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How PILLER Increased Customer Service with �鶹ԭ�� Customer Experience Solutions

Karin Fent — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 12:15:50 +0000

produces high-performance blowers and compressors and customized solutions to meet specific requirements of various industries. Its global network of wholly owned subsidiaries and joint ventures enables it to serve an international customer base.

To increase customer service quality, the company wanted to share information and optimize business processes across its sales, service, and marketing activities.

Moving from Manual Processes to Integrated Activities

At PILLER, different departments were using their own IT solutions.

The service department had manual processes, such as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, to dispatch service technicians. The technicians were logging into a central server to retrieve data and recording customer support by e-mails and conversations. The sales department had a basic access environment due to custom-made products with individual serial numbers. There was no master data; tailored sales quotes were done on paper, posing challenges for data updating and quality. The marketing department was conducting its business, like capturing trade-fair leads or planning and executing campaigns, by hand and with spreadsheets. All these manual activities were time intensive and prone to human error.

To enable the marketing, sales, and service teams to perform to the best of their abilities, PILLER wanted solutions that allowed it to share important information. It wished to harmonize all customer-related processes, from initial contact and order management to delivery of spare parts and follow-up.

“For new products or customers, it’s important that real-time master data in our core software is mirrored in our sales, service, and marketing systems. We can do this by integrating �鶹ԭ�� Customer Experience solutions and �鶹ԭ�� Field Service Management with �鶹ԭ�� S/4HANA,” said Frank Münzner, in-house �鶹ԭ�� consultant for Lead to Cash at PILLER Blowers & Compressors GmbH.

Adopting Cloud Solutions to Achieve Innovative Customer Service

PILLER employed the solution to help address the needs of its sales team and integrate functionalities, such as managing quotes and orders, in one place. The solution offers a search capability and a modern, intuitive user interface.

The company is using the to help create service tickets, which are the single point of customer contact, with product serial numbers and metadata. Integrating this mobile app with the solution can enable technicians to receive service ticket information on an Apple iPad, so they can have everything they need to carry out their work. This can also translate to good customer support.

By deploying the solution and integrating it with �鶹ԭ�� Sales Cloud, PILLER now proactively shares data, such as service tickets, lead opportunities, and customer contacts, between the sales and marketing teams. This lets the company contact a customer with a warranty option or service cost reduction, for example.

PILLER has now integrated the three �鶹ԭ�� Customer Experience solutions for sales, service, and marketing and with , the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

PILLER partnered with to gain advice about new functionalities and implementation support, while provided guidance around leveraging the potential in terms of business transformation and digitization.

Gaining Comprehensive Customer Visibility with Integrated Solutions

The major advantage in connecting the �鶹ԭ�� Customer Experience portfolio, �鶹ԭ�� Field Service Management, and �鶹ԭ�� S/4HANA is that real-time data can be available across all these solutions. While master data, such as for a new product, customer, or material, is entered and kept in �鶹ԭ�� S/4HANA as the core software, it’s automatically pushed into the other integrated solutions.

This is helping PILLER deliver highly efficient and innovative customer service and business models. The company gains a comprehensive view of worldwide customers in real time while interacting with them at each stage of their journey in a targeted manner.

There are now customer-related processes across departments, sites, and systems as well as consistent communication throughout the company, thanks to standardized forms and templates. The business is achieving agile sales with faster response times and better allocation of target groups. It’s also making decisions for customer management based on facts and analyses.

Other benefits the company achieved were:

360-degree view of customers worldwide in real time
90% less paper with digital processes
30% reduction in effort by using digital processes

“We’ve always combined tradition with innovation when manufacturing our blowers. With �鶹ԭ�� Customer Experience solutions, our customer management operations are superior to those of our competitors. We’re able to keep a close eye on processes and respond quickly and accordingly,” said Thomas Henzler, CIO at PILLER Blowers & Compressors GmbH.

Rolling Out Customer-Centric Solutions

Combining and the �鶹ԭ�� Field Service Management mobile app with �鶹ԭ�� S/4HANA is helping deliver real-time data for integrated processes.

The integration of the �鶹ԭ�� Field Service Management mobile app with �鶹ԭ�� Service Cloud is being piloted with three service technicians and garnering positive feedback so far.

Watch an of �鶹ԭ�� Sales Cloud to help build lasting customer relationships and to maximize customer lifetime value with connected service. Read about the benefits companies achieved with . View a and to learn how to maximize productivity and asset uptime with �鶹ԭ�� Field Service Management. .

Karin Fent is senior director of Global Customer Success Digital Supply Chain at �鶹ԭ��.

How Tech Makes Shopping Quick and Easy for Bosch Customers

Derek Klobucher — Tue, 15 Aug 2023 12:15:51 +0000

Benefits of e-commerce include reaching new customers and better personalizing service. But what if your customers need – and have spent decades relying on – the in-store expertise of your associates? To find a very specific product? For use with another very specific product? To accomplish a very specific task?

“More and more of our users are coming online…[and] they still want to have the similar guidance and the systems they had in-store,” Ganna Lobachevska, the touchpoint owner of Product Finder and Product Guidance at , told �鶹ԭ�� at NRF 2023 for a new video. “Our overall goal is to make it easier for our users to find the right accessory for their job.”

Of course, making something easy to do on the front end is seldom easy to build on the back end. And that was Bosch’s challenge when helping online shoppers narrow their search for the perfect jigsaw blade, drill bit, or abrasive wheel from a truly massive accessory portfolio.

“Any company with a wide range of products has to think how they can simplify the user journey…and how they can make it easier for the customers to find the right product,” Lobachevska said. “With the Bosch , we provide a solution that makes it easier and faster.”

Building that easier, faster solution meant finding a high-tech way to satisfy a peculiar demand by online shoppers.

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When Brick-and-Mortar Set the Bar (Almost) Too High

Selecting a specific power tool accessory for a specific job – and ensuring it’s compatible with your specific power tool – are big reasons that people historically shopped at brick-and-mortar stores, according to Lobachevska. It makes sense, right? You can consult with a knowledgeable human sales associate.

But Bosch’s e-commerce customers expect the same in-store-style expertise via a quick and painless online exchange, according to Lobachevska. And she doesn’t seem worried.

“The Accessory Advisor guides the user through a series of very simple questions,” Lobachevska said. “In the end, they have three perfect recommendations for the work they want to do.”

It’s pretty much an online conversation that yields the right product, according to Lobachevska. And Bosch found the right tech – and partners – to make these virtual dialogues happen.

Tech to the Rescue

“We realized that there is a need for a better user guidance,” Lobachevska said of Bosch’s decision to go with , a Boston-based digital commerce search platform and partner solution in �鶹ԭ��’s industry cloud. “It offered us the best.”

Zoovu’s Semantic Studio translates technical jargon into e-commerce-friendly prose, which saves time for both Bosch data managers and shoppers. A few artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted questions later, and these accessory hunters have enjoyed a smooth, seamless customer experience.

“This means that our customers spend less time searching for a product,” Lobachevska said. “And when they purchase the product, it’s the right one and they are more satisfied.”

This increases efficiency, according to Lobachevska. It also cuts down on returns and poor online reviews.

Powering Forward

Whether in-store or online, Bosch digital assistants and �鶹ԭ�� Marketing Cloud connect to improve Bosch’s data analytics, business insights, and customer experience, . Those digital assistants have already helped enhance the customer experience for more than 1 million Bosch shoppers across more than 35 global markets, boosting engagement up to 65% as well as increasing customer loyalty and satisfaction.

And still more can be done by connecting all of that to the Accessory Advisor, according to Lobachevska.

“We would like to connect the Bosch Accessory Advisor with our CRM system, which is basically �鶹ԭ�� Marketing Cloud,” Lobachevska said. “This will allow us to gain business insights, to build better personas, and to make the user experience even better because it’ll be more personalized.”

Harrods’ High-Tech Backend Helps Deliver Unparalleled Experience

Derek Klobucher — Tue, 25 Apr 2023 13:15:09 +0000

It’s easy to say customer experience is your No. 1 priority, but offering a truly seamless journey is often brutally complicated on the backend. So, London-based luxury retailer Harrods uses �鶹ԭ�� technology to ease that backend burden and deliver a silky-smooth customer experience across all its channels, which include a growing ecommerce site, private shopping in China, and more.

But Harrods’ most important channel is still its flagship store.

“When we talk about luxury and the importance of experience, the store is core to what we do,” Erik Rasmussen, head of �鶹ԭ�� & Data Analytics at Harrods, told �鶹ԭ�� on the NRF 2023 showfloor. “Having that single flagship store is still absolutely crucial to Harrods’ DNA and something that we expect to drive going forward for a long time.”

Harrods’ flagship store is about 1 million square feet (about 93,000 square meters) of retail space in Knightsbridge, an upscale London neighborhood known for grand Victorian and Georgian homes, fine dining, and, of course, high-end shopping. This single, full-line department store offers food, fashion, homeware, furniture, and technology – and it reaped £2.4 billion in sales last year.

“So, small footprint but massive business,” Rasmussen said, noting that the flagship store alone carries more than 400,000 products from about 4,000 brands. “And incredible things [are] going on every day.”

To keep incredible things happening, Harrods and �鶹ԭ�� invested in the Single View of Customer project, an analytics initiative to help Harrods better understand how customers interact with the brand. When Harrods can accurately anticipate what shoppers will want, it can deliver memorable experiences that make delighted customers say, “Wow!”

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How to “Wow!”

“Harrods is a unique model…A lot of other retailers will have a smaller selection of products in store and an endless aisle online,” Rasmussen said. “At Harrods, the most complete shopping experience is still to come into the store because of the variety…[and] the different experiences you have.”

Indeed, Harrods rewards shoppers at its brick-and-mortar flagship store with expert associates and a truly impressive array of products. For instance, in the furniture department, you can see examples of each piece and then choose your very specific model based myriad variables, such as size, headboard style, and even jewelry configuration.

“With one single product, you can very quickly get into things like 10,000 different permutations,” Rasmussen said during a presentation at �鶹ԭ��’s NRF booth. “When you think about that spread across an entire product assortment – spread across all the brands that we carry – you suddenly start to find yourself in a really challenging data management perspective.”

To conquer that challenge, Harrods consolidated all the relevant data from vendors and others into its backend, according to Rasmussen. Harrods’ digital technology team then built a Web app that lets shoppers personalize furniture from start to finish – from browsing to home delivery.

“A lot of heavy lifting that we had to do on the backend – it’s not easy to make this work,” Rasmussen said. “But from a customer experience, ultimately it becomes pretty seamless.”

Investing in Customers – And Single View of Customer

It’s vital that Harrods get better acquainted with the roughly 2.5 million consumers registered in its loyalty scheme, according to Rasmussen. Of the 400,000 or so unique customers who shop in store each year, the top 0.1%, roughly 400 people, account for about 20% of Harrods’ sales.

A 2021 implementation of �鶹ԭ�� Customer Activity Repository and �鶹ԭ�� BW/4HANA laid the foundation for much of Harrods’ analytics, according to Rasmussen. And, as a high-value – as opposed to high-volume – business, Harrods’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and data warehouse could analyze every individual transaction.

“This type of investment – giving us the right insights, the right analytics, the right visibility – has really empowered our teams,” Rasmussen said. “Knowing that information – and we let that feed things like the Single View of Customer platform or our data science initiatives or replenishment – is fuel to the things we can do to drive our business.”

Such drivers include reactivation campaigns, as happened with a shopper to whom Harrods offered a free pastry with a £50 purchase, according to Rasmussen. The customer made a qualifying purchase, received the complimentary gift, and then promptly returned to the salesfloor to spend another £30,000.

“If we can reactivate those types of customers across the entire 2.5 million [customers], the opportunities for our growth will be enormous,” Rasmussen said. “It’s something that we’re already seeing pay dividends, and we’re really excited to see what we can develop for the future.”

The Future Is Still Experience

Predictive analytics will be a big focus for Harrods, especially identifying new shoppers who might be similar to its high-value customers, according to Rasmussen. Data from �鶹ԭ�� Marketing Cloud, �鶹ԭ�� Customer Data Cloud, and �鶹ԭ�� Service Cloud can help Harrods spot – and serve – its next big spenders, alongside transactional information through �鶹ԭ�� Customer Activity Repository and analytics via �鶹ԭ�� BW/4HANA.

“How can we take a customer who might look like they’re spending £2,000 and realize that they are customers who should be spending £200,000?” Rasmussen said in . “Get them the right personalized service within either our personal shopping department, our concierge service, or a stylist to make sure that we can nurture them more quickly.”

And, again, this seamless customer experience is made possible by a lot of work on the backend. But it’s worth it, according to Rasmussen.

“The two things I take away from what we’ve done at Harrods are one, customer experience comes first,” Rasmussen said. “Secondly, I think we’ve really benefited from the strong partnership we’ve made with our technology partners, �鶹ԭ�� being one of them. We’re making sure that we can invest with them, co-innovate with them, and…we’re collectively moving towards giving the customer the absolutely best experience.”