On November 9, 2022, Thomas Sailer (Director Global After Sales & Authorized Representative at Gardena) and Stephan Haller (Managing Partner Dr. Fried & Partner) offered an expert forum at the KVD Service Congress.
After two years of online congresses, the service association KVD once again invited its members to a large face-to-face event – this year at the Grand Hall Zollverein in Essen. Networking, maintaining contacts and knowledge transfer were the focus of this year’s congress motto: “New or normal – service as a driver”. Keynotes, workshops, expert forums and panel discussions focused on the changes resulting from the past two years of Covid19. On the other hand, the effects of the service revolution on the service of the future were discussed in particular.
In the expert forum of Gardena and Dr. Fried & Partner with around 30 participants, practical approaches from our joint project were presented on how Gardena is constantly making its after sales units more customer-centric. By consciously designing the contact channel mix and optimizing contact processing, the aim of the project is to continuously offer customers/ dealers an optimal experience – even during peak season.
Thomas Sailer and Stephan Haller outlined the following steps for more intelligent contact processing at the expert forum:
- Creating transparency about contact reasons through continuous analysis
- Identification and gradual 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
We would like to thank Thomas Sailer and his team for the excellent cooperation in our joint project and the successful expert forum. Thanks also to Detlef Birkhof from Bosch for moderating the expert forum. And we say “Thank you!” to the KVD for the perfect organization and execution of the Service Congress in the impressive location at the UNSECO World Heritage Site Zeche und Kokerei Zollverein. We look forward to the next KVD Service Congress!