Coffee and tea bring people closer together. It’s during these intimate moments that some of life’s special moments can come about. Mark Hemetsberger asks: “We want to convey this warm feeling to our customers and this often starts with the first contact with a customer or a prospect: How do you approach them in a warm, personal way?”

You create that positive experience by speaking to the customer in a certain way, but also by ensuring that the customer receives quick, high-quality assistance. You want to ensure that communication is as smooth as it can possibly be. Mark explains:

“The personal nature of JDE Professional is based on our brands’ warm reputations and on fast and personal service.”

But how do you guarantee this personal service? Jacobs Douwe Egberts always has its finger on the pulse. The company uses surveys to continuously check if the service it offers is up to scratch. Its service is measured using a five-point scale. If a customer says that a problem has not been properly resolved or gives a score of lower than four, the Customer Experience team will take action. Someone from the team will call the customer and ask how JDE Professional’s service can be improved. Mark says:

“We strive to offer the best possible service and we’re proud to say that our average score is greater than four on the five-point scale.”

The team is currently made up of around 30 customer service employees who are in contact with customers every day. Customers reach out to the team with a whole host of questions; these can be about changes introduced by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, machine breakdowns, or deliveries of new stock.

It is often the case that questions come to the Customer Experience team that are actually best handled by the Marketing or Sales teams. For this reason, customer service employees also work closely with their colleagues in Marketing and Sales. Mark meets with the other departments on a weekly basis.

“As members of the Customer Experience team, we are well and truly at the heart of the organisation – it makes our work so much fun!”

While the employees embody the company’s core values and contribute to the warm feeling of Jacobs Douwe Egberts through the ways they communicate, the variety of communication channels also adds to the personal experience. By deploying an extensive range of communication channels and integrating these within Engage, the organisation ensures that its customers enjoy personal, warm and fast service.

“Customers can reach us on all direct and indirect channels, including by phone, email, WhatsApp, social media, live chat and chatbot. We want to offer our customers the full range of options so that they can contact us using their preferred means. This is in line with our customer-focused offering. Since some channels are more costly than others, we try to encourage customers to use the more efficient channels, such as WhatsApp, but not everyone wants to do that. Some customers have been with us for a very long time, or may be a little older, and expect to be able to communicate with us in the same ways that they always have, for instance via email or over the telephone. And that’s no problem at all – we are happy to be able to offer these options if our customers value them.”

You may wonder how a chatbot can contribute to a personal, warm approach. If a virtual team member handles messages from a customer, is this still customer-focused? Mark believes so, and feels that the chatbot contributes to the brand promise.

“The chatbot does a lot of preparatory work. When a customer comes into contact with a chatbot, it will usually request information that is useful for the service representative, such as the customer’s postcode and customer number. Approximately half of all chats are handled by the chatbot, but if that isn’t possible, then our team is on hand to help during office hours. Using the pre-collected information, our team members can help the customer quickly and effectively through the live chat or one of our other channels.”

If you have a large number of communication channels, it can be easy to lose track of communication. This is where Engage comes in. Messages from different streams all flow to a single dashboard, meaning that you can maintain an overview of your communication. Team members can claim messages and assign them to each other, so they can easily use the tool to collaborate across a large team.

Mark explains:

“Engage is extremely easy to use. It is clear, insightful and pleasant to work in. I never get any complaints about the system.”

Not only does Engage give you an overview of the communication channels, but it also lets you see an overview of your team. Using the statistics from the tool, Mark regularly looks at KPIs that let him monitor his team.

“So that we can guarantee our customers the very best service, I monitor the handling times of the messages we receive. I can also see if all of the messages have been answered and how the customer was spoken to.”