Christmas is clearly a special time in the Oxybul calendar. The pinnacle of the year, November and December are a hive of activity with everyone focused on the same goal: customer satisfaction. Let’s take a peep behind the scenes.
On the digital front, a 6-strong team has been monitoring the Oxybul e-shop every weeknight from 7 to 10 pm since the beginning of November. At the weekend, this changes to two 8-person teams working from 9 am to midnight. The aim is to ensure that the online customer journey flows smoothly. “We put ourselves in our customers’ shoes and place orders like they do, permanently monitoring our indicators such as server response times and sales conversion rates, and stepping in if there’s the slightest incident,” explains Olivier, Oxybul’s technical manager.
As well as their monitoring role, Cédric and Olivier spend some of their shift working on technical matters, coordinating any action needed with other key players within the organization’s “daisy” structure. These include teams working on the Web, logistics support, ERP, customer service and social media, who pass on customer alerts in real time.
“Obviously, if traffic increases tenfold (or more), it can get hectic! A server can overload, or software can fail. We all stay constantly connected via instant messaging, so we can react immediately.” François explains.
” It’s intense, but we work all year round to safeguard against any eventualities ! “
On the customer service front, Claire and Anne are also ready for action from September, with three challenges ahead of them:
- To train the additional staff (employed to boost existing numbers) as quickly and effectively as possible on the brand, the message and the tools at their disposal. This equates to 60 staff for the Barcelona platform and 20 based in Amiens. “Christmas means 80% more staff for customer service, ready to take care of our customers,” Claire explains.
- To further the collective drive for customer satisfaction by flagging any sticking points in real time or as close to real time as possible.
- And to correctly gauge how incoming flows should be processed, distributing resources as effectively as possible between taking calls, processing emails, answering Facebook messages and resolving queries.
“During first week of December, we dealt with 9,244 individual requests, 35% of which were about deliveries. It’s THE hot topic right now!
So this weekend, we’ve decided not to take calls for half a day to alleviate the delay that has built up.“, explains Sophie, the marketing director.
On the social media front, Lucille can focus on facilitating the customer community because customer service messages are being dealt with. But she still keeps a close eye on the customer comments on Facebook and Instagram.
Lastly, on the logistics front, the figures speak for themselves. As Rémi, manager of the warehouse in Dourges explains:
- 50% of orders are fulfilled at the end of the year,
- 650,000 packages are processed,
- 2 million games, toys and books are dispatched to our online customers,
- 27,000 pallets are used,
- 800 lorries leave our warehouses.
“While we manage our flows for 10 months of the year with a single team on day shift,
during the 2 months of the Christmas campaign we need 3 teams working 24 hours a day.
We move from 120 to 350 people performing a magnificent permanent ballet involving 59 forklift trucks on site!”
With just 15 days to go, there’s no time to be bored at Oxybul!
