JYSK is an international furniture and homewares retailer – and a great entrepreneurial success story.

Since opening its first store in Denmark in 1979, the family-owned company has expanded into 50 countries and now operates more than 3,000 stores with 26,500 employees. There are 103 JYSK stores in the Netherlands alone.

The company runs 28 contact centres to handle the millions of customer requests it receives every year. However, prior to working with Puzzel, each of these contact centres used a separate telephony system. This made it difficult for the company to deliver a consistent level of customer service across all countries.

Today, JYSK uses just one unified contact centre solution to handle all telephone customer enquiries. We caught up with Tari ter Maat, JYSK’s Netherlands Customer Service Manager, to find out how the new set-up has streamlined operations.

Unified communications

JYSK uses Salesforce Service Cloud integrated with Puzzel to deliver its voice customer service. This enables all customer service staff to work within the same platform, with all customer data and insights in one place. “It was messy and hard to keep track of all the customer enquiries before. Things are so much smoother now,” Tari explained.

JYSK provides omnichannel customer service across voice, email, webchat and social media, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. However, voice makes up 60% of its customer enquiries. To manage the demand, the company uses skills-based routing to ensure every customer is directed to the right agent to answer the enquiry the first time. It also offers callbacks.

“Features like callback help when we’re very busy with calls,” Tari said. “When a customer is in a queue for longer than 30 seconds, they receive an automatic message offering them to receive a callback, which is usually within 10 to 15 minutes. We also have a service goal to make sure no customer is waiting in a queue for more than 80 seconds.”

The power of cloud

With a cloud-based contact centre, it is now easier for JYSK to grow and expand into new geographies. Puzzel is quick to scale and can be adapted for new languages, with JYSK only needing to make a few local adjustments, such as recording new audio files for menus.

The company can also support a hybrid workforce, with agents able to work from any location. “We now offer flexible working post-pandemic. We have a 50/50 hybrid approach,” Tari said.

Employee experience

JYSK’s company vision is to be customers’ first choice within retail, as well as people’s first choice for employment within retail, reflecting its commitment to providing great experiences for both its customers and staff.

Tari has worked at JYSK for six years. In that time, she says the company has continuously worked to create an inclusive and friendly workplace. “We recruit for candidates of all ages but have a lot of students within the team. The majority of my team are part-time – it’s very popular in Holland,” Tari said.

“We also have lots of lovely stories about agents coming from the retail side of the business. For example, one agent could no longer work in-store due to a physical ability, so she changed roles and joined the customer service team. That’s just one of the reasons why working in customer service is so great. There’s room for career progression and you can develop skills that are very transferable. Working in retail requires very similar skill sets to those needed in customer service.”

Tari said she joined JYSK because of the growth opportunities. “When I first joined JYSK, I was a customer service coordinator. Now I am a customer service manager managing a team of 21 people — a great development opportunity!” she said.

Bigger and better

JYSK believes it can always do things a little better and become even bigger – and with Puzzel’s cloud-based contact centre solution it can do just that. Switching to one unified telephony system has not only streamlined its customer service operations, but also increased its agility and flexibility too.

Want to improve your customer and agent experiences? Book a meeting with one of our contact centre consultants today.