With the new rules of digital commerce, the shopper-first retailing and the need for unique approaches to consumers, merchants must provide compelling and flawless services. But, to achieve the desired success, they need to set in place a strategic plan for continuous improvements and an optimized eCommerce platform. These usually bring more chances for customer conversion and loyalty, higher website traffic and increased selling frequency. In one word, more chances for business growth.
Brico Dépôt and its skyrocket journey
Despite the COVID-19 impact on the economy, the brick-and-mortar stores closing their doors and the overall decrease in spending for certain markets, the home improvement and DIY industry has seen little disruption. This sector has managed to keep a steady pace, continuing to gain revenue due to the massive requirements for improvement projects. Actually, the DIY home improvement market value in Europe is expected to grow by USD 26.42 billion, increasing at a CAGR of 3% from 2020 to 2025. In 2020, Europe held a share of approximately 30% in the global home improvement industry.
Brico Dépôt is one player that clearly comes to mind in this home retailing segment,. In 2013, Brico Dépôt, part of Kingfisher Plc group, acquired the Bricostore chain of stores in Romania. And in 2017 it acquired the Praktiker chain. Starting with 2019, bricodepot.ro positioned itself as the second company in the Home Improvement market in the country, with 35 stores available. Addressing both individuals and professionals in Romania, Brico’s main goal is to make the redevelopment of homes accessible to everyone. To better tend to its customers’ needs and to offer daily access to more product ranges, while enabling an efficient process for customers, Brico Dépôt has found in Zitec a reliable partner that would accelerate their digital transformation process, as well as offer their clients a set of improved solutions to oversee their unique set of needs.
The bumps around the road: the market challenges
With GBP 279 million sales for Brico Dépôt Romania in 2021, +15% vs 2020, the company is on an ascendent path. But any business growth needs to be sustained by a scalable development process, improved functionalities, or rapid ordering and delivery processing procedures (both online and offline). In addition, solving in real time any issue raised by the customer is key to a good business functioning and to keeping the clients satisfied.
Brico understood these necessities, so they started the search for the best solutions in place. The company also wanted to solve incidents such as the slow website loading, inability to collect payments, re-founding, order cancellation or changes, among others. Brico Dépôt’s aim was to find a development team able to constantly provide fast interventions and efficient solutions.
The key to the lock: the intervention subscription solution
To prevent all the mentioned issues and to obtain more control for its processes and adaptable solutions for its clients, Brico Dépôt teamed up with our Continuous Improvement Services (CIS) team. After assessing the platform, our team of specialists proposed an intervention subscription agreement. Thus, Brico is benefitting from exactly what they needed: constant intervention from experts on various types of interventions. They aim to reach guaranteed results and save more time for both the customers and the employees. These are designed to fix any:
- wrong updates on the order status
- incorrect order flow
- unfinished order made online
- new account with malfunctions or incorrect data
- unavailable addresses
- stock information and notifications
- issues displayed when uploading new products on the platform
Brico’s long run destination: the business outcome
Brico Dépôt has massively improved customers’ experience by reducing the waiting time, while ensuring a continuous process flow. The company has managed to solve many previous limitations on its platform. As such, in case the customer order undergoes any type of blockage, the intervention team acts immediately. So they set again the order flux into motion. This also happens when an account is incorrectly created and the customer is locked out of the platform. Hence, the correct flow and the fast order process eases any dissatisfaction that might appear for the client.
Via its intervention subscription, Brico Dépôt has also brought substantial benefits for its consumers. From January 2022 until June 2022, there were approximately 1000 situations that involved over 1000 Brico clients. All their issues were processed in less than 5 minutes since the issue was signaled. The team encountered situations including the malfunctioning of the site. They also received tasks that impacted the order prices or the sales. They solved these issues in a record time, varying from 15 minutes to hours, depending on the complexity of the intervention needed. Various times, they offered support during the weekends as well.
The company also successfully improved their return flow. Once the CIS team receives signals for an issue and they solve it, the client receives the product or the payment/the refund in maximum 24 hours.
Let’s also consider this: an optimized process leads to happy clients. The user-friendly flow is a great solution to solving customers’ issues. Still, this flow also has a positive impact on Brico Dépôt’s employees. They no longer have to worry about updating the prices for the new online products. The intervention team does this. Thus, they save time and don’t have to engage in activities involving manual verifications.
As proved so far, the tailwind that propelled Brico Dépôt into the home improvement market will definitely not stop here. Continuous improvements and strong collaborations stay at the core of great success. So, we are keen to keep an eye on Brico’s further journey.
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