then we come.” This happened with Yoshkar-Ola ice cream made with goat milk. Now the plant has started working with other networks.

VkusVill does not impose fines on suppliers, but if the products turn out to be of poor quality, the entire batch is withdrawn from sale and returned without payment. “We receive a complaint that a fly was found in the product. If this is the first fly, we simply ask the supplier to take action. If this bug is repeated, then we demand that the problem be eliminated, even to the point that our technologist goes to the production site and sorts it out himself,” says Valery Razgulyaev. If such “flies” are repeated, they simply stop working with the supplier.

At VkusVille, the principle of duplication applies: for one item they look for at least two suppliers. For example, every winter there are shortages of goat milk, so they found not two, but four suppliers for it. But this principle often causes dissatisfaction among customers. The same product from different manufacturers may differ in taste and quality. The network has so far decided to bring goods from one supplier to one point, but they do not promise absolute stability. The taste of milk, even from a particular herd, can vary depending on the time of year: in the summer, cows eat grass, and in the winter, hay.

Joy for Buyers and Sellers

There are now about 5 thousand sellers working in the chain’s stores, and the company believes that they need to be given more rights. Everyone can choose their own opening hours and decide which products need a discount. Any cashier cancels a purchase without waiting for the store manager. The company also decided to waive penalties for shortages. As part of the Happy Seller, Happy Customer program, any store employee can report a problem at work. Most often, these are easily fixable things like a freezing cash register or a table on which pantyhose are torn.

The network is not just trying to tell you something, it is trying to be friends with you and wants you to “add it as a friend.”

Previously, the cashier’s duties included a casual conversation: while punching goods, they talked about new products or found out customers’ opinions about the goods. But not everyone liked such sociability. According to Evgeny Shchepin, one day a woman contacted the quality control service and mistook the conversation at the cash register for an attempt to flirt with her husband. After complaints about the annoying service, they initially introduced a new feature: through a bot in Telegram, you can set one of three scenarios for interaction between the seller and the buyer - “You can communicate,” “Tell the most important things,” and “Don’t touch me.” But this innovation failed quite quickly. “Imagine, a customer brings a shopping cart to the checkout, the salesperson scans the items and talks about everything, and then asks for a discount card. And then it dawns on him that the buyer, in fact, asked to limit communication with him. The seller apologizes, and both of them become even more embarrassed,” recalls Evgeniy.

According to the management of VkusVilla, what makes the buyer happy is the opportunity to influence the assortment. Anyone can complain about poor quality and thereby remove the product from the shelves, or, on the contrary, ask to add some item. Normal rotation is considered to be approximately 30–50 products per month. Due to popular demand, sweet potatoes, wild garlic, Jerusalem artichoke syrup, sugar-free cheesecakes and even processed cheese and mayonnaise appeared in stores.

The buyer can express the extreme degree of his dissatisfaction by returning the product to the store, without even needing to present a cash receipt or passport. There is a message about this on every package. “When we look at returns, we realize that the vast majority of them are because people simply did not like a particular product. This is easy to check with a regular customer card: here he regularly buys something, but returned it for the first time in a year. If it’s not one, but ten people, we begin to understand the product more deeply, and technologists get involved,” says Valery Razgulyaev. The company tracks each such return. There are also unscrupulous buyers, but there are very few of them: about one person in a thousand brings a sausage tail and declares that it was inedible.

At first, VkusVill’s main clients were mothers concerned about the nutrition of their children and athletes with a certain diet. But now they account for approximately 10–15% of the network’s audience, and most buyers are simply looking for natural products at affordable prices. More than 600 customers visit each store daily, the average check is 500 rubles and remains at this level, despite various promotions and discounts. The most popular products remain milk, butter, kefir, cottage cheese, chicken and tomatoes. But unusual positions are often discussed on social networks. Recently, drinking cottage cheese “shot out” there. And the biggest hit on the Internet was the egg wash.

The reason for the popularity of VkusVilla is its unusual way of communicating with customers, says Pavel, promotions manager for a large retail store. The network is not just trying to tell you something, it is trying to be friends with you and wants you to “add it as a friend.” If in other stores it is written “No dogs allowed,” then “VkusVill” puts up a sign with the inscription “Master, I will wait for you here” - and draws a smiling dog. Pavel notes that this format is very captivating: the network has become so “friends” with customers that even Rospotrebnadzor was unable to weaken these mutual feelings.

This text, which also talked about checking the quality of vegetables and searching for powdered milk in Snezhka, was written by VkusVilla PR manager Marina Purim. “We are true patriots; we refuse foreign products if there is a complete Russian equivalent, even if it is more expensive. What can we do if at home we allow ourselves to have tiles chipped, we somehow live with them, but the state forbids us to have them in the store?” - Valery Razgulyaev comments on the situation.

“At home we allow ourselves to have tiles chipped, but in the store the state prohibits us from having them?”

He says that Rospotrebnadzor checks all retail chains this way. “They almost have KPIs for fines. If inspectors do not fine a store, questions will arise for them,” says Razgulyaev. The press service of Rospotrebnadzor, in response to a request from The Village, reported that they inspected 813 companies over the past year. Among them were the stores “Verny”, “Dixie”, “Pyaterochka”, “Perekrestok Express” and “Semya”. The department issued 4,351 decisions on fines in the amount of 110 million rubles. Rospotrebnadzor does not say what specific violations were found in retail outlets.

“After this fine, they began to register us as fighters against the regime, compare us with Telegram, and attract some problematic stories to us,” says Valery Razgulyaev. He assures that stores and the messenger have only one thing in common: VkusVill has a convenient bot with several useful functions.

The company initially wanted to make a mobile application, but the question arose: is the buyer ready to install the next, hundredth application for one network? The idea of ​​launching a bot on Telegram was proposed by Andrey Krivenko himself. Already the first version could do quite a lot: activate a card, search for the nearest store, change your favorite product. Later, a rating system for each title appeared - using a bot after purchase, you can give a rating. Now users give about 1.5 million ratings per month - this helps to form an assortment. So, at one point they decided to remove from the shelves all products with ratings below “4”.

Competitors and imitators

Being a store “for mothers and health care professionals,” VkusVill did not compete with virtually anyone. Now all major retailers are its competitors. Then an evolutionary goal appeared - to make quality products available to everyone, even if they were sold in other networks. Now under the brand name “Market. Green Line" in 12 Perekrestok stores you can buy milk, sour cream, kefir and desserts, just like in VkusVille.

“The products are sold under his own brand, but we help select suppliers, check quality and even arrange logistics,” says Razgulyaev. “It turned out that it was easier to hire us than to rebuild the entire system, even taking into account the fact that the logistics turned out to be significantly more expensive than those of the same Perekrestok.”

About 70% of VkusVilla’s products are products with short shelf life, so the entire logistics of the chain is really designed to work with “perishable goods.” If a large retailer can supply some products to the store not every day, but keep them in the warehouse for almost a day, then at VkusVill only a few hours are spent on this. In the evening, a truck with goods arrives at the warehouse - and the next morning it’s all on the shelves in stores. They do everything at night to avoid stuck in traffic jams.

Several years ago, the SAPK-Moloko plant from the Kaluga region acquired its own chain of natural products stores, Podvorye, with more than 100 locations in Moscow and the Moscow region. Previously, the company collaborated with the Izbenka retail chain, from which VkusVill grew. Andrey Krivenko himself visited the barn and production, took samples of the products. But in 2011, the first Podvorye stores opened, and soon supplies for Krivenko stopped. “They insisted on reducing the purchase price and expanding the range, not in favor of strong positions. Such a restructuring would affect the final quality of the product,” Podvorye commented on the situation. They say that their network is not a competitor to VkusVill and was conceived before its appearance. Now Podvorye stores are visited by up to 200 people a day, each of whom spends an average of 280 rubles there.

“Someone looks at us and says: we want the same! They try to copy everything, even to the point of coming up with names similar to ours, using a similar green color,” complains Valery Razgulyaev. It even goes as far as copying uniforms. One day, the manager of the VkusVilla retail stores saw a salesman smoking on the street. This is unacceptable for a chain: firstly, the retailer positions itself as focused on a healthy lifestyle, and secondly, customers are unpleasant when a person in a smoky uniform works in the grocery store. The manager was about to make a remark, but noticed in time that the logo of another grocery chain was printed on the clothes, but it looked very similar.

In his interviews, Andrei Krivenko has repeatedly admitted that he picked up many successful ideas for his business from Western retailers, which is why he treats imitators quite calmly. Recently, following the example of European supermarkets, a pandomat appeared in one of the Moscow “VkusVills” that accepts plastic bottles and aluminum cans. But so far it is very unstable. From time to time the machine refuses to accept containers, and you have to call one of the employees - he takes time off from work and helps load the cans. The pandomat is still far from having the functionality of everyone’s favorite Telegram bot, but on the VkusVilla website customers from all over Moscow are already asking to install the same one in their area. It turns out that the retailer has again achieved its goal: the people’s love is not hampered by Rospotrebnadzor checks or jamming machines.

Photos: Anna Mikheeva

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The channel administrator often needs to write to it not on his own behalf, but by posting official material or messages from sponsors. How to make a post in Telegram? @Controllerbot will come to the rescue. With its help, you can create a full-fledged post using an HTML or markdown editor, giving it a presentable look with pictures and beautiful design. When everything is ready, you can post it on your channel with the click of a button.

Why does Vkusville need a bot in Telegram?

Is it even worth doing all this programming? As we see, even large retail chains are coming to realize the capabilities of Telegram and the potential of their use. Vkusvill in Telegram created their own bot to help their customers navigate the products offered, choose their favorite product and receive a discount on it.
This is a carefully designed customer support service that will increase the loyalty of the retail chain’s customers. The development of such a bot can cost hundreds of thousands of rubles and it’s worth it. If you don’t have the ability to program and don’t have a development team to create such products, contact VTope for a time-tested service for creating commercial channels.

They can significantly save time searching for the necessary information. They are able to find and order tickets, from a cinema to an airplane, send files upon request, or simply inform on thematic issues. More and more large companies are launching their own bots in order to effectively interact with customers.

The trading network selling natural products “VkusVill” also keeps up with the rhythm of modernity, which has also added a special account in Telegram. The company uses its own bot, entrusting it with routine work to resolve technical issues. The developers made the Telegram account as useful as possible for the buyer and added a wide range of functions, thanks to which they made the work of VkusVilla employees and customers of the network easier.

How to find the Telegram bot “VkusVill”

Finding and adding your favorite store account to your contact list is easy. To do this, you need to have the Telegram messenger installed on your device, and then perform a number of simple manipulations:

The Telegram application is installed by default with an English interface, many people use the messenger in this form, but if there is a desire to Russify it, the bot menu also has such an option.

What the Telegram bot “VkusVill” can do and how to use it

Thanks to the Telegram robot of the VkusVill chain of stores, it has become possible to remotely carry out the following actions:

1. Change "Favorite Product". The application's multifunctional tool can replace the product selected on your “Let's be friends” card with a 20% discount with another one. A purchase worth 500 rubles made over the previous two days can trigger these manipulations.
2. You can view personal discounts and promotions directly in the application by sending the command “I’m in the store” and indicating your location or store address. The bot will find products from various groups participating in the program. If you need to make adjustments to the subscription, this is available in the “All functions” tab, where, by going to the settings section, you can remove unnecessary categories based on the principle “I don’t use this group of products”, and promotions for them will not be provided. The selection of discounted items may vary by store and changes daily.
3. The account is a replacement for the “Let's be friends” card. You will be able to use the bot instead of a plastic card. All bonuses and promotions will become available after sending the “I’m in the store” command. Then you should provide the phone number or numbers from your plastic card at the checkout. After an hour, when closing a receipt or after sending the command “I’m not in the store” to the bot, the service will be deactivated.
4. Perform any technical operations with the card, such as: linking, changing the phone number, name, sending a receipt to an email, as well as other functions that were previously impossible to perform without a technical support operator.
5. View the product range. The product catalog is available for viewing directly from your account. You can search by name or category. It is also possible to check the availability of the selected product for any store in the network.
6. Setting up the main menu, adding the necessary options. You can customize the function keys in the bot to your liking. Four of the six menu buttons are editable. Your preferences may also be shaped by the options you use most often. You will see the entire available set of actions that you can add to the menu by going to the “All functions” tab.
7. View the route to the nearest VkusVill. Upon request, the robot will show you a store near your location and send you a map so you can quickly find it.

The menu also contains a feedback button, thanks to which you can contact a technical support representative with a question of interest.