As we have seen several times in this blog, a company’s business no longer revolves around just the product but around the entire experience that a customer lives during a purchasing process (customer journey), which is becoming longer and longer.
This is why customer service is a topic that has become particularly important in recent years: the relationship with customers is one of the fundamental assets around which the business revolves.
Customer service: what it is and why it is important
The relationship with customers is the beating heart of every company, a real journey that begins even before the purchase and continues well beyond.
Whether it’s about orienting you among the various options before buying something, helping you solve difficulties or simply answering your questions, customer service is like that friend who is always ready to help you.
In a company, customer service is no longer just an office: it has become an essential pillar, a mix of a team of product experts and relationship management who create bonds with customers, making them feel understood and valued.
Customer service today is much
More rooted in people’s lives than just a few years ago where there was a toll-free number. Today we talk about email automation, chat, forms, WhatsApp, CRM with the customer’s history.
Who is MasterPRO Italia
MasterPRO Italia is a brand of the Bergner Group, a multinational that offers a series of 360-degree consultancy for companies in the retail sector and owns and markets, in addition to the aforementioned MasterPRO, dozens of other brands to the consumer, with products ranging from cooking, to textiles, to the home in general.
OFG follows Bergner Italia as a communication partner on all fronts, from loyalty to institutional or product campaigns, from social media, to CRM, from marketing automation to customer service.
In fact, MasterPRO Italia is a beautiful case history also for digital communication and communication on classic media, but today I would like to focus on how OFG Advertising managed its customer care activity.
Customer care: the case history
The initial situation
Initially, before our involvement, customer service was managed internally. With several other things to do, customer care was never a top priority for the team. The intention, having little time to dedicate to this activity, was to automate as much as possible and limit human interactions through a software that recognized the instructions that users gave on the phone and then performed simple operations such as sending links via SMS to pages on the site that could help users overcome problems. The software also had to manage warranty requests.
In theory, everything was quite linear. However, when user requests became pressing and numerous, the system was too inflexible to properly manage the increase in volume and the most diverse requests and in a short time it stopped being efficient, generating a very long queue of angry, dissatisfied and frustrated customers because they could not speak to anyone who could understand their problems other than an automatic responder.
After a few months, the number of dissatisfied customers reached almost a thousand.
The setup of activities and processes
After realizing the need to change the way the relationship was managed, we held several meetings with the managers in the company to understand where the problems were in the process, how they could be solved and with what actions. With their support we carried out an analysis, developed in the following way:
Analysis of internal processes.
What was working, what needed to be changed, what urgently needed to be overturned. Some procedures were too much delegated to the machine and did not leave customers room for human contact, creating frustrated customers who, not finding the right satisfaction in the phone, sought contact by spamming their message on every available means: social media, email, form on the site (dedicated to e-commerce customers). The analysis also revealed new needs: processes not previously mapped that needed to be included in customer service management.
Analysis of business processes. What were the ways in which customers could purchase a product? E-commerce, Amazon, resellers and partners: each of these has a dedicated process for managing returns, warranties or spare parts. It was important to differentiate the different sales processes to outline the best and most effective ways through which customer requests could be satisfied.
Definition of roles and people involved. Who takes care of what? Warehouse, logistics and shipping, relationships with partners, who manages sales, who manages purchasing, who manages
Phone number database is a trusted database to provide active contact list in the country. Also provide best service to our database and clients. Again, if you follow our methods correctly, you can improve your trading skills. Our company is phone number database always researching and discovering new things. Our company employs a number of people who always provide our clients with good and tested sites. And why don’t we give the client what color sites we get. You will always find 100% good and valid sites in our company. And our work is always low in price. We always come for you.
There is the CRM which takes
Care of the front-end and will become the official voice of MasterPRO Italia customer service.
Overview of touchpoints and tools. Where are customers ryomen sukuna: o personagem de anime da série Jujutsu Kaisen most comfortable contacting the company? What are the easy tools that cannot be missing, which ones can we avoid? Let’s remember that each contact point, if activated, must be managed and you never have infinite resources. You have to choose consciously.
Process automation. What can actually be delegated to automation without affecting the relationship but, possibly, adding value? This process, seen in reverse, helps to understand that automation is nice and convenient but when you are dealing with people it cannot be the only solution.
Definition of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). What happens when a person involved in the process has a stomach ache and decides to stay home? Panic. Here the SOPs, playbooks that explain how the procedures were built and what actions to take depending on each case, help those who have to take charge of procedures that were previously unknown.
Tools setup
In agreement with the client, we decided to use Hubspot Service Pro as a CRM, therefore as a tool for collecting information on each client, which is the Hubspot platform dedicated to customer service management. How does it work?
We have defined that the entry points awb directory for contacting customer service are:
Email
Huspot form on the official website
Chat and chatbot on the official website
Whatsapp
Social media
We have deliberately left out the telephone, as an attempt to see if it was possible to avoid having a person dedicated to telephone conversations. Since there are several other more convenient means of interacting with the company, customers have not raised any problems in this regard, so we can say that the telephone is not a necessary means if the other touchpoints work and are well organized.
Once the means have been defined, we have interfaced them with Hubspot and, where possible, we have made sure that a ticket opens automatically, so that the customer service manager only has to manage the relationship. When it is not possible to automate, as in the case of social media, the ticket is opened manually.
Project kickoff and relationship recovery
We decide to start. Initially we use email and chat on the site. Little by little we integrate the other touchpoints. Hubspot begins to collect data and record all interactions. Then we open the form and WhatsApp, which replaces the landline number with the telephone.
The customer service project starts with the recovery of lost relationships: all those who have remained unheard in the previous months obviously have precedence. Some are lost forever, most forgive us and allow us to solve the problem. Relationship recovered with a high percentage of customers. The key is kindness and promptness: you cannot disappear for a second time.
We practically immediately
started sending a small survey, 2 questions to express an opinion on customer service, automatically when closing each ticket.
To date, the front-end customer service is managed by OFG while all warehouse, logistics and supplier management operations are handled by MasterPRO.
It took weeks to clear the queue of customers that had gone unheard. Today the service runs smoothly, with about 8/10 contacts per day, between problems and requests for information.
