One of the biggest challenges brands face today is meeting the consumer where they are. With so many consumers relying on their favorite social media platform or messaging app to ask a product question or submit a customer service inquiry, consumer care teams are having to take an omnichannel approach when it comes to their customer communication tactics.
Unfortunately, instead of implementing a unified, proactive customer engagement strategy, many brands continue to focus on a limited number of communication tools for their consumer care efforts — leading to a disjointed customer experience program that fails both the consumer and the business. Customer service inquiries fall through the cracks, leaving consumers unhappy and consumer care agents stressed out trying to track down consumer care cases left unresolved.
Getting Creative With Customer Service Capabilities
When Freshpet, a top-tier fresh pet food supplier, decided to rebuild its consumer care strategies, it knew the challenges it was up against. The brand needed integrated, transparent communication capabilities across all digital channels. It also wanted to avoid consumer service conversations happening in silos without the ability to seamlessly move from one social media or messaging platform to another. Most of all, Freshpet’s consumer care team wanted to make sure they responded to all consumer service inquiries in a timely manner — without having to increase the amount of time they were already spending answering calls, emails, texts and more.
After evaluating multiple customer engagement platforms, Freshpet landed on the Emplifi Service Cloud, a solution that allowed the brand to connect with its audience across multiple consumer-facing platforms, from the brand’s website and social media channels to SMS and messaging apps. However, the consumer care team knew that simply implementing technology wouldn’t be enough to meet their primary objectives.
To build trust with new consumers and long-lasting relationships with pet parents who were already part of Freshpet’s customer base, the consumer care team wanted to be as responsive as possible to all inquiries. They couldn’t afford to lose track of a consumer service conversation just because the consumer switched platforms. The team was also well aware that most consumers leveraged multiple apps to contact the brand. It was imperative that Freshpet’s consumer care team had access to a single, comprehensive dashboard where it could track all conversations in real time.
By taking a strategic approach to its consumer care communication strategies and implementing a comprehensive and intuitive customer engagement platform, Freshpet reduced call volumes by nearly 40 percent and cut wait times for consumers to speak to a live agent by 29 percent.
The Unexpected Bonus of a Happy Customer: Happy Employees
Not only was Freshpet able to achieve all of its consumer service goals with a single customer engagement solution, but the intuitive nature of the platform also ushered in all new levels of collaboration that vastly improved daily operations for the brand’s consumer care team.
By managing all consumer inquiries within a single dashboard, the team was able to streamline multiple workflow processes. Meanwhile, because of the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot Scout’s ability to answer common consumer questions, Freshpet’s consumer care agents also won back hours in their workday so that they could focus on complex issues that needed more of their attention.
The improved workflows and additional time that could be allocated to high-value work translated to a vastly improved employee experience for Freshpet’s consumer care team. In the end, employees were just as happy as the pet parents they served — ensuring everyone’s pets received all the love they deserved.
Zarnaz Arlia is chief marketing officer at Emplifi, responsible for driving all marketing functions from vision and strategy to execution.
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