How was customer service time reduced by half at home&you?

About the company

The BBK SA is the owner of the home&you brand that specializes in the import and distribution of interior furnishing accessories. The sales is conducted online as well as in 150 stationary stores.

What did the customer gain thanks to Salesforce implementation?

A reduction of customer service time by half and Customer’s Service Center (CSC) transition to remote work— those are the two most important measurable benefits of implementing the Salesforce Platform. The effect was achieved by replacing many scattered tools with a single system, creating a comprehensive customer database, and standardizing the customer service process. All of this is now done on one tool, that employees work freely on after transitioning to remote work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Personalized automation marketing campaigns were also enabled — GDPR-compliant emails and texts. All operations in customer service and marketing are monitored on an ongoing basis.

Figure 1 — Summary of the implementation benefits

The challenges

In 2018, the new e-commerce platform powered by Magento 2 engine was implemented. After launching a sales channel, the most urgent need was to introduce a system that would automate operations in two crucial areas of customer contact besides sales: customer service and marketing.

Up to that moment, the company had not been using any CRM system. The greatest problem of customer service was the lack of customer database that would be available for all consultants. Everyone looked for the information on their own (Magento, ERP, shared Excel databases.) A knowledge database that might facilitate and standardize case handling did not exist.

The implementation was aimed at delivering a tool that could gather and organize scattered data in one place to improve the quality of customer service and work efficiency and, what is important, that could allow measuring work performance.

From the marketing point of view, one of the biggest challenges was to get back customers: those who left their checkouts as well as those who were inactive for a long time. The brand’s collection changes even eight times a year, so the number of customer visits on the website and the frequency of those visits are incredibly essential. What is more important, the site (and a store at the same time) is the first source of information about products for most customers (regardless of the fact whether they prefer online or stationary shopping.)

The implemented tool was supposed to allow running and analyzing email and text campaigns as well as sending newsletters.

The CRM system implementation was also supposed to help in building the brand image and its regular positioning as a premium brand leading in the interior decoration industry. To achieve this, it is essential to provide the highest quality customer experience and to take care of its consistency both online and offline.

The challenge, that, essentially, emerged already after the implementation, but with which the tool easily coped, was to entirely transition the Customer’s Service Center department to remote work. A natural concern here was the issue of consultants’ work efficiency in home conditions and the technical aspects of the department’s work. You can read about the effects of implementing remote working in CSC in the Benefits section.

The solution

The Salesforce platform made it possible to meet all the above challenges without searching for additional solutions.

Two modules from the Salesforce portfolio were used to carry out the project: Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud. The implementation was divided into two stages.

It started by implementing Service Cloud and its integration with the Magneto platform. Thanks to the standards built in Salesforce, a unified customer service process was introduced. Online and offline data was collected in Service Cloud — a comprehensive database about all company customers was established and duplicated contacts were deleted. Service Cloud also enabled aggregation of all customer communication channels (email, form, phone) in one place and registration of all activities.

Thus, the foundation for the next stage of the project was built, that is the implementation of Marketing Cloud and the introduction of marketing automation activities using this module.

The benefits

A single coherent and modern system instead of many scattered tools — it is the most important advantage of the Salesforce platform implementation. The customers are at the center of all activities — a full view of their activities, that is the 360-degree view, is available.

Thanks to Service Cloud, the customer service employees received complete information about customers in a single place. Order statuses, the history of complaints — all of these are on customer cards, available for every employee. It allows responding to other requests quickly and efficiently. A unified knowledge base updated continuously by responsible employees also helps in this. Case categorization and routing were implemented thanks to which cases are passed to the right consultant right away.

Service Cloud also allows measuring all the activities related to customer service as well as reporting results such as the number of customer requests, processing time, or cost of solving a given case (both complaint and first-line support.) Based on this, it is possible to properly plan the distribution of forces in the customer service department, for example, concerning sales and support peaks in a particular period, and to assess the completion of goals more efficiently — both for the whole team and for individual employees. As a result of the implementation, the case processing time was reduced by half.

The additional benefit from implementing a cloud Salesforce solution is a smooth transition of the whole customer service department team to remote work. With no support from the IT department, the employees can change their place of work without any impact on its quality. The implementation of a single system that gathers all customer data, their orders, and all communication with potential and current customers has made it possible to work remotely. Consultants, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, are working from home following all the standards and procedures that have been implemented. The only change that took place in the CSC department was the hotline’s deactivation to put more focus on written communication. Despite the concerns about the consultant’s efficiency, their productivity increased by 50%.

New agents are trained on the tools and ready to work in one day, also from home. It proves the high adoption of the system that the employees willingly use. Thanks to KPI implementation, the team manager keeps a finger on the pulse and monitors the department’s performance.

Figure 2 — The benefits of the implementation

Complete customer data, gathered in one place, allows using it for marketing purposes. In Marketing Cloud, marketing automation paths were configured, and the possibility of creating personalized email and text campaigns was introduced (also for offline customers). All operations are compliant with GDPR, and customer consents, which are obtained during campaigns, are collected and stored in the system.

Salesforce made it possible to combine marketing and sales activities on a single platform. Marketing campaigns — due to the effective use of customer database — led to an increase in sales. All the operations are measured and reported on an ongoing basis, and that allows a quick revision of assumptions, if necessary.

The integration of the loyalty system with Salesforce continues — after transferring customer data and marketing consents, communication with that group of users will be established.

Figure 3 — The benefits of the implementation