Hi there! We are the founders of fello., a customer service chat that helps brands to gain new customers by leveraging their loyal customers’ product knowledge to solve enquiries transparently.
fello. was founded by three friends, Choo Lian Jiet (Product Development), Wong Jing Wei (Business Development) and Lim Yi Zen (Experience Development) — all friends who wanted to make a difference in the world of online shopping. Our platform is designed to connect new customers with existing loyal customers of the brands in a chat session, so they can share their experiences about the product and potentially land a sale.
Our vision for fello. is to become the standard of reliability and transparency in customer service. We want to help people make sound purchase decisions and create a truthful and reliable environment for businesses and consumers.
The idea for fello. came to us when Yi Zen had an unpleasant experience purchasing a Sonos speaker that cost approximately RM2,000+. He had done his research, but when he travelled to a physical store to check out the demo unit, the sales assistant was not properly trained in product knowledge and couldn’t answer some of his questions. At that moment, he wished that there was someone who owned and used the speaker, who could share their experience from an owner’s perspective. That’s when we knew we had to create a platform that could connect customers to reliable sources of information, and help them make a more informed purchase decision.
It is common for us to have bad experiences after purchasing products online because of all the positive reviews that we find online that are not genuine. We are frustrated by this because we waste money and time buying products whose quality isn’t up to the reviews. We believe that reliable and transparent opinions should be heard, especially in a world where there are tons of fake product reviews on the market. With our platform, we can gain a little bit more insight into who we are speaking to during a customer service chat session while helping customers understand the products better before purchasing.
One of our biggest challenges has been introducing this new concept to the market. As a novel solution to a long-existing problem, we know that it may take some time for people to adopt our platform. We also want to encourage users to keep using the platform by introducing a double points system for users who accept responding to new enquiries within 30 seconds.
Since the inception of fello., we have become more appreciative of partnerships and collaborations with other parties – which we lack as a start-up. Over the past few months, we have been a part of BEYOND4’s MYStartup Pre-Accelerator Programme. It has taught us lots of things, such as how to prepare a pitch deck, financial modelling, marketing strategies, and how to identify your sales funnel. In addition, we met a lot of other start-ups and mentors with different backgrounds who also ran cool business ideas. By collaborating with these parties, we can promote growth for all.
Our motto is, “Whatever you can be in life, be real.” We believe that being truthful to oneself can make life less complicated and more meaningful.
Our ultimate goal is for fello. to become the market standard for reliability and transparency by launching full functionality. We want to be remembered as a platform that connects customers to reliable sources of information and helps them make sound purchase decisions.
We’ll be launching soon, so keep an eye out!