View PDF version

Samsung Electronics France:
A Multitude of Products to support

Samsung Electronics France is the French subsidiary of Samsung, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of consumer and business electronic products. Its diverse product lines include audio and video, telecommunications, and information systems products, as well as appliances and semiconductors. Samsung rapidly and continuously develops and introduces new products to the market, which are sold through both retail and dealer channels. The quantity, diversity and technical nature of its products requires Samsung to provide extensive customer service operations.

Samsung consolidated its three outsourced call centers in France onto a single CosmoCall Universe contact center platform hosted by Orange Business Services (France Telecom) and fully integrated with Samsung’s SAP CRM system. Samsung used the flexibility of the platform to restructure so that customers and dealers now call a single service number, regardless of the product.

Flexibility Needed for Lower Cost, Better Service

To support its many products in the French market, Samsung had three outsourced call centers, each for specific product groups, and each with a different phone number and its own team of agents and specialists. With 50 new products each month, the specialists required much training. The teams were located near the French headquarters for training access, but this location was not cost effective for the team’s non specialized agents. A more efficient call center structure was desired.

Also, Samsung was providing and maintaining the equipment used by its outsourcers, managing the phone service providers, and keeping a specialist on staff to support the phones. The systems had limited CRM integration capability and were inflexible. Facing these costs and limitations, Samsung decided to replace its call center systems and improve its customer service.

Premise-based to Hosted Contact Center

Samsung wanted the scalability and flexibility that a hosted IP based system provided, so that it could easily add and drop agents, change sites or even outsourcers, and monitor agents from anywhere via the internet. It preferred a hosted model with a monthly fee for usage, rather than a new premise-based system with a large capital investment. It wanted a complete package of services from a top provider, and a service level agreement, things that would let Samsung focus on training specialists and serving customers, rather than on maintaining call center equipment and managing phone service.

Samsung Outsources its Call Center Platform as well as its Agents

Samsung found the solution it needed from Orange Business Services, which provided a complete hosted IP contact center built on the CosmoCall Universe platform, and included all telephone service. Samsung has achieved better control over its operations. The Tenant Self Administration capabilities of CosmoCall Universe provide complete and uniform reporting, administrative visibility and operational control of its outsourced agents. Supervisors can manage the system from any location that has an internet connection. In addition, Samsung used the flexibility of the CosmoCall Universe platform to reorganize its call centers from a product line organization to a Tier 1 and Tier 2 structure. Tier 2 product specialists stay close to headquarters for cost effective training, while less-skilled Tier 1 agents can work anywhere, including home and offshore.

Following its call center reorganization, Samsung replaced its original Magic® service desk application with a full SAP CRM integration. With SAP, customer service ticket and account information is now instantly available to any Tier 2 specialist in any location when a call is transferred, no matter where it was originally answered.

Lower Costs, Better Service, Greater Customer Satisfaction

Using its new hosted CosmoCall Universe contact center platform, Samsung has improved the quality of its customer service and increased customer satisfaction, while simultaneously reducing its costs. One major cost reduction is the elimination of system maintenance and support burdens.

More important, Samsung’s Customer Service operations are now simpler and faster for both agents and customers. With SAP fully integrated into the CosmoCall Universe platform, customer account information appears on the Tier 1 agent screen when a call is answered. And by automatically sending account and service ticket information to the Tier 2 specialist, the time spent looking up the caller account information or having the caller restate their issue is eliminated. Since 70% of Samsung’s calls are transferred, average call time has dropped from 8 minutes to 7.25 minutes, and total outsourcer costs are down 13%. Shorter calls are not only a cost saving for Samsung, but a support experience enhancement for its customers, and therefore a true competitive advantage.

The CosmoCall Universe platform provides Samsung with the ability to easily manage its outsourced agents, and the flexibility to add or drop agents and sites as needed. It can now set up new test site locations for Tier 1 agents using commercial internet access. Now Samsung can quickly and easily evaluate the feasibility and cost of a potential new site before deciding to make it permanent. Samsung’s new hosted contact center in France is a success by every measure, strengthening Samsung’s position as a global leader in customer service. It is being studied by other Samsung European Subsidiaries for their consideration as a model for deployment.