The implementation of a unified customer communications and last-mile logistics platform dramatically enhanced customer engagement and reduced costs by consolidating 4 separate solutions into a single one.
Company Overview
The Dufresne Group (TDG) is the largest Ashley Furniture retailer in Canada and the parent company of Dufresne Furniture & Appliances. It currently has 46 retail locations, a growing e-commerce business and six distribution centers handling over a thousand deliveries every day.
Success Indicators
- 85% increase in self-service delivery confirmations
- 239% increase in automated customer support chat conversations, reducing the cost of human customer service responses
- 45% feedback response rate regarding the delivery experience, for improved delivery operations
- 4 into 1 consolidated 4 different systems into 1 package.ai platform
Reasons For Approaching Package.ai
To manage the various stages of the customer lifecycle, TDG had implemented four separate solutions, from pre-sales to post-delivery. This included Paragon for routing, DispatchTrack for delivery logistics, a separate solution for pre-purchase customer communications and one for promoting social reviews post-purchase. With this many piece-meal, non-unified solutions, it was proving impossible to get a complete picture of a single TDG customer’s experience and journey. Its one-way customer communications made it difficult for customers to have a voice throughout the post-purchase process, including delivery.
- There was no unified view of customer interactions, and this was preventing the delivery of the insights necessary to provide an end-to-end customer experience to foster loyalty and repeat business
- Its lack of engaging post-purchase interactions with its customers was failing to set TDG apart in a highly competitive market and not delivering positive reviews to help promote the business
TDG knew it needed to change this fragmented, non-integrated, multi-vendor solution and Package.ai’s unifying approach was the answer.
The Challenge
To optimize its post-purchase communications with customers and develop a unified line-of-sight into all customer interactions to:
- Cultivate customer connections and enhance the overall customer experience beyond being merely transactional
- Build deeper, on-going customer relationships to drive more sales
- Deliver more satisfied customers
- Develop a channel for positive customer reviews
The Solution – What We Did
- Map all processes and workflows
- Analyze existing platforms
- Streamline all processes, workflows and communications into one unified system
The Package.ai implementation team worked hand-in-hand with the TDG team to map all processes and workflows, analyze existing platforms, and prioritize which mission-critical activities could immediately be shifted to the Package.ai platform and which would be phased in over time.
“I was convinced that this would be a game-changer for us in our journey to become a leader in customer-centricity. Additionally the thoughtful migration and consolidation process was completed seamlessly in less than four months with zero impact on day-to-day operations at TDG.” said Norman Alegria, Director of Customer Experience at TDG, an early champion for the project.
Results
Package.ai immediately enabled TDG to provide more open and effective two-way communications with customers in the post-purchase phase. This resulted in:
- An increase in self-service delivery confirmation rates, leading to the highest ever-recorded successful delivery rate thereby reducing costs
- An increase in automated customer support chat conversations that resulted in significant cost reductions over human customer service responses via phone
- A new source for positive social reviews, with higher customer engagement levels translating to increased positive reviews, which is a critical marketing metric for the TDG business leaders
- An increased feedback response rate regarding the delivery experience, while also making it possible to measure and improve the delivery operations in a data-driven and customer-centric manner. Prior to Package.ai, the previous platform did not offer any customer feedback
“Package.ai represents a transformation for our business, giving us one platform to manage all customer interactions and providing all departments a complete line of sight for each customer interaction. The future of retail is relationship rather than transactional, and Package.ai is helping TDG make that future into a reality.” said Norman Alegria.
What’s next
Now that the initial implementation is up and running, the TDG team is working on consolidating additional services and workflows onto the Package.ai platform. The goal is to further improve internal productivity while better connecting with customers. In addition, the teams are working on adding sales-related capabilities to the automated communications platform, in order to turn the phenomenal customer engagement levels into incremental sales. “We are really excited about what the future holds for Jenny, the Package.ai chatbot at TDG. The platform’s ability to measurably lift customer engagement levels have been eye-opening. It feels like we’re finding more potential use-cases every day,” says Norman Alegria, Director of Customer Experience at TDG.
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