Headquarters: Paris, France
Moved to Cloud: 2013
Offerings:
Build a social chat
Create an on-site
community
Gather data and insights
Generate and publish
user content
2013
A community of brand
ambassadors
You can find reviews of products on almost any
e-commerce site. Some are kind, others cruel, and others
brutally honest. The one thing they all share in common is
that they occur in the past. Now imagine if you could have
interactive chats on e-commerce websites with other
like-minded shoppers or users. The people at TokyWoky did
just that and with the help of Microsoft Azure, they turned
that kernel of an idea into a successful French company.
Founded in 2013, TokyWoky strives to unite helpful people
who want to share their experiences or advice. “I think
TokyWoky will become a new reference channel,” said
Timothee Deschamps, co-founder of TokyWoky. “It’ll be a
standard for allowing online visitors to interact in real-time
on ecommerce websites.”
A Facebook debut
The name, TokyWoky plays on the English word,
“walkie-talkie,” which in the French language, is reversed to
read “talkie-walkie.” Much like the walkie-talkie, TokyWoky
drives brand conversations within communities. The
application made its original debut on Facebook in 2013 as
a small anonymous Q&A chat system for teenagers to ask
questions and get answers. Back then, the founders
considered it a fun side project. Within three months, the
app had 50,000 users. Suddenly that fun little app forced
TokyWoky’s founders to quit their day jobs and build a
company.
“We actually didn’t know how to make money with our
product,” said Timothee Deschamps, co-founder of
TokyWoky . Looking at the types of questions and
conversations people had on the site, the founders noticed
the majority concerned retail products. “Everyone was
helping each other in a very cool, friendly way,” said
Deschamps. “We thought we could apply that principle to
help retailers on their e-commerce websites.”
Getting more than they
bargained for
Big ideas require big capabilities, which in TokyWoky’s case
meant having the ability to quickly scale. Such scalability
could only really be done in the cloud. Because engineers
had built the initial platform using the .NET framework,
Azure became the natural cloud platform choice.
Today, the company uses Azure as a launching point for
adding additional tools and resources. For example, the
company is now exploring machine learning. “We track
every visitor on the website to get information about the
questions they’re asking, the keywords they’re using and so
on,” said Quentin Lebeau, CEO at TokyWoky. The company
can track whether consumers bought something or not, if
they put something into their basket, or left the website, or
asked a question. It can also see which pages were visited.
“Machine learning helps us to predict
consumer needs. Our dream, is to
display the right information
to customers depending on
where they are on the website
using past behavior.”
Quentin Lebeau, CEO at TokyWoky
Power
BI
Another Microsoft cloud tool that TokyWoky extracts value
from is Power BI.
“We had only intended to look at Power BI,
but it ended up being a very efficient and
attractive way for us to display the data we
acquire,”
Quentin Lebeau, CEO at TokyWoky
Key Learnings:
TokyWoky uses the Azure
and additional Microsoft
tools and resources as the
foundation for its
successful and rapidly
growing application and
business.
• Invest time into the
Microsoft partnership
• Use Azure as a
launching point for
adding additional tools
and resources
• Remember that
Microsoft adds
credibility with
customers
• Help improve predicting
consumer needs with
machine learning
• Try Power BI as an
attractive and efficient
way to display data
• Test as many products
as you can and be
willing to fail
• Encourage every single
employee to share their
ideas
“We’re also looking at some new moderation tools that we
have seen in Azure. It’s a combination of all these resources
that’s helping us answer our client’s needs better.”
The Microsoft factor
In addition to technology, one of the biggest benefits
Microsoft provides TokyWoky with is leads. “They have a
vision for us,” said Deschamps. “They talk about what we
can do with huge corporations that we would not have had
access to otherwise.” For example, in 2015, Microsoft
invited TokyWoky leadership to the National Retail
Federation show in New York. “Actions such as that give us
a lot of credibility,” said Deschamps.
Working with Microsoft also adds credibility with
customers.
“When we talk to a client we say that
Microsoft helps us, which because we’re a
small company of only 12 people, helps us
with bigger clients. It gives you a lot of
credibility and exposure.”
Timothee Deschamps, co-founder of
TokyWoky
To get the full Microsoft benefit, the
company invests time into the Microsoft
partnership. “We have meetings with
Microsoft France every month to improve
our processes and talk about new
technologies,” said Raphaël Prat, co-founder at TokyWoky.
A reason to cheer
2017
estimate of
50 million
users
TokyWoky currently has 50 customers and seven million
users―two million asking questions and the other five
million answering them. In addition, it has what it calls
40,000 ambassadors, people who are willing to help brands
for hours each day by answering questions and giving
advice.
6
300
01
2
%
In 2016, TokyWoky expects its numbers to grow to 80
customers and ten million users. In 2017, it estimates more
than 100 percent growth to 200 customers and 50 million
users. As for the bottom line, leaders anticipate a 300
percent revenue growth in 2016 and 500 percent in 2017.
With numbers such as these, whatever the company is
doing with Microsoft it intends to continue to do.
In terms of the technology, the company’s surging revenue
is driving new innovations “We want to be as mobile as
possible for people who ask questions and people who
answer them,” said Prat. TokyWoky also wants to expand
outside ecommerce into industries such as healthcare,
Public Sector, and education. “When people are learning
things together we think it’d be great if they could talk to
and help each other complete their tasks,” said Lebeau. The
company also anticipates exponential growth by expanding
globally too. “We have clients in Italy, Spain, Portugal,
Poland, Germany―basically most of Europe,” said Lebeau.
“The next logical step for us, which we will take this year
and next, is international expansion.”
Azure has given the company a powerful platform on which
to build success. “We finally have the means of addressing
problems in the best way possible,” said Deschamps.
“I think both the evangelism and technical
expertise Microsoft offers is going to help us.
The more you let people talk with them, the
more you realize how much they can actually
help you.”
Timothee Deschamps, co-founder of TokyWoky
Explore TokyWoky's Projects
www.tokywoky.com