Victorinox crafts customer experiences with Swiss precision

Karl Elsener set up his workshop in Ibach in 1884 and created the Swiss Army knife in 1897. Victorinox products—now including watches, luggage, and perfumes—are sold in over 120 countries worldwide.

Complex manual processes and lack of transparency reduce productivity.

With no CRM system and only basic ERP functions, Victorinox’s support processes for its business customers—mainly individual retailers—were extremely time-consuming and manual. For example, the spreadsheets for recording new customer data were so complex that only experts could make changes, which slowed everything down.

The ordering process for retailers also involved a lot of administrative work for Victorinox’s internal sales team. Orders received via email or phone had to be manually entered into the ERP system, leaving less time for value-add activities, such as strengthening relationships and expanding the company’s market share.

There were similar challenges in its B2B marketing division, such as ensuring retailers are provided with the latest product information and pricing. Again, the process was granular and distributed across several stakeholders. One challenge became clear when classifying retailers by product category. Transparency over whether all retail partners had the relevant information and measuring the impact of its marketing efforts was nigh on impossible.

A premium brand needs premium service.

Quality and sustainability are core values for this long-established Swiss company. With customer numbers rising, so too were customer enquiries and repair requests. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Victorinox to ensure these were processed quickly and its customers got the experience they expected.

Introducing Sales Cloud has made recording new customer data considerably faster. Around 80 to 90% of all compulsory fields are prefilled, and data is transferred to the ERP system automatically via an interface. Centralising its data collection has also enabled Victorinox to gain a 360-degree view of each customer and, in turn, full transparency over all customer-side processes and results.

To increase the transparency—and above all the efficiency—of its retailer orders, Victorinox also selected Commerce Cloud. The once manual steps to process orders received by phone and email have now been replaced with the online B2B platform. The ability to reorder functions and full order histories also make things more convenient for customers themselves.

Almost 30% of the company’s orders are imported from Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, and around 60% of these are now sent to the logistics centre automatically, saving staff an enormous amount of time. The integration of Commerce Cloud and Sales Cloud has been pivotal in Victorinox’s success. Documenting all its activities centrally gives the sales team a 360-degree view and therefore significantly greater transparency over its B2B customers. The company can now plan and implement its activities strategically and use the results to continuously optimise its B2B marketing strategy.

B2B marketing optimization increases data quality and sales efficiency.

The company’s monthly newsletter—which covers things like new and discontinued products and upcoming campaigns—has always been important for communicating with its retailers. While the sales team previously had to send these emails individually, Victorinox now uses Marketing Cloud to manage them. By consolidating all its contacts, it now ensures that these important messages reach retailers promptly. It can also segment customers easily for the first time—for example, by product category—which is important as the stores all stock different ranges.

During the Marketing Cloud deployment, Victorinox was also able to update and cleanse its database. Now Salesforce has established a single source of truth, the company has quickly found new ways to use the data, such as for central planning and managing its visual merchandising. Visit logs and photos from the points of sale are also included, creating transparency and helping the sales team prioritise important contacts and meeting preparations.

Excellent customer service experiences that align with the brand’s reputation.

Service Cloud has enabled Victorinox to accelerate many of its service processes and make them more efficient. The company uses an external contact centre for support at peak service times. With Service Cloud’s powerful dashboards and reports, the company’s service managers now have full transparency over processes and how well it is adhering to SLAs. Any insights are visible to all relevant departments via Salesforce, which helps the team make the customer experience and product development processes more customer centric.

Administrative effort for watch repairs reduced by 40%.

Salesforce has made Victorinox’s watch repair service significantly faster, with customers now completing an online form to register their repair request. This data is then sent straight to Service Cloud, which automatically creates a case and sends the customer a confirmation.

The system also simultaneously generates a QR code that is given to the workshop with the watch once it has been mailed in. The technicians then simply scan the code to view all of the information at a glance and can enter status changes and comments straight into the database. The entire process is paper-free and transparent, and administrative effort has reduced by 40%. 

Salesforce has given Victorinox a 360-degree view of its B2B operations for the first time. Automations in Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud have considerably improved staff efficiency, and the greater transparency and convenience offered by the new ordering process are improving retailer satisfaction. Together with optimised, paperless watch repairs—which will soon be rolled out in other areas—Victorinox is now delivering a customer experience that matches the quality of its products.