Croma delivers consistent service that wins customer loyalty

In line with its service-first approach, Croma wanted to provide a consistent experience to all its customers across channels, irrespective of the brand or product they had bought.

To achieve this, the company had to collaborate with the numerous brands it retailed. And call centre agents and field service technicians needed a clear, unified view of end-to-end processes, workflows, and customer data, so they could offer seamless customer service. 

This could all be enabled by replacing the disparate systems Croma had for CRM and field service, with a single, unified, integrable solution. 

"As retailers from the house of Tatas, we go above and beyond to understand and delight our customers,” explains Shibashish Roy, Deputy CEO, Croma. “Salesforce helps us create a layer that masks the complexity of our ecosystem, and empowers teams to provide simplified, personalised journeys to customers."

Customers contact Croma for various reasons - such as product or store location queries, installation follow-ups, and complaints —  on the phone, through WhatsApp, email, or social media. These inquiries are all consolidated on Service Cloud. Cases are then auto-assigned, and if they require a more complex or lengthier resolution, they're escalated via automated ticketing and intelligent queuing to the agent best equipped for this. 

Agents use a unified console, well-defined workflows, and a comprehensive knowledge bank to efficiently resolve issues. Processes for refunds, returns, and cancellations are clearly defined as well.  This streamlining and automation of service processes has made call centre agents more productive, and reduced average handling time (AHT) by 9%. Speedy access to a comprehensive knowledge bank and FAQs has helped reduce the call hold percentage by 12%.  

The solution also tools supervisors and service leads with rich, interactive dashboards to monitor and optimise daily operations. With real-time access to KPIs and trends at the individual and team levels, they can identify and act on areas of improvement on the fly. This process of continuous optimisation, and the resulting delivery of seamless, unified service has boosted the NPS by 7%.

“The service we deliver to our customers is what differentiates us beyond the products that we offer,” says Shivmangal Barai, Head of Customer Service, Croma . “With Salesforce, every interaction we have with the customer through the asset ownership lifecycle is intelligent, consistent, and of high quality.”

Field service technicians are at the frontline of customer experience for a company like Croma, and it's crucial to empower them with the right information so they can ensure customer satisfaction. 

For the Croma Authorised Service Provider (ASP) team, nearly all this information is now available through the Salesforce Field Service app,  which is installed on the smartphone of every technician. When a work order arrives, ASP dispatchers assign a field service appointment to technicians based on their availability, location, and most importantly, skills. The technician has a complete view of who the customer is, what their concerns have been so far, and the details of the latest request. This helps them decide what spare parts and inventory they need to take along to complete the task successfully. With the knowledge bank available on the app, technicians can also access support and resources on the go. 

Data from these interactions flow into dashboards, and with real-time access to KPIS and the ratings for all technicians, ASP team managers can guide their teams to deliver best-in-class service.

Agents can now deliver more contextual experiences by using a comprehensive customer 360 built on Data Cloud that consolidates customer interactions going back a decade or more. The customer 360 is the agents’ single source of truth, unifying data from multiple systems - from the order management system and multiple Excel sheets to service interactions on Service Cloud. 

Historical and current details, such as customer details and preferences, and order data enable agents to provide highly personalised engagement and swift case resolution. 

More data from sources such as the website and app will continue to enrich this customer 360.

Croma has successfully established improved baselines for its service experience. But the company sees this as an ongoing journey and will continue to leverage Salesforce  to make customer service more intelligent and efficient. 

The roadmap includes greater case deflection via chatbots, and using AI to anticipate outcomes and streamline processes and workflows for increasingly improved customer experiences. The team is also looking at deploying generative AI for automated service replies and case summaries so agents can serve customers better.

Delivering consistent service in a multi-brand and multi-product landscape is no easy feat. The brand that gets this right stands apart from its competitors. By unlocking and unifying its enterprise data on Salesforce Einstein 1, Croma is bringing its teams together around the customer to improve the service experience. And ultimately build meaningful, long-term customer relationships.