During our largely attended #bluecruxtalk “From Headset to Mindset” on Wednesday, September, 20, Bridgestone’s Christophe de Valroger and Miele’s Peter Tillon shared their experience from recent customer service transformations. We relay their messages in three takeaways.
Digitization is everywhere and it should be a key strategy for customer service departments. It allows your organization to save time and resources on “no hassle” tasks and reallocate it to premium activities. Those premium activities will differentiate your company’s customer experience from competition. Why not offer the possibility for your customer to automatically place an order online? It’s that kind of solution he’s looking for!
To outsource or not to outsource. And if you do outsource: then, what exactly? It’s a question a lot of customer service managers struggle with. Tillon’s advice is clear: “Keep your core business and outsource other activities to people that are better at it than you. By doing this, the quality of service that Miele offers to its customers has improved. As an example, a simple service request can now be made every day from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., and less than 10% of the cases are transferred to the Miele customer service back office.”
“Between 2015 and 2017, Bridgestone transformed its customer service in the Original Equipment business, moving from a country-based organization to one multilingual front office organization based in Germany and a central back office organization in Poland. During the transformation, priority was given to clear internal communication and business continuity. Today, we work with a centralized model that has been achieved with zero impact on customer satisfaction and a significant gain in efficiency. In addition, we have now built a platform to further develop added value services in the future. One key takeaway? Don’t forget the people who stay. Make sure you keep them motivated, support them to find their way in the new environment and their new tasks.”
Judging from the many questions the participants asked, it was clear that the speakers had struck a chord. And you, where do you stand with your customer service? Get in touch to chat with one of our experts about your journey.
