An innovative retail group digitalising itself quickly and at scale
Fnac Darty is a leading retailer and e-merchant in Europe, specializing in household appliances, electronics, and entertainment products. It operates more than 900 stores in thirteen countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and aims to provide customers with in-store, online, and omnichannel shopping solutions that suit their needs.
Coming from its two main brands the group has 2 very important values in its DNA : innovation and service. Both Fnac and Darty are well known for the high level of expertise and service customers can expect from their salespeople and in their stores. In the past years, the growth of sales via digital channels in Fnac Darty's total sales has been impressive – accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent changing consumer behavior observed in Europe. In 2021, online sales represented 26% of all the group’ sales – and click & collect orders represented nearly half of the e-commerce sales (46%). The group attracted 10 million new customers online in the last 2 years!
THE CHALLENGE
In 2020 Fnac Darty saw an increase of 150% of its customer interactions on its digital channels, due to a combination of the Covid crisis, a long term change in customers behaviours, and the success of the Fnac Darty e-commerce websites. It appeared quickly that using the traditional mix “e-mail, phone, livechat” would not be enough to satisfy the mobile first hyper connected 2022 consumer
Email generates a lot of frustration for the client and is expensive for the brand (2x time more back-and-forths). Phone and Livechat are appreciated by customers but are expensive, limited (business hours, number of agents available at a given time) and generate also specific frustrations (waiting time for phone, non persistency for livechat).
A staggering reduction of the email volume after 1 year!
Average delay for a 1st human answer. A truly fast asynchronous service!
Customer messages processed in 2021 via Alcmeon
“Customers want us to be and answer them where they are : on Facebook, Instagram and messaging apps like Messenger and WhatsApp. As customers are increasingly mobile-first, email is a less convenient channel for service than it used to be. With Alcmeon, our teams were able to offer business messaging quickly and at scale to our prospects and customers, and we were able to reduce the volume of email requests by 70% !”
Customer Service Director – Fnac Darty
THE SOLUTION
The Fnac Darty team decided to use messaging at scale on the frontline using Alcmeon technology to offer an hybrid (bot + agents) always on asynchronous messaging service, available via numerous entry points : Facebook, Messenger, Twitter public & DMs, Instagram, WhatsApp, Apple Messages, Google and Google Maps, Fnac Darty websites and apps.
The first goal was to reduce drastically the volume of incoming emails. The idea was also to show that asynchronous messaging could be a major channel of the frontline mix – more efficient, less costly, without deteriorating CSAT and the quality of service.
A special 'conversational' team was trained internally to use Alcmeon and design autonomously Fnac Darty’s different service chatbots and escalation scenarios.
This omnichannel customer service team is now fully operational and this transfer of expertise allows Fnac Darty to deploy new social messaging channels in record time. The first 50 stores connected to Google Business Messages were rolled out in less than 2 months !
MESSAGING JOURNEY EXAMPLE 1
Darty Max is a super innovative and successful new service offered by Darty to its customers. A monthly unlimited subscription to repair all the devices a customer can have at home, even those bought in another chain, and for just 9.99€ per month ! After just one year, the service has more that 500 000 subscribers
The Darty team thought a service as innovative as this one would need also to come with an innovative customer service. They used Alcmeon to offer a premium WhatsApp hybrid messaging service to all the Darty Max subscribers. And they used Alcmeon’s super efficient sorting and prioritization tools to make sure these customer requests would be processed very fast. Result : less than 3mn on average during business hours and an impressive adoption rate (+400% in 5 months).
MESSAGING JOURNEY EXAMPLE 2
Google Business Messages is a new business messaging channel available through innovative solutions and Google partners like Alcmeon. It’s potentially game changing for business messaging because it allows brands and retailers to start messaging conversations directly on the Google results page or on Google maps !
For Fnac Darty as for a lot of retailers around the world, customers trying to reach out directly by phone a store after a Google search is an issue, and a messaging offer right in the search engine is a very promising new call deflection tool.
When the Alcmeon innovation team presented this new possibility to Fnac Darty they immediately seized the opportunity. The first 50 stores were connected in record time with a localized hybrid messaging service.
After 3 months, the channel was already representing 5% of the incoming flow of private messages !
Facebook Messenger
X
Google Business Messages
Apple Messages
Instagram Direct