Interview
HORNBACH: Providing optimal support to the customer
HORNBACH’s success is due to a number of factors, Stephen explains. HORNBACH stands for the largest selection, the largest stock and the lowest price. But above all, HORNBACH wants to support the customer and his project. Hence it goes without saying that personal customer service is important. But how to keep a personalised service while at the same time having a growth strategy and on top of that offer the lowest price guarantee?
Firstly, find out what HORNBACH’s customers want exactly. Danissa van Hattem, product owner of the Salesforce environment at HORNBACH: “We went to Eindhoven to visit Nextview’s Design Thinking Center. There we made personas out of our customers. After that we took it upon us to go through the entire customer journey as that persona. That way, it became clear to us what we needed to optimise.”
So what were the opportunities for optimisation? Stephen: “In our old environment, people dropped out but we didn’t know exactly where. We also didn’t know why. And we couldn’t approach those people afterwards either.” With Salesforce’s tools, HORNBACH has many more opportunities to track customer interactions. “Moreover the onboarding process has become much smoother and runs faster”, Stephen adds.
HORNBACH has been able to absorb a strong growth in customers without sacrificing the customer experience. And without a negative impact on the workload of the back office. There is a solid base for a smooth customer experience for business customers. It is certainly not the final destination for HORNBACH. Danissa: “Now we are going to investigate what employees at our local branches would like to improve themselves. And of course we want to ask our business customers the same thing.”
A solid basis for the future
HORNBACH was faced with a difficult task: how to achieve significant growth while keeping a demanding customer satisfied? Stephen Smits, Director of Operations: “It was quite a complex project. So we wondered who we could take on such a complex project with. A partner who, if things got tough, would still take responsibility. Working with Nextview took off exactly as we hoped.”
HORNBACH not only wanted a solution to this problem, but also a solution that could be adaptable to new challenges in the future. Stephen: “Now we have a future-proof solution that we can build upon. By choosing Salesforce, we can piggyback on future developments on the platform. New add-ons are added all the time. That fits in perfectly with our growth strategy. And with Nextview we have an implementation partner who, like us, thinks in terms of: ‘how are we going to solve this together?’ It felt good.”
Want to know more?
Read the customer case: HORNBACH
