“Service in Turbulent Times” was the motto of this years’ Service Congress of the Austrian Customer Service Association (KVA) on April 13 and 14, 2023 in Altlengbach near Vienna. Representatives of well-known companies from Austria and the D-A-CH region met to network, cultivate contacts and share knowledge. Among them were Markus Kräutle, Head of Customer Service at GARDENA, and Stephan Haller, Managing Partner of Dr. Fried & Partner.
Current service challenges such as sustainability, inflation and price increases, delivery bottlenecks and solutions for service success were discussed in presentations, keynotes and forums at the KVA Service Congress.
In their presentation to around 40 participants, Markus Kräutle and Stephan Haller showed how the GARDENA After Sales units are becoming more and more customer-centric. The background to the presentation is a joint project by GARDENA and Dr. Fried & Partner on intelligent contact processing in the GARDENA After Sales. The aim of the project is to continuously offer customers/ dealers an optimal experience – even during peak season. In their presentation, Markus Kräutle and Stephan Haller outlined the following steps for more intelligent contact processing:
- Creating transparency about contact reasons through continuous analysis
- Identification and step-by-step implementation of avoidance/ optimization approaches in the relevant contact reasons, e.g. through automation, knowledge transfer, outsourcing
- “Tidying up” the contact channels currently offered and targeted placement of the most suitable channel for the customer/ dealer/ GARDENA in each case
- Development of a strategy for which contact channels should be used to communicate with customers and dealers in the future
- Transformation of the units from contact processor to knowledge aggregator (knowledge transfer in all channels) and qualitative/ quantitative controller of contact processing – whether personalized or digital
Stephan Haller already presented the joint project on “Intelligent Contact Processing at GARDENA After Sales” at the Service Congress of the German Customer Service Association in November 2022 together with Thomas Sailer, Director Global After Sales & Authorized Officer at GARDENA.
We would like to thank Markus Kräutle for the excellent cooperation and the successful presentation at the KVA Service Congress. Thanks also to the KVA for the perfect organization and execution of the Service Congress. We look forward to attending the next KVA Service Congress.