Flipkart to replace ‘Ping’ with ‘user to seller’ chatting platform

Owing to low customer interest, e-commerce platform Flipkart would soon be replacing its social shopping feature ‘Ping’ with a pilot ‘user to seller’ chat.cPresently, it allows customers to reach out to friends and family on its app and another link that helps to search through images.

In a company statement, it was stated, “After 25th June 2016 users will not be able to chat with their friends or family on Ping but will be able to browse through their existing chats on the app…Customers will continue to be able to share any messages or products through any social media platform of their choice.”

“We will, keeping in mind the consumer preference, discontinue image search, but will continue to support the ‘visually similar’ feature on the platform to make shopping easy and seamless,” said a company spokesperson in the statement.

As a replacement for Ping, the ‘user to seller’ chat will soon begin the ‘user to customer care’ chat on its platform. The new feature will help users to chat with sellers about their product related queries, prior to even buying the final product.

Punit Soni, who was Flipkart’s Chief Product Officer at the time of Ping and Image search launch, had done this as part of a drive towards product innovation. Soni is a former Google employee, who went on to quit Flipkart in April this year, to move to Silicon Valley.