Improving customer relationship management without impacting costs

Withings builds products jam-packed with technology and innovation for both medically monitored people and others who just want to improve their quality of life. To support its growth and perfect its customer relationship management, the French company chose Zendesk for its customer support solution, customising it with the integration of a delivery tracking solution by partner Shipup. This comprehensive, scalable solution helped Withings get an omnichannel overview of its customers and improve the agent experience. Since then, sales have surged, but not costs.

As a French Tech icon, Withings manufactures and markets connected devices in the health industry. The company’s products can help you analyse your sleep, access a consumer cardio scale, and detect potential arrhythmia using an ECG watch.

Now that the Nokia era is truly behind them*, Withings wants to accelerate its international growth, while maintaining strong roots in France. It should come as no surprise that some smartwatches are still assembled in its Issy-les-Moulineaux workshop, and a large number of its reference health professionals remain French!

Today, Withings distributes its products through various channels such as FNAC, Darty, Boulanger and Amazon, in an effort to reach tech-savvy customers. The company chose Zendesk specifically to improve their experience. A one-stop solution optimising customer relationship management, and more…

Processing and leveraging customer requests more efficiently

Withings now uses several Zendesk tools on a daily basis, such as Support for ticketing, Chat for live messaging and Explore, an analytics-driven tool providing detailed reports and performance indicators with just a few clicks.

Another Zendesk tool quickly became essential: Guide. This self-service knowledge base makes it very easy to process all customer requests. It is also used by various internal departments, as Pablo Hamer, Customer Service Director at Withings, points out: “The tool provides insights to the marketing department and thus informs product development. It also gives additional clarity to legal teams.”

Guide is a particularly valuable tool during major sales events, such as Black Friday. Withings uses this help center to deliver content specifically tailored to the event, and made readily available to Internet users. Those users can then easily and autonomously find out which products are available, and in which countries they can get deals.

Improving customer satisfaction using real-time delivery monitoring

Another key to improving customer relations is optimised delivery tracking. To achieve this, Withings chose to integrate its partner solution Shipup, which is available in the Zendesk Marketplace. In just a few clicks, Withings was able to connect this solution directly to its e-commerce platform and to its Zendesk platform.

Withings can now offer its customers a custom, branded, proactive follow-up. Customers and customer service are better informed. Any potential issue is immediately identified – such as a package stuck in transit – and can be quickly resolved. At the agent level, order tracking shows up directly in the Zendesk interface, so that the agent doesn’t need to check the carrier’s site. This saves time and offers added convenience. Lastly, a satisfaction survey is sent at the time of delivery. Negative feedback is escalated into Zendesk tickets to detect potential critics before it’s too late. Shipup helps reduce the contact rate while increasing customer satisfaction. “Thanks to Shipup, Withings improved its NPS. It used to be around 30, but now it’s over 55,” remarks Pablo Hamer.

Victor Habourdin, Web and e-Commerce manager at Withings adds: “Shipup was easy to set up, it’s one of those services that I can just sit back and leave running, knowing that it improves our post-purchase experience. There’s no maintenance or upkeep needed, and it solves a significant e-commerce issue.”

Better customer relationships at no additional cost

Today, using all these different Zendesk tools, Withings offers its customers a unique shopping experience and round-the-clock availability. Sales increased, without needing to deploy additional resources: “We’ve noted a 10% decrease in incoming ticket volume between January and September 2019, compared to the same period in 2018,” says Pablo Hamer.

In addition, using Zendesk solutions has positive effects on human resources. It’s simple: sales teams no longer have to answer the same questions from customers over and over again. This boosts team motivation and productivity. “The agent experience is improved, which helps reduce their turnover,” adds Pablo Hamer.

Close links with your Customer Success Manager

To better leverage all these new tools, Withings is supported by a dedicated Zendesk Customer Success Manager. They check in on the company, providing advice and problem-solving support for daily operations, with no workflow disruption.

For instance, Withings had tried developing an in-house tool over the last few months, that would be similar to Zendesk while costing less. In the end, this idea was discarded: “Very quickly, we realised that industrial-scale ticketing was such an undertaking that any another solution would have been inevitably more expensive. The Zendesk solution is so intuitive and well integrated that we will probably keep it for a long time,” says Pablo Hamer.

Helping foster a new community

In close collaboration with the Customer Success team, Withings also created a new community: Gather.

“Our Customer Success helped us set it up and saved us a lot of time. This way, there was no need for any external third party,” says Pablo Hamer.

“Our Customer Success helped us set it up and saved us a lot of time. This way, there was no need for any external third party,” says Pablo Hamer.

An extension of Guide, this new community aims at further fostering the use of self-service. In full autonomy, Internet users can find a wealth of information on product reliability, technical issues or previous buying experiences. Less than 6 months after its implementation, Gather is already yielding significant traffic. “During the peak month, over 50,000 people viewed content on the forum,” comments Pablo Hamer. With this community, Withings can now use valuable insights to prioritise development requests and make even faster progress on product improvement. Only available in English for now, Gather should be launching its German and French versions very soon.

For Withings, Zendesk is not just a customer relationship tool. This comprehensive solution has become a real knowledge base, optimising both ticketing and reporting management. From now on, the company can better collect and track insights.

*Sold to Nokia in 2016, Withings became French again in 2018