Branded jewellers embrace AR, video calling to push sales

Covid impact

With the social distancing norm becoming a standard practice, jewellery makers are embracing latest contactless sales techniques to push their sales.

The Covid-19 induced lockdown has encouraged many branded jewellers such as Tanishq from the Tata Group, Kalyan Jewellery, Abaran Timeless Jewellery and C Krishnaiah Chetty among others to adopt augmented reality, video calling, virtual jewellery try-on, real-time live assisted chat, and appointment-based walk-ins in selected stores across the country to attract buyers.

“We are connecting our customers through a video call to showcase jewellery. Customers will be personally attended and our executives will help them choose from a range of products curated beforehand, based on their preference. We have created a studio-like facility in our selected stores in various cities where our sales executives will wear the pre-selected jewellery and display it to customers through the video call,” said Ajoy Chawla, CEO, Tanishq.

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Once the customer selects his or her jewellery, they can book an appointment at a nearby store and walk-in for a personal touch and take the delivery, he said.

Tanishq has also arranged a live chat facility for customers. It is doing around 15,000 live chats with real customers in a month. Since the time Tanishq launched video calling feature, 4,200 customers have bought jewellery so far.

Tanishq has arranged special magnifying glass, a fixed camera with proper lighting to show jewellery at its store. People can connect with the stores through their smartphone, laptop or even a smart TV. Person on the other end will wear and show the 360-degree view. Video calling facility is provided at 200 stores out of 335 stores in the country, Chawla said.

Kalyan Jewellery has also adopted the video calling feature. “Our customers have to identify a store near to them and our executives will call back using the video call feature if they don’t want to travel to the store. We will run through the identified jewellery and they can select what they want and come to the store only to take the delivery,” a company spokesperson said.

Abaran Jewellers, a Bengaluru-based jeweller is also using video calling and augmented reality to showcase jewellery to its customers. “We have installed touchscreen kiosks to showcase our jewellery collection. Customers can take their picture and select the jewellery and try the pieces to see how it looks on their body,” Pratap Kamath, Managing Director, Abaran Timeless Jewellery said.

The company has also deployed dedicated sales executives to take customers across all the counters in both their stores.

Bengaluru-based jeweller, C Krishniah Chetty Group has developed an app on which customers can book an appointment. It has installed a 20x zoom camera for a closer look at every detail of a wide variety of jewellery from heritage to contemporary. It has also deployed dedicated staff to guide the customers to select their favourite jewellery and once the payment is done online, it will deliver the product within 2-3 days.

“A video call shopping is almost like being in the showrooms. The experience, the close inspection of Gems, Jewellery and Rare Artefacts & Collectables is unique,” said C Vinod Hayagriv, Director, C Krishniah Chetty Group of Jewellers.