The Situation
Oliver Bonas is a UK-based homeware and fashion retail store. Founded in 1993 by Oliver Tress, the company takes inspiration from the alchemy of great design and fresh thinking, and the belief that design has the power to positively affect how we feel. As of 2023, there are currently 85 stores in the UK, and new designs land in-store and online every week.
The Challenge
In today’s digital age, the myriad of communication channels, including email, social media, chat, phone, and more, requires businesses to juggle an array of customer touchpoints. With each platform comes a unique set of expectations, response times, and customer demographics, making it crucial to maintain consistent and high-quality service across them all. Coordinating and tracking customer interactions across these channels can be mind-boggling, leading to the potential for missed messages or inconsistent information.
What’s more, ensuring a unified brand voice and tip-top service necessitates well-trained agents, robust technology integrations, and streamlined processes. As customers increasingly expect swift and effective responses regardless of the platform, Oliver Bonas sought out to invest in a sophisticated omnichannel customer service platform to meet these challenges head-on and provide 5-star customer service. With a high-traffic website and over 80 stores, a best-in-class omnichannel solution was needed!
Our Customer Service team is at the heart of our business, not only because they support our wonderful customers and stores, but also because they provide crucial feedback on our services and products that highlight areas for change or improvement. It was vital that we found a partner who would enable us to report on all customer and store contacts through multiple channels, so that we could see this data in one place and in real-time, therefore allowing us to make well-informed decisions to enhance and improve our customer experience. We have seen a significant improvement in our team’s overall efficiency since we partnered with Dixa, nearly doubling the workload that is achieved each day which has resulted in extremely positive customer satisfaction and very happy teams.”
Natasha Sims
Operations Director
Oliver Bonas
The Solution
AI and automation to enhance agent experience
In March 2023, Oliver Bonas made the transition from Freshdesk, prioritizing the enhancement of the agent experience. Their focus was on empowering agents with a centralized workspace that is not only user-friendly but also equipped with all the necessary information on one screen, enabling them to deliver a fast and highly personalized service.
Implementing AI-driven intelligent routing, which automatically prioritizes VIP customers and divides queues based on predictable contact reasons, has led to a dramatic improvement in the CS team’s productivity, experience, and satisfaction.
With these streamlined processes, Oliver Bonas has significantly decreased the need for hiring, which could go up to 30 new agents during peak season.
It has also allowed them to create a new development career path for agents as subject matter experts in key support areas.
Customer Service within Oliver Bonas is a passion and we are lucky enough to support our online and in-store customers as well as being there for our physical store teams as well. With this much contact coming through to us we needed to filter and prioritize our conversations. We also work with a variety of systems as we are a team that fixes issues for our customers and stores, we don’t just pass them onto someone else. Dixa took all of this onboard and they integrated our order management system meaning we could process refunds, gift cards and leave notes on orders without leaving Dixa. They also enabled us to route our conversations to different teams within customer service ensuring that we could work with people’s strengths to give the best service to our customers and stores. Working in this way has meant that our team has nearly doubled their contacts per hour, our customer CSAT stays consistently high and our team feels empowered to independently work their way through the day.”
Becky Hickey
Head of Customer Service
Oliver Bonas
A strategic partner to elevate CX
At the forefront of Oliver Bonas’s digital evolution is Tom&Co, the London-based e-commerce creative agency, renowned for their longstanding partnership with OB since 2013. Over the years, they’ve played a pivotal role in designing, developing, and fostering the growth of Oliver Bonas’s online store, transforming casual visitors into loyal customers.
By supporting OB to seamlessly incorporate Dixa’s platform into their website, they’ve enabled an effortless customer service experience for their customers across multiple channels and ensured that Oliver Bonas’s commitment to customer satisfaction remains at the forefront of their digital landscape.
Integrating Dixa with Oliver Bonas was a seamless process, showcasing the collaborative synergy between Tom&Co and Dixa’s customer-centric brand. As an agency that is renowned for keeping the customer at the forefront of mind, a partnership with Dixa made perfect sense.”
Daniel Ciornie
Lead Business Analyst
Tom&Co
Quality assurance and analytics to drive data-led improvements
The use of Dixa Discover was a game-changer. By removing manual quality assurance, OB is able to assign and schedule QA reviews automatically, saving a significant amount of time. It also empowers agents with a transparent performance review that is quick and easy to access, and a report with tips to improve.
All the data gathered helps in shaping decisions across the wider business.
This integration not only elevates customer satisfaction but also equips Oliver Bonas with invaluable insights into customer behavior and preferences. Through the strategic use of Dixa, Oliver Bonas successfully enhanced its online shopping experience, solidifying the brand’s reputation and fostering customer loyalty.
Tom&Co has always been driven to craft top-notch omnichannel capability for the Oliver Bonas brand. Acknowledging that “I’m sorry, that size/item isn’t in stock” is not a good enough answer anymore with increasing shopper expectations, we implemented an ‘Endless Ailes’ solution. This allows stores to connect to the warehouse and order the out-of-stock item for the customer directly to the customer’s home. We also seamlessly integrated all Oliver Bonas stores with the Click & Collect service, which is especially handy for their smaller stores with high footfall such as in tube stations to grab those last-minute gifts on the go! That’s why when it came to customer service, only the best would do! Dixa provides cross-channel support with a 360 view of how the customer has interacted with the brand. This allows Oliver Bonas to perfect its advocacy and retention strategy with new and existing customers.”
India Claydon
Marketing & Partner Manager
Tom&Co
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