Since making the switch to Package.ai from the industry standard delivery software, HomeZone has seen confirmation rates grow, failed deliveries shrink and customers giving their overall experience a highly positive rating. Improvements since implementing package.ai:
+32% Delivery Confirmation Rate
-67% Rate of failed deliveries
450% Percentage of Customers Leaving Positive Reviews
97% of customers that leave a rating give four or five stars
“The industry-leading platform we were using before Package.ai was very basic, in comparison. It was kind of confusing for customers and offered very little customization. With Package.ai, the level of customization is incredible and the support offered is second to none.”
Jeremy Sanchez, HomeZone’s Director of Operations
Family-owned Furniture Manufacturer and Retailer That Loves the Personal Touch
HomeZone Furniture is a family-owned furniture manufacturer and retailer based in Dallas-Fort Worth. Since its establishment in 2007, HomeZone has continued to expand across Texas and Oklahoma. Its founder, Bree Barber, saw an opportunity in the furniture industry to do things differently as a small business by bringing the personal touch into the customer experience.
Why HomeZone Made the Move to Package.ai
Despite the fact that HomeZone was using the industry-standard dispatch software, it took a team of five people three-to-five hours every day to ensure everything was routed and dispatched correctly. In order to confirm deliveries, staff would ring the customer 24-hours before the delivery, but the only other contact was an automated call and text message when the driver completed the stop before, saying, “Hey, we’re headed your direction”. These two touch points before delivery were proving insufficient and resulted in a delivery confirmation rate that hovered around 72-75% and a failed delivery rate of 15% (including customers that weren’t home but were rescheduled on route).
The big problem for HomeZone customers, however, was they had no way of directly interacting with customer service or the driver in real-time. If they needed to make a change during the delivery process they had to locate the phone number and call the customer service team directly.
Just before making the switch to Package.ai, the dispatch software HomeZone was using had an outage that lasted a full working week. This forced HomeZone to manually route its trucks using Google Maps. When they called the provider of the dispatch software to find out when the problems would be resolved they were repeatedly told “We’re working on it”. This was the breaking point and saw HomeZone make the switch to Package.ai.
“I just wanted a more customer friendly platform that really put customer communication out in front and made it a priority. Package.ai allows us to instantly achieve this and that’s exactly what I was looking for.”
Jeremy Sanchez, HomeZone’s Director of Operations
Super Fast, Customized, and Responsive Implementation
Once the decision had been made to make the switch from the industry standard dispatch software, Package.ai’s support and onboarding team worked closely with HomeZone to ensure a smooth transition. As Package.ai is the only AI-powered chat and logistics platform custom-built for home furnishing retailers, it was customized to precisely fit HomeZone’s needs and was fully implemented in 30 days.
Webinars were used to train key employees, going through each of the functions of the platform and demonstrating everyday use cases. Once they were fully trained HomeZone implemented a train-the-trainer methodology, which saw the staff that were trained via the webinars, in turn, train their teams.
“I’ve gone through a lot of implementations, and the Package.ai implementation was hands down the best I’ve ever experienced. And it was seamless. I think it took about 30 days when it was all said and done. I was very impressed.”
Jeremy Sanchez, HomeZone’s Director of Operation
Giving Customers a Voice
Thanks to the implementation of Package.ai’s chatbot Jenny, HomeZone’s customers can interact in real time to ask questions, make changes to their delivery and chat with a customer service representative or the delivery driver when needed.
Staff, whose time was taken up having to monitor HomeZone’s old dispatch platform to try to head off issues before they escalated, now allow Jenny to take the pressure off by taking care of business, safe in the knowledge that if their assistance is required Jenny will let them know.
This lets the customer service team work on warranty claims and other higher level tasks, and when they hear Jenny chime they know there’s a message they have to look at and can jump over to Package.ai in an instant.
“The biggest thing Jenny does is give our customers a voice. Our team now has the ability to listen and respond at scale without increasing our staff. Jenny gives them an opportunity to get immediate help, when they need it. This is instead of them having to submit a support ticket, and then be told, “We’ll get back to you in 24 to 48 hours.”
Jeremy Sanchez, HomeZone’s Director of Operation
Radically Improving the Automated Management of the Delivery Fleet
The management of HomeZone’s fleet of 30 delivery vehicles, which makes 250 stops on average a day, is now fully automated and hassle-free. But the huge benefit of Package.ai is the ability to communicate with the driver directly through the platform without having to call them.
With each driver traveling hundreds of miles each day, their safety has been improved by enabling them to communicate directly via the platform rather than have to answer their phones while driving. This has now become HomeZone’s preferred method of communication with the drivers because each interaction with them is also fully logged, meaning conversations can be referenced when needed.
The Results: More Deliveries, Happier Customers, Better Productivity
Making the switch to Package.ai, thanks to the vastly improved customer communication capabilities, saw delivery confirmation rates jump from between 72-75% to 95-98% every day. This also saw failed delivery rates plummet from 15% to 5%. However, if you take out reschedules, the failed delivery rate is only about 1%.
This is thanks in large part to Jenny, who ensures customers experience a constantly connected delivery experience. This has really improved customer satisfaction because customers get answers when they want them, which is now and not tomorrow. So if a customer has an issue with their delivery, they generally have a resolution within the hour.
Before Package.ai, HomeZone was being left reviews by about 10% of customers. This has now rocketed to 55%, with 97% of customers that leave a review giving a rating of four or five stars. Jenny plays a large part in this by prompting satisfied customers, once a delivery has been made, to leave a review.
In the past HomeZone was measuring the productivity of its delivery fleet manually with an Excel spreadsheet. And it was a complicated, cumbersome, inefficient process. The best case scenario was it took a couple of hours a week to manage just transcribing all the data. Now HomeZone can find all that data and reports within Package.ai.
“Package.ai allows you to focus on the smaller things. You know, the big things get done with Package.ai, like the routing of deliveries and customer communications. So now it lets us focus on packaging, presentation and preparation to improve the impression we make now that our deliveries arrive on time to satisfied customers.”
Jeremy Sanchez, HomeZone’s Director of Operation
Future Plans to Expand the Roll Out of Package.ai
Now that the platform has delivered such impressive results, just a few months after implementation, HomeZone is undertaking a review to look at areas where Package.ai can add further value.
One area they are keen on exploring is Package.ai’s Sales Chat module, which helps furniture and appliance retailers capture more revenue from upselling warranties and complementary products. This is achieved by automated upsell campaigns based on the products a customer bought and their overall purchase history.
“Package.ai is a huge win for us, because all interactions with clients are there and it’s the single point of truth. Everything is in front of you so there is no guessing. So, it is a perfect tool to help us to increase our revenue by upselling complementary products.”
Jeremy Sanchez, HomeZone’s Director of Operation
