How The Cookware Company Achieves Outstanding Omnichannel Customer Service with 300% Growth YoY

What do you do when your company suddenly grows by 300% in a year? What strategies and systems do you implement to accommodate this growth? Most of all, how do you guarantee that you’re still maintaining the quality that you promised customers?

These were just some of the unique challenges that The Cookware Company faced over the past few years.

The Cookware Company began as a manufacturing company in 2005 and, over time, it shifted its focus to provide a range of smart cookware solutions. Today, The Cookware Company has more than 25 brands and holds more than 500 trademarks. It also has offices across the globe—from Belgium and the Netherlands to Japan and the United States.

As its meteoric growth began, The Cookware Company also had to contend with a surge in the number of customer inquiries and communication channels their support agents had to handle. Previously, they fielded perhaps five emails and one call a day, but this became hundreds of email tickets and 150+ calls per day in a short period of time.

It soon became apparent to Ludovic Leleu, The Cookware Company’s Customer Support Manager, that they needed a solution that allowed them to provide an effective omnichannel customer service experience—one that could scale with their growth.

However, Ludovic wasn’t looking for just any solution—he needed a solution that would fulfil all the company’s needs both today and in the future.

Providing Customers and Clients the 360 Experience

Before Aircall, the customer support team at The Cookware Company was nearly at their breaking point.

They had a backlog of 7,000 tickets and dozens of missed calls and didn’t have any software in place to keep track of them.

Ludovic needed an omnichannel solution that allowed his teams to:

• Recognize who called

• Know if the customer had an existing ticket or contacted them previously

• Quickly identify the caller’s order status

In addition, The Cookware Company had both B2C customers and B2B clients that each had unique support and communication needs, so Ludovic required a solution that could accommodate both. He had been looking for a solution for more than a year, but none seemed to be the right fit.

Ludovic recalled:

“I tried competitors, and most of the time, the setup is not clear, because you have to do everything yourself. Second, the costs are not clear … and the price can end up being significantly more than you initially expected”

Finally, Ludovic approached their customer support partner, Premium Plus, to ask for suggestions.

Premium Plus had previously helped them install and integrate Zendesk into their systems. With Zendesk, The Cookware Company got consolidated overviews of their social media, website, and email customer support channels and could manage and track customer inquiries. They wanted a solution that would integrate with Zendesk, so Premium Plus suggested they look into Aircall.

In addition to tracking call metrics, collecting customer data, and providing international numbers, Aircall easily integrated with The Cookware Company’s systems. This included Zendesk, which was also integrated with ShipUp and Magento.

By integrating Aircall and Zendesk into their internal team workflows and customer support channels, they were able to get a 360-degree view of the customer support journey and provide their clientele with a truly omnichannel experience.

Taking Control of Customer Support Quality

Ludovic knew that Aircall was the best solution for his company because it seamlessly integrated into their current systems and was easy to use. He also appreciated that Aircall’s pricing structure was clear and predictable.

However, he had to overcome an internal hurdle: convincing higher-ups of the value of having an integrated cloud calling solution.

“I had to sell it internally and convince management it was necessary. Since I didn’t have an omnichannel solution, I didn’t have data to report. So I couldn’t clearly point to the number of customers being lost every day. The initial move to Zendesk helped to uncover that need internally, as it showed us the number of emails we were receiving every day. But we didn’t have the phone aspect.”

What made it more difficult was that management didn’t understand how investing in a cloud-based call solution would benefit them.

However, Ludovic and his team knew the consequences of relying solely on a landline. He knew that if they continued on this path, they would lose more customers. So Ludovic started tracking every call that came into his company.

He discovered that out of 150 daily calls, they answered fewer than half. Through this exercise, Ludovic proved the value of Aircall to his company.

Once they set up Aircall, Ludovic gained a dashboard that displayed all the data on his team’s activity, allowing him to track metrics like their response time and how long customers waited on hold. He could also more accurately track team capacity and predict call trends so his teams could prepare for high call volume periods.

On top of this, moving to a cloud-based system allowed him to monitor and maintain the quality of customer support, even when working with an outsourced call center.

Global Solutions for Global Problems

Switching to Aircall made a major impact on Ludovic’s team.

“Within two months, we cleared our backlog of tickets. We had a negative NPS of -25 and we moved it to +45. We had a CSAT that was around 50%, and now we are at 85% to 90%. Availability on calls is awesome — we have virtually no missed calls.”

Every new client that The Cookware Company acquires can now have new dedicated local and international numbers through Aircall. That number will handle all product and market inquiries under the brand, making it easier for The Cookware Company to segment customers and drive more personalized experiences.

Additionally, Aircall’s IVR and skill-based routing system allows customers to identify the specific issue they need help with before they even reach an agent. This tremendously improved their customer experience, as callers are immediately routed to a customer support agent who can resolve their inquiries at the first contact.

At the same time, the company’s support team became more efficient by handling calls that are best suited to their skill set, instead of having to figure out during the call which department the customer should be transferred to. For example, Danish-speaking customers calling about a Smeg product can choose to speak to a Danish-speaking agent specialising in the Smeg brand.

Lastly, Aircall’s 80+ integration partners will enable The Cookware Company to add more services to their customer team as they scale up. Aircall can integrate with a variety of platforms and tools, ranging from e-commerce systems like Shopify to live chat platforms like Intercom.

Best of all? The Cookware Company won’t spend a lot of time setting up these integrations and figuring out how they work, thanks to Aircall’s ease-of-use and user-friendly interface.

Ludovic has one last piece of advice for other customer support departments that are looking for a powerful cloud calling platform to improve their service operations:

“Get a good integrator. You will always need to connect new channels, so get a solution that enables you to continue to do this as you grow.”