Business Messages improves TEDi pre-sales product support and customer service across 1,800 stores

TEDi was founded in Dortmund, Germany in 2004 and quickly expanded to 2,500 stores in nine European countries. The retailer prides itself on offering customers “a broad and varied product range with lots of surprises,” selling some 9,000 items, including household goods, party supplies, DIY and electrical goods, toys, and cosmetics.

Dortmund, Germany

www.tedi.com

Retailer using Business Messages

70%

of interactions are pre-purchase related

1 hour

per day saved per agent

over 10%

increase in customer service productivity

Business Messages should be on everyone's digital roadmap for 2021. It’s an easy plug-and-play solution that improves how customers interact with your brand.”

Wassilios Marazopoulos, Corporate Development, TEDi

Customers chat with TEDi through Google Search

Customers chat with TEDi through Google Search

The summary

TEDi faced a challenge. Though they had long used phone and email for customer support, these channels were now resulting in long response times and an inferior customer experience during peak seasons. To improve the customer experience, in June 2020, TEDi partnered with Airy, a Conversational Platform, to launch Google’s Business Messages on Google Maps for their 1,800 German store locations. With Business Messages, customers can engage in conversations in the language of their preference and quickly get the answers they need, whether they are asking about item availability, job openings, or COVID precautions. In November 2020, TEDi expanded their use of Business Messages to Google Search. No additional agents were required to handle message intake—and the retailer says their agents are saving an hour a day of work, which translates into an increase in overall productivity of over 10 percent.

The challenge

For years, TEDi used phone and email for customer support queries. However, these traditional communication channels often resulted in long response times, so they are now being replaced increasingly by direct messaging. Quick response times are essential as around 70 percent of customers contact support to check if an item is in stock before visiting a store, signaling a strong intent to purchase. Seeking to capture the moment and get more customers into stores, TEDi chose Airy to implement Google’s Business Messages. “We have 1,800 stores in Germany, and a lot of our customers search for us on Google Maps. We wanted to help people reach out to us right from the map, instead of having to email or call us,” says Wassilios Marazopoulos, Corporate Development at TEDi.

TEDi uses rich features to provide personalized shopping

TEDi uses rich features to provide personalized shopping

The approach

TEDi implemented Business Messages on Google Maps in June 2020, and on Google Search in November 2020. When customers initiate a chat, they see a welcome message and a list of questions that they can tap on to start a conversation. The questions address the main support queries TEDi receives about item availability, job openings, and COVID precautions.

When a user taps on a question, they enter into a relevant, bot-based conversational flow. For example, stock availability can be checked in real time in any store, resulting in immediate purchasing decisions and improved customer satisfaction. By working with a partner like Airy, TEDi can also implement new features as soon as they become available. For example, they quickly moved from plain text questions to more visually-appealing cards, and used the ability to take into account a device’s language settings to trigger either a German or English-language conversational flow. No extra support agents are required to handle Business Messages queries; they are managed centrally using Airy's smart inbox, which shares the user's location and question for added context.

The results

Today, TEDi estimates that their agents are saving an hour of work a day, which results in a productivity increase of over 10%, the equivalent of a full-time agent’s salary over the course of a year. And customers enjoy faster responses—with instant answers for most queries, and answers within 24 hours for the rest. CSAT scores of 76 percent for this channel demonstrate that most customers are satisfied with TEDi’s bot-first support experience.

To others thinking about adopting Business Messages, Marazopoulos says, “Build it, deploy it, and improve it over time. Business Messages should be on everyone's digital roadmap for 2021. It’s an easy plug-and-play solution that improves how customers interact with your brand.”