The Dufresne Group (TDG) achieves an 85% Increase in self-service delivery confirmations with Package.ai’s Conversational AI Platform
The implementation of a single, unified, two-way customer communications platform has given all departments in TDG full transparency of every customer interaction and helped dramatically enhance customer experience through each stage of the lifecycle.
BACKGROUND
The Dufresne Group (TDG) is the largest Ashley Furniture retailer in Canada and the parent company of Dufresne Furniture & Appliances. It currently has 46 retail locations, a growing e-commerce business, and six distribution centers handling over a thousand daily deliveries.
To manage the various stages of the customer lifecycle, TDG has implemented four separate solutions, from pre-sales to post-delivery. This included Paragon for routing, Dispatch Track for delivery logistics, a separate solution for pre-purchase customer communications, and one for promoting social reviews post-purchase. With this many piece-meal, none-unified solutions, it was proving impossible to get a complete picture of a single TDG customer’s experience and journey.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
TDG knew it needed to change this fragmented, non-integrated, multi-vendor solution because:
- Its one-way customer communications made it difficult for customers to have a voice throughout the post-purchase process, including delivery
- There was no unified view of customer interactions, and this was preventing the delivery of the insights necessary to provide an end-to-end customer experience to foster loyalty and repeat business
- Its lack of engaging post-purchase interactions with its customers was failing to set TDG apart in a highly competitive market and not delivering positive reviews to help promote the business
The challenge was to optimize its post-purchase communications with customers and develop a unified line-of-sight into all customer interactions to:
- Cultivate customer connections beyond being merely transactional
- Build deeper, ongoing customer relationships to drive more sales
- Enhance the overall customer experience
- Deliver more satisfied customers
- Develop a channel for positive customer reviews
SOLUTION
TDG saw an opportunity to consolidate its multiple solutions into a single, unified platform for all customer communications and delivery operations by utilizing Package.ai.
“I was convinced that this would be a game-changer for us in our journey to become a leader in customer-centricity,” says Norman Alegria, director of customer experience at TDG, who was an early champion for the project.
The Package.ai implementation team worked hand-in-hand with the TDG team to map all processes and workflows, analyze existing platforms, and prioritize which mission-critical activities could immediately be shifted to the Package.ai platform and which would be phased in over time.
The thoughtful migration and consolidation process was completed seamlessly in less than four months with zero impact on day-to-day operations at TDG.
RESULTS
Pakage.ai immediately enabled TDG to provide more open and effective two-way communications with customers in the post-purchase phase. This resulted in:
- An 85% Increase in self-service delivery confirmation rates, leading to the highest ever-recorded successful delivery rate and therefore reduced costs and increased customer experience levels.
- A 239% Increase in automated customer support chat conversations that resulted in a significant reduction in costly human customer service responses via traditional phone calls
- A new source for positive social reviews, with higher customer engagement levels translating to increased positive reviews, which is a critical marketing metric for the TDG business leaders
- A 45% feedback response rate regarding the delivery experience while also making it possible to measure and improve the delivery operations in a data-driven and customer-centric manner. Prior to Package.ai, the previous platform did not offer any customer feedback
“Package.ai represents a transformation for our business, giving us one platform to manage all customer interactions and providing all departments a complete line of sight for each customer interaction,” says Norman Alegria, director of customer service at The Dufresne Group. “The future of retail is relationship-based rather than transactional, and Package.ai is helping TDG make that future a reality.”
WHAT’S NEXT
Now that the initial implementation is up and running, the TDG team is working on consolidating additional services and workflows onto the Package.ai platform. The goal is to further improve internal productivity while better connecting with customers. In addition, the teams are working on adding sales-related capabilities to the automated communications platform to turn the phenomenal customer engagement levels into incremental sales.
“We are really excited about what the future holds for Jenny, the Package.ai chatbot at TDG. The platform’s ability to measurably lift customer engagement levels has been eye-opening. It feels like we’re finding more potential use-cases every day,” says Norman Alegria in summation.
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