Fast with competent support service

When customers turn their backs on a company 60 percent of the time it is not an issue of price or product quality. More often than not it is because the customer has not been treated well or well enough. This is why the quality of the service that goes along with the product is so important to overall success. The ability to provide customers with the information they need quickly and competently is an essential aspect to successful customer service.

At Deutsche Post customer service staff is responsible for providing customers with all-around service. They handle all incoming questions and complaints. Results of a study looking at customer satisfaction in the area of customer service, however, showed considerable room for improvement. A First Choice project was called into life to remedy the problem.

Information technology is one tool customer service staff cannot do without. The root of the problem was quickly revealed after analyzing customer care processes. Over the course of time the number of subsystems administering Mail division's customer data had grown to 21. One consequence was that employees working the service lines never had access to the customer's complete data. Customer service personnel was required to request the information needed, such as previous orders, contract information and posting details, from other departments.

A new customer care system was put in place to give service personnel a 360-degree view of all available data from both business and private customers. Standardized workflows were designed to allow customer service to process the entire range of customer issues quickly. The biggest challenge was integrating the data from the various inventory systems onto a single IT platform, making it the MAIL division's most complex IT project yet.

A First Choice solution customers benefit from

The hard work paid off. Service personnel is now in a position to respond to MAIL customer inquiries much faster and in a more comprehensive and competent manner. Since the new system has been in place, MAIL's customer service has responded to more than 1.2 million customer requests without having to contact other departments for information and without having to forward the caller to another service representative. Customers save time and appreciate the professional manner in which their matters are handled.