Bomenbezorgd maintains speed and promotes sales even during peak pressures

Bomenbezorgd.nl is an online gardening specialist. In four years, the organisation has grown rapidly and now has around 45 employees; all keen to make the most out of every customer contact.

Challenge: coping with high volumes of customer contact during peak season

"I can describe our challenge in two words: Peak seasons," says Liset Schiphorst, Operations Manager at Bomenbezorgd.

"Spring and autumn are the ultimate peak times for us. Every year we're scrambling, and had no insight into what was going on exactly and what was to be expected."

With high demand for the products, across the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, it became too difficult to keep an overview of the large volumes of customer contact. That's what Liset and her team wanted to fix. Because to compete within a saturated market, it's necessary to distinguish yourself by offering exceptional customer support and fast deliveries through efficient internal work processes.

Solution: a multichannel inbox that boosts speed and sales

"Looking at our team goals I can say that speed and relevance across key channels play a big role. Let's take WhatsApp for example, the most convenient channel for customers, we want every customer to receive a response within an hour.

"While, I want our team to stay equally focused on creating and looking out for sales opportunities at every touchpoint."

But how does the team ensure that even during peak season pressures, the customer experience at Bomenbezorgd remains high quality? 

"With Trengo's multichannel inbox, we collaborate easily and therefore faster, because we work from a complete overview of all customer contact. You can't achieve that with a normal inbox."

- How does the team use Trengo to respond quickly and drive sales?

1. Messages are prioritised with labels:

"For each channel, we've set up workflow automation that labels messages. Making it possible for us to meet customer expectations. WhatsApp is a 'fast channel' where customers assume to get a quicker response than over the mail. Therefore, an hour after a WhatsApp message, the conversation will be automatically labelled 'urgent'."

2. Sales opportunities are filtered by automation:

"If a message contains terms that indicate a sales opportunity, these messages are also labelled. This way, the team immediately sees that a sales opportunity has arisen, and handles this message rather than an FAQ."

3. Team efforts are tracked:

"Roles and teams are all organised. So we know who is working on what, and we easily redirect certain messages directly to planning, for example. Really useful for convenience and maintaining an overview of all customer contact."

Results

- What impact is Trengo making for Bomenbezorgd?

"Quite honestly, we were amazed when we saw that we could really manage and record all customer contact. That was really a wow moment for us. I can safely say that we experience a lot of ease of use with Trengo."

"With Trengo, we now have a grip on what is coming in for Customer Service, Purchasing and Planning. We know what to expect in terms of customer contact, have control and can scale up efficiently."

It doesn't matter from which location the Bomenbezorgd team works, be it at home, head office, another department or even any other location. From anywhere and across all channels, conversations are quickly answered and handled.

"We also handle many conversations automatically, especially when we are busy. This saves a lot of time."

— What changed since Bomenbezorgd started using Trengo?

1. Increased team efficiency:

"We work much more efficiently since Trengo. We communicate internally at speed; easily pick up phone calls and put them through, plus we collaborate quickly by @tagging colleagues within customer queries. Everything happens on one platform where all channels come together."

2. Growing customer happiness:

"We connect with customers easily, and not only respond faster but also better. This is because we extract relevant information from previous contact moments, customer profiles and other data. A normal inbox does not provide all these insights."

3. Improved collaboration and process optimisation:

"As mentioned, we have become faster in answering queries. Our teams don't have to email back and forth consulting each other, for example. And emails are automatically forwarded to the right teams, and labelled."

— What were things like at Bomenbezorgd before they started Trengo?

"In the beginning, I managed the inboxes together with the owners. We tried to indicate with flags, you know the ones within Outlook, who picks up what. We also had an iPhone lying around, and we answered WhatsApp with that.

In the early days of Bomenbezorgd this was the norm, and if the chat went off during lunch Liset would run back to quickly reply via the desktop.

"We were really trying to weather the storm. I really can't describe it any other way."

"We manually created folders in the mailbox, and worked from lots of sheets. But during the pandemic, when everyone stayed home and things got really busy for us, we found out that we couldn't handle all the communication via one phone anymore. Our mailbox exploded and we needed as many as 15 different types of flags to indicate messages."

- Trengo was needed because:

- Much higher volumes of customer enquiries were coming in; during peak seasons

- The team was losing overview; who would pick up what and when

- Internal communication was no longer running smoothly; the team was constantly texting each other to try and keep up to date

How did Bomenbezorgd set up the multichannel platform?

Step 1: Set up integrations

"All our web shops are linked to the Trengo inbox. From our Dutch to our German, plus the new webshops we gradually bought up."

So Bomenbezorgd got rid of all external parties in one fell swoop.

💡 Although the team was a little apprehensive about integrating all mailboxes, no extensive technical knowledge was expected from the team and there was no downtime.

Step 2: Add favourite customer channels, such as Live Chat and WhatsApp, to the inbox

The team at Bomenbezorgd wanted to make sure customers had a good experience before, during and after the buying process. That's why they added the most popular - and most accessible to customers - channels to the inbox. This included Live Chat, which allows customers to ask questions directly, and WhatsApp the channel our target audience prefers to use.

📚 "In addition, we use WhatsApp templates to send automated messages outside office hours, or when it is busy. This way, we stick to the 24-hour rule and get in touch with customers easily."

💡 "When setting up WhatsApp, we kept our company number, and it was transferred to our new number. We didn't have to communicate anything to customers. Super simple."

Step 3: Save time with Trengo automation

To avoid spending time performing manual tasks, the team uses:

- @tagging: customer service, our buyers and planning all communicate quickly with each other. Without emailing back and forth, they use the internal notes and tags to gather internal advice. Whether they are in the same building or in a different location.

- Automatic tags: messages are automatically arranged, so the sales team knows, for example, where opportunities lie and which emails can be picked up quickly.

- Rules: workflows make sure that customer conversations and internal messages are immediately forwarded to the right teams. This way planning knows when products are on their way.

In the future, the team wants to:

"Save even more time through automation. For example, with a Flowbot that can guide customers directly to an answer."

📚 Want to know more about these products and features? Check out our resources:

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