Case Study: Creating an Omnichannel Customer Care Centre

Omnichannel concept with stacked blocks and contact icons

242

Established in Bath in 2002, Lovehoney is a market-leading products brand. Its focus on exceptional product innovation, customer service and marketing has placed it at the forefront of developments in the market.

In August 2021, Lovehoney joined forces with WOW Tech, and together with Swiss brand Amorana – which was acquired by Lovehoney in 2020 – they now form the Lovehoney Group (LHG).

The Lovehoney Group today boasts a global customer base of 2.2 million, spanning operations in the UK, the US, Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Canada and New Zealand. The group also operates 11 different ecommerce websites.

“Our mission statement, and actually the very first strapline that spun up after the merger, was ‘Customer first’.

“The customer is at the heart of everything we do, and included in that there is a big element of developing our people and keeping our people interested in what we are doing.” Jan Oldaker, Head of Customer Care at Lovehoney.

QUERIES RESOLVED INCREASED by new chatbot; avg 35% compared to the previous solution
INTELLIGENT CALL ROUTING to leverage the global footprint and capabilities of the Customer Care team with a ‘follow the sun’ approach
ENHANCED ROI from their Salesforce investment by integrating Service Cloud Voice and Einstein Chatbot with Service Cloud

Fragmented Customer and Employee Experiences

Lovehoney has been leading with one motto: ‘Customer First’. At the heart of their customer-centric approach is their Customer Care operation that supports the majority of regions and websites of the group, serving customers 24/7/365.

Their rapid growth together with the recent mergers and acquisitions strained the capabilities of their existing contact centre infrastructure.

Various tools (telephony, chat, ticketing) were operating in silos, causing disconnected customer experiences and frustration to the customer care team that was not having the full picture of the customer interactions readily available.

And the problems were only accentuated during the pandemic when advisors had to work from home.

To bring all contact streams in one place and enable their advisors to have an up-to-date view of all customer interactions, Lovehoney had already implemented Salesforce Service Cloud, but they still needed to address challenges with their legacy telephony and chatbot tools that were not able to support the vision for a global, omnichannel customer care operation.

Creating a Global, Omnichannel Customer Care Centre

Lovehoney engaged Sabio Group and its specialist Salesforce practice to support them in the move away from their existing solutions, helping to implement Salesforce Service Cloud Voice (SCV) and Amazon Connect for their telephony, and Salesforce Einstein to replace their chatbot.

The initiative had a pressing deadline mandated by seasonality that was to start in a few months’ time, and the fast approaching ‘end of life’ of their existing chatbot.

Sabio’s experience in contact centres, and specifically with CX chatbot technologies for more than two decades, coupled with our extensive knowledge of Salesforce and Service Cloud, offered a unique blend of understanding and skill that allowed them to meet the requirements head-first and on time.

Telephony

Sabio worked closely with Lovehoney’s Customer Care and IT teams to understand not only the technical challenges, but also how they were affecting advisors and customers.

With Lovehoney’s peak season starting on Black Friday, in just five weeks the team was able to implement Service Cloud Voice and Amazon Connect and achieve:

The delivery of an efficient telephony platform that supports the company globally with advisors working from home
Visibility of the customer contact points and conversations in one place
Removal of latency and call quality issues that led to lagging and dropped calls
Intelligent call routing to leverage the global footprint and capabilities of the Customer Care team with a ‘follow the sun’ approach

“The international routing of calls had significant issues with call quality, lagging and dropped calls. With Service Cloud Voice on AWS Connect, that changed overnight!” Jan Oldaker, Head of Customer Care at Lovehoney.

Chatbot

The existing solution was reaching ‘end of life,’ which brought a pressing deadline on replacing it. Understanding the urgency, Sabio went over and above to ensure Lovehoney’s chat availability would not be interrupted.

“We chose to continue our partnership with Sabio because we knew they were really fast and also that they had some very good quality people with real expertise and knowledge.” Jan Oldaker, Head of Customer Care at Lovehoney.

Working closely with Lovehoney, Sabio have:

Replaced the existing solution with the Salesforce Einstein Chatbot in just 4 weeks.
Increased the number of queries resolved by the new chatbot; averaging 35% compared to the previous solution (avg 25%). Performance continues to improve, reducing the instances requiring live support.
Enabled advisors to see the transcript of the chatbot in near real-time alongside the history of all other customer interactions in one screen.

Results

Sabio were able to deliver a scalable, future-proofed Salesforce solution that empowers Lovehoney’s growth ambitions for 2022 and beyond, ahead of their ‘peak season’:

Enhanced the ROI from their Salesforce investment by integrating Service Cloud Voice and Einstein Chatbot with Service Cloud.
Improved experience for both advisors and customers across channels.
Improved telephony and chatbot performance, meaning advisors have more time to focus on the customers’ needs and their own personal development.

“We want our advisors to be brand ambassadors, freeing them up to do the more interesting work, having the simpler enquiries resolved by the bot and more automation in the IVR.” Jan Oldaker, Head of Customer Care at Lovehoney

The Future

Lovehoney understand that to become leaders in product and market across regions they need to make decisions based on data.

The teams at Sabio are working closely with Lovehoney, refining their new telephony and chatbot solutions to produce insights and reports that will help them further optimise their operation and incorporate additional regions and teams.