For this customer case we ended up at Epplejeck in Drachten. Epplejeck is the largest equestrian store in the Netherlands, once started at the kitchen table with the aim of changing the image of the equestrian industry. You can read how they did this in this blog!
Away with the corniness
When Epplejeck entered the market, the image of equestrian sports was very typical. There were cheerful colors missing from the range, often aimed at the professional rider and this resulted in a limited range. With this in mind, Epplejeck has started to conquer the market and thus change the image of the equestrian industry forever.
To achieve this, they also had to do a lot in terms of customer service. At Epplejeck, the customer service goal was to appear very personal. This resulted in a young image of the company. The ultimate goal is to give the customer the feeling that he has actually been helped when he puts the phone down.
The informal atmosphere allows the passion for equestrian sports to come across. Everyone in customer service also shares this passion and this ensures that everyone has the insight to solve the customer's problems. In addition, this passion provides the drive needed to complete all these conversations.
Favorite Belco feature
Rixt and Marije's favorite feature is the quick response. This allows you to set a standard text that you often use in a conversation. The risk of these standard texts is that it can seem impersonal. Marije has a tip for that. "The trick is to go through this text every now and then and revise it. This applies to all texts, including the texts in the widget and the automatic answers in the app."
The reason they often use the quick response is because it takes a lot of time to have to type chunks of text every time. Epplejeck is known for their super-fast service. In a normal situation, the customer must be fully assisted within 2 hours and the problem must be resolved. For such a large company this is an enormous challenge, but Epplejeck succeeds in 90% of the cases. A large part of these conversations consist of warranty requests, returns and customer questions. Especially with the first two, the quick responses are often very useful because the correct information is always requested.
Physical store & online store
At Epplejeck they are very proud of their physical stores and that is true with no fewer than 15 branches, with 2 more on the way. Many customers like the fact that physical stores are available. "This way the customer takes you much more seriously." This is what Marije says. The reason for this is that the customer is more likely to order if there is a physical store nearby. If there is something wrong with the product, they can always visit us physically. In addition, products are often also delivered to physical stores. This way, the customer can drop by to see what the product looks and feels like.
They also always have Belco open at the checkout to see if there are still certain conversations open with a particular customer or to read back if a customer has a problem and indicates that they have had contact about this before.
Personal shopping experience
Nowadays, Epplejeck is increasingly experimenting with personal shopping. For example, they want to use the live chat much more for questions about products while shopping. In this way, the customer service employee can offer very personal assistance via Belco. Tip from the writer: Another function that ties in with this is co-browsing, for example. The customer service employee can then monitor the customer. This way they can search for products together and the customer service employee can provide advice in the meantime.
Epplejeck is a pioneer in this because this does not happen very often at the moment. They recently opened from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Sundays, because many customers don't have to work and are looking for horse products in their spare time. The idea for personal shopping came about at another shop of theirs, horsefitshop.nl. Here they give a lot of advice to customers via chat, because this often concerns sick horses and the customer often does not know what to do about this.
