Interdiscount and Microspot.ch get ahead of the game with seamless customer service
Online retailer delights customers with service that’s both speedy and seamless
To be a leader in the modern-day retail space you need to have two things: omnichannel capabilities and great customer service. Well-known Swiss retailer Interdiscount, runs 170 stores, an ecommerce website, and a sister site for its online shopping hub, Microspot.ch.
While Interdiscount is known for home electronics, Microspot.ch brings the same high level shopping experience to consumers looking for homeware, toys, beauty products, tech, sporting equipment, and more. In addition to a great selection of products, the retailer has a vision of providing the best customer experience in the industry.
“Our 2025+ strategy is to retain our position with Interdiscount as the leading electronic retailer in Switzerland with the best online shopping experience and service. With Salesforce, we can give consumers a seamless, omnichannel experience, and if they need support, we’re here for them in their choice of three languages,” said Georg Weinhofer, Chief Operating Officer at Interdiscount.
With multiple touchpoints to connect and a global service skills shortage to contend with, that’s no mean feat. But since kicking off its service transformation in 2021, the company is responding to customers faster, more efficiently, and sending customer satisfaction ratings soaring.
1. Great service starts with better visibility
When Weinhofer’s team were charged with elevating customer service, they started by working towards unlocking 360-degree visibility of every customer. But without a case management solution, every call or email was treated as a new case, and customer service agents lacked visibility of the bigger picture. They also had to work in multiple legacy systems, which was time-consuming and frustrating.
“A good omnichannel strategy relies on joined-up processes across sales, marketing, ecommerce, and logistics. Without a single source of truth, service agents can’t see the whole customer journey or offer a truly seamless experience,” Weinhofer explained.
To bring its vision of seamless customer service across multiple channels to life, Interdiscount began looking for a new solution – one platform that would centralise communications, modernise operations, and integrate well with other key systems.
Having already implemented Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud, the team rolled out Service Cloud for its great user experience and MuleSoft to integrate the technology behind its ecommerce business.
“MuleSoft stitched together our multi-cloud environment and on-premises servers. It supports both API and EDI integrations, which is crucial in the retail space to issue credit notes, invoices, and connect to our warehouses without manually re-entering data,” confirmed Marc Zesiger, Chief Information Officer at Interdiscount.
The integration went smoothly, with implementation partner, Valion, providing MuleSoft expertise. The team connected internal platforms and systems from up to 60 third-party vendors to create a single source of truth. Finally, they rolled out Service Cloud to provide a central console for staff to work in.
2. One hub to centralise communications
Working remotely with IBM iX in 2021, the team began the discovery phase to scope out the next steps. While IBM iX defined the roadmap, the teams worked as one to deliver the project despite never meeting in person due to the pandemic. Together, they designed a service solution and identified areas for optimisation and automation, working towards a goal of making every process as efficient as possible.
“During discovery, we widened the scope of the project from simply replacing old, disparate phone and email systems to adopting a whole new approach,” said Weinhofer. “Service Cloud became our central communications hub to connect customers, the contact centre, after-sales staff, and the order management team.”
Starting with Interdiscount, the company launched a minimum viable product, onboarding Microspot.ch in time for the peak sales period between autumn and Christmas. In total, 90 contact centre agents, 10 in order management, and 15 after-sales staff all work in Salesforce.
By automating more processes, the company has reduced costs while delivering faster, more convenient customer service to thousands of shoppers. With one solution supporting communication across all departments – from the contact centre, to after sales, order management, and even third-party partners such as delivery companies – service has never been faster, more transparent or more efficient.
The new environment also gives the retailer the flexibility to partly outsource communications and inbound calls to a third-party during peak periods, which wasn’t possible previously.
3. Richer insights into performance
Today, agents have full visibility of the customer’s communications across all departments, and any open cases. They handle approximately 33,000 calls and 25,000 emails per month and will be opening more lines of communication across live chat and messaging in the coming months.
Interdiscount and Microspot.ch have redefined the service team’s KPIs to include first-contact resolution, first response time, and total resolution time. “We tracked operator availability and the number of unanswered emails previously, but it was simply not possible to monitor response times and first-time resolution rates without Service Cloud,” added Weinhofer. “Now, we look at those dashboards every day, and if we see an issue developing, we can take measures to prevent any dips in service levels.”
And to make sure customers are enjoying the new service, the company tracks the customer effort score. After engaging with the support team, customers receive an email asking for feedback. When they’ve rated how effortless it was to solve the issue from a scale of 1-7 they’re asked to provide a written response explaining more.
If the customer states they’re not satisfied with how their case was resolved, they’re automatically routed to a webpage where they can request a callback to discuss the issue further, but most customers are satisfied and cite the fast response, quick refunds, and ease of using the service as the top benefits.
4. Helping customers to help themselves
The team also tracks trending topics and works alongside the marketing, ecommerce, and IT team to proactively resolve common customer issues.
“The majority of cases are around order tracking and requests to cancel items,” said Zesiger. “We’re working on implementing a self-service help centre so customers can find information like that quickly without reaching out to us.”
The hub will act as a first port of call for customers to find fast answers to queries 24/7, and insight from Salesforce is helping to shape the solution. Next, the team plans to open more channels for support such as Live Chat, social media, and WhatsApp, to make sure it can connect with customers how and when they prefer to communicate.
But service isn’t the only area that Salesforce is optimising.
The ecosystem also includes Marketing Cloud, which is used to share a digital newsletter from each brand with product recommendations, and handle transactional emails such as order updates. The marketing team can customise dynamic templates with images and text and switch between languages, which is a process that was previously managed by the IT team.
“The tech team is always really busy, so being able to empower staff to do more themselves is better for everyone. The marketing team can enjoy a more creative role, and the IT team is free to innovate, adapt, extend, and configure our Salesforce platform to better support our business,” commented Zesiger.
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Conclusion:
Since implementing Salesforce, the human experience has improved for both customers and staff, and the IT team achieved this transformation ahead of schedule with almost no bumps in the road.
“Using an agile approach means we can roll out small feature sets so we don’t overwhelm people, which has been great for user adoption,” said Weinhofer. “As we move into the next phase of the project, we can focus on omnichannel and optimisation knowing we’ve already achieved a service offering we can be proud of.”
With this new approach to service, Interdiscount and Microspot.ch combine the human-centric support customers expect in store with the efficiency and transparency of technology, creating more memorable experiences for customers however they like to shop – and that really is an industry-leading approach.
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