How BlackTyres is playing in the long game with tire and wheel buyers

How are tires and wheels sold now? The buyer chooses the product on the Internet, which is either delivered to his home/office/installed on the car at the point of issue. Stores with their retail outlets and setup services are more successful than online-only stores. But where there are retail outlets, there is always contact between store employees and customers, which means there will undoubtedly be conflicts.

In our business, it often happens that a person has chosen a bus on the Internet, bought it once, and cursed everyone because the installers ignored his wishes or even rudely. Fitters are simple workers; they don't really care about what impression they will make on the client. Of course, you can protect yourself from customer problems and focus only on one-time sales. For example, instruct call center employees not to accept complaints or listen but not respond in any way. But taking into account the cost of advertising, the price of attracting new customers is approximately comparable to one-time revenue. That is, in reality, a company begins to earn money only when it has regular customers.

Even though tires and wheels are not bought every day, they are definitely needed every few years. And if the client likes the service, he will also come to be served. Tire fitting, seasonal change, and storage of wheels - these are all services that we provide. Plus light work - refueling air conditioners or changing oil. For this to work, we need to understand what the client is not satisfied with at all stages of service: from accepting an order to the moment of delivery or installation on a car. At the same time, it is important not only to answer the complaint but also to rebuild business processes and remove barriers that prevent us from earning.

Among all Moscow sellers of tires and wheels, we were the first to decide to build long-term relationships with customers through feedback. At first, we sent SMS messages to clients immediately after the order was closed. Following the link in the message, the person got to the form on the website to rate the service and describe what he liked and what he didn't. But to process these applications, they had to be collected somewhere, and then it took a long time to find out who was to blame if the client was dissatisfied with something—and having already understood the situation - to look for a solution, how to prevent this from happening again.

When working with SMS, it became clear that high-quality feedback cannot be established without a helpdesk system. I spent a month and a half choosing a suitable system from those that were on the market at that time. At the finish line, I had a list of three or four companies that generally met my expectations in terms of functionality - Usedesk was one of them. There are three main functions that were important for us to implement: multichannel, flexible customization and classification of calls.

Multichannel. I knew for sure that I needed multichannel to create different ways of accessing one platform, quickly switch and customize the system for myself.

Flexible customization. When choosing an important role played by additional fields that can be flexibly configured for processes and departments. We now use them to process all requests - we have ten such fields. Given that we have several separate divisions in the company, it is important for us to know where the request or complaint came from and who served the client. To do this, you need to classify requests by suppliers, types of goods, methods of services.

Classification of requests. To understand at what stages we receive the most requests, requests mustn't go in one continuous array but with a segment distribution. You can immediately see where the most problems are; for example, one glance is enough to understand - We receive 18% of complaints on this site." To implement all this, we needed a closed list for sorting requests. But the decisive factor in the choice was the responsiveness of the users. When I sent out my requirements to all companies, it was only from UseDesk that they returned me a list of my own questions with comments on each item, how it can be implemented, and the result. And during the free trial period, the guys answered my questions in detail, and specifically, they tried to understand the tasks deeply. The rest of the companies responded that we have it all, plug it in, and sort it out yourself or pay the franchisee to complete the service according to your wishes.

We accept applications as it is convenient for our clients. Experience with SMS has shown that the communication channel is not enough. To get feedback from a client, you need to receive it through all possible channels and in any form: photo, video, audio, text, or in a live conversation. For example, a customer needs to send to show that they didn't like it. Not everyone knows how to pull a photo from a smartphone to their mailbox to send it to an operator - a person will wave his hand and silently leave so as not to return. For such cases, the messenger is ideal: I took a photo and immediately sent it without unnecessary gestures. Sometimes it is more convenient for the client to call and tell about the problem by voice. Otherwise, describe everything in detail in a letter and send it by e-mail. The least common requests come from social networks because our clients are not teenagers but people over thirty. We knew that our customers are more accustomed to calling, e-mailing, or responding in a messenger, so we immediately integrated all these communication channels with Usedesk. It was more difficult to answer whether to acquire telephony and turn every call into a request in Usedesk. During the trial period, I configured telephony so that a call to an established extension would create a new task in Usedesk, and the call record would be attached to the request. But it quickly became apparent that it didn't make sense. A lot of calls come over the phone that are not related to solving problems. And wasting time ranking calls and clogging up the system is too expensive. After all, our task is not to process all requests, complete all the checkboxes, fill in the fields, solve the client's problem, and help him. Otherwise, while the operator ticks the boxes and fills in the fields, the client waits for an answer or does not receive it at all for a long time because the fields were filled in, but they forgot about the client. As a result, we abandoned the integration of telephony and Usedesk.

We classify requests and immediately see the statistics. When it was necessary to set up the classification, I remembered the principle by which the architects of urban spaces lay paths in the courtyards. They do not know in advance what routes pedestrians take. Space, where the paths should be, is plowed up or covered with earth, waiting for the locals to trample paths and laying tiles or asphalt on the widest ones. These routes will be in demand - people will not crush the lawns to shorten the path. I went the same way: I collected all the complaints and tried to classify each one. As a result, we got about 20 types of hits. But the operator is not comfortable using such an extensive list, so I have combined them into five categories and divided them into subcategories. This is where the significantly additional fields that allow you to customize the system for yourself came in handy - with their help; we managed to create a tree-like structure of the appeal. Every request in Usedesk goes along a specific route; for example, the client is not satisfied with the tire center → Ivanov served him → a day later, the tire was flat. It turns out a chain: where → who served → what is wrong. This makes it easier to work with hits and allows you to collect statistics to solve problems at the global level, rather than patching holes with each call.

We switch to someone who can help. Now the request from the client gets to Usedesk, and the employee of my department immediately appoints the executor who can solve the problem. In one case, it will be a logistician; in the other - the call center operator who processed the order. This switching capability was one of the critical points in the choice of the system and paid off.

We accept requests directly from 1C. All orders from 1C automatically go to Usedesk. If a complaint is received for an order, then the Usedesk ticket already contains all the data necessary to solve the problem. An employee of the department of work with appeals and complaints does not need to manually enter the client's contact information and the place where he is served. It remains for him to describe the problem and the solution.

We respond to all requests without exception. Regardless of how much a product or service costs, a customer can complain, suggest something, or praise it. Specialists who know how and love to communicate with people working with requests. After all, some clients apply on the case, and there are professional complainants. The operator needs to understand the situation, understand if there is a problem, or just like to complain. Our main task is not to ignore a constructive proposal or complaint.

It happens that the buyer was misinformed or misunderstood something. If our employee made a mistake, confused something, or was naughty, we will compensate customers for losses or moral damage. And it happens that the buyer bought a product and wants to receive all additional services as a gift, but for us, it is the cost of paying for the work of the fitters and consumables. If we start doing everything for free, we'll go broke. For such cases, we have a point that we quite often use - subjective expectations, when a person believes that some services should be free. Our task is to figure it all out.

We work promptly with reviews. Most sites with reviews, marketplaces, and social networks allow you to set up notifications about positive and negative reviews. With positive reviews, we work directly on reviewers and social networks, and negative feedback turns into a ticket in Usedesk that needs to be processed. This integration we set it up ourselves, without programmers.

Experience has shown that working with a company's reputation on the Internet is impossible without a unique tool. A person puts the name of our company into a search engine, sees that customers are answered everywhere, delves into the problem, understands, and if the claim is adequate, they meet halfway. Consumer extremism is politely replied that the person was offered options, but he rejected everything. Worst of all is a negative review that went unanswered. Then there is only one position - the one who complained. By contrast with the polite, balanced position of the company, the prospect will see both positions. Without a service for working with complaints and wishes, you will forget or lose something, and you will not know which areas are more likely to have problems. "

We do not use traditional indicators to assess the work of employees. We do not measure the indicators that are usually calculated by the support service: SLA, reaction speed, how it ended, how long it took, the degree of customer satisfaction, and other quantitative indicators. They are zero because requests can be very different. We close some requests in one call, while others turn into complaints and can take several months - these are very difficult cases. Therefore, we measure the work of employees with only one indicator - business benefits.

Employees have a provision on customer service with instructions on how to act in a given situation. I wrote it based on working with clients - this is not a theoretical document cut off from life, but a clear set of rules, actions, and instructions in real situations. In working with clients, there is rarely black and white when one of the parties is 100% right; therefore, to resolve a conflict, an employee needs diplomacy and the ability to use all the tools he has in his arsenal.

To evaluate the employee's work, I check how he used all possible tools to resolve the conflict - it is impossible to digitize it. In difficult cases, I am always mentioned in the ticket. If the patient gets out of the routine work, I go to the correspondence and send the operator or immediately decide how to proceed. Plus, every day, I selectively look through the tickets and study history, and if the employee worked competently, I tell him about it: here you are great, I tried to solve the problem consistently. If the employee messed up, you need to collect evidence before accusing him: a document, video, or photo that proves his guilt. You cannot judge a person without proof. The employee performance evaluation must be fair.

We check the cleanliness and order at retail outlets. In addition to working with customer requests, we collect questionnaires with assessments of cleanliness and order at retail outlets and complaints about the quality of goods. The survey results go to Usedesk - they affect the rating of departments, on which the employee bonus depends. And all negative assessments immediately turn into tasks assigned to the department without moderation and go to work.

The decision to work with customers after the purchase and the choice of Usedesk has already paid off. We have a continually growing number of regular customers, including word of mouth and reviews on the Internet. People advise contacting us because they know that problems can arise with any company, but they will figure it out and help; they will not leave the client alone with trouble. Without Usedesk, it would be impossible to establish such a systematic work.