How Berlin Brands Group used AI-powered conversation intelligence to conquer return rates & raise NPS (+70)

“If we didn’t have EdgeTier, it would feel like going back to the Stone Age.”

As a leading global e-commerce retailer, Berlin Brands Group (BBG) boasts an impressive portfolio of over 4,800 products across more than 100 sales channels. With such a large scope, efficient customer service is essential as every question, comment, and concern is directed through the support team. To ensure repeat business and ongoing revenue as the Director of Customer Service, Vladimir Greavu’s primary target was ensuring consumers knew their notes were taken seriously through quick response and action.

Yet, with over 900,000 emails annually, Vlad and the team at BBG found themselves experiencing a disconnect between customer feedback and product management due to manual reporting processes. This is where AI-powered conversation intelligence came into play, providing the online retailer with the tools needed to not only bridge the gap but also proactively enhance customer satisfaction, streamline operations, and optimise support processes. 

Instead of being able to harness the data from their customer interactions for analysis and actionable insights, BBG’s previous process involved agents manually collecting and feeding details back to management. This manual process resulted in localised, fragmented, and impenetrable information that could not be used by other departments. 

According to Vlad, the lack of centralised data led to frustrations: “I was the voice of the customer inside the company. I was shouting out loud what the customers were complaining about. The other teams within Berlin Brands Group were not able to understand what the real issues were, and they were working in silos trying to solve different challenges… But there was no concerted effort, and there was no analytical response to that based on facts, based on data, based on the truth.”

The resulting disconnect not only slowed the progress of problem-solving efforts but also made it more challenging to ensure consistent and accurate responses to customer concerns. 

The lack of a comprehensive view of their data also made it difficult for Vlad and his team to identify potential issues. Relying on manual processes limited visibility into trends that indicate ongoing, widespread problems with a product or process. 

“We were just in reactive mode reacting to all sorts of escalations without being able to actually quantify the impact or the magnitude of a specific issue.”

Such a delayed approach to client responses results in it taking days or even weeks to simply spot an issue let alone understand the size and scope of the problem. As a result, a larger set of customers are more likely to be impacted than if it was caught early, leading to lower client satisfaction rates. 

Fragmented data also limited BBG’s view of their product issues. Vlad noted, “We were getting insights just based on the return reasons from our customers, and we were not able to actually put the finger on the wound and say, ‘What is most hurting our customer? What are the reasons?”

Without unified insights, the company was unable to quickly and accurately identify and fix the root causes of product issues. Not only does this situation affect customer satisfaction, but it also puts the company at risk for potential legal issues.

“After ordering a product, every question a customer has comes into our customer service. So, it is very important to listen to the feedback of our customers, to listen to the complaints of our customers, to understand what our customers do say about our products, about processes, about the experience they have with our company – from the buying process until a service need has arised.”

BBG’s leadership understood the incredible value of consumer feedback; they simply needed the right solution to harness its power. To help address their CX and product challenges, they leveraged EdgeTier’s AI-powered conversation intelligence platform, implementing Index and Sonar to centralise consumer insights and drive proactive support. 

To overcome the root cause of their CX challenges – fragmented data, BBG was able to achieve 100% visibility across all customer interactions with EdgeTier. The team leveraged Index for real-time data, multilingual support, and AI-powered tagging of customer interactions, eliminating manual efforts and the risk of human errors. Sonar, simultaneously, identified hidden risks and opportunities for improvement.

“With EdgeTier, we were able to get those insights from an end-to-end perspective.”

Access to clear, actionable data in one platform transformed their approach to customer service, allowing the e-commerce company to improve their CSAT and raise their net promoter scores to over 70 points as well as reduce contact volumes. It also positioned the support team as the company’s insights engine. Now, they’re able to provide other teams with valuable feedback to make positive changes, ensuring effective collaboration that reduces time and resource waste.

EdgeTier’s Sonar solution takes real-time customer insights to the next level with proactive anomaly detection. Not only did the tool analyse BBG’s full range of customer feedback data, but it also identified emerging irregularities, equipping the retailer with the tools to stay ahead of potential issues before they expand. Such an approach allowed them to proactively resolve high-priority concerns, limiting the number of impacted customers. 

BBG leveraged EdgeTier’s integration abilities to stay on top of their growing product portfolio. The system was able to combine data from support queries with additional customer details and activities tracked by other systems, like their consumer profile, the products they ordered, and the logistics carrier used. Once collected, the information was analysed and presented in a digestible format to provide useful supplier feedback and adjust product offerings – a key factor in raising their positive rating reviews by up to 30%. 

“We shifted from selling no matter what to really selling what matters.”

The partnership between Berlin Brands Group and EdgeTier has been more than just a collaboration; it’s been a transformative journey. According to Vlad, some of the standout aspects have been the unwavering support provided by EdgeTier, sharing: “I specifically liked the flexibility. I liked the can-do attitude. I always felt supported. There hasn’t been any single point in our journey where EdgeTier has said no, this cannot be done, or no, we will not be able to do that…I felt like I’m the most precious customer.”

Such high-level support has not only empowered BBG to overcome their initial challenges, but it’s also positioned them for ongoing success by enabling better product portfolio management and seamless customer experience.

BBG’s results serve as a testament to the power of EdgeTier. If you’re looking to transform your customer support operations into an insights engine, improve key metrics like CSAT and NPS, and race ahead of the competition, it’s time to explore the possibilities of AI-powered conversation intelligence. 

Leave manual customer support processes in the past by reaching out to our knowledgeable team today.