How The Cookware Company Delivers Exceptional Omnichannel Customer Service with 300% Year-on-Year Growth

What do you do when your company suddenly grows by 300% in a year? What strategies and systems do you put in place to handle this growth? Most importantly, how do you ensure you’re still upholding the quality you promised your customers?

These were just some of the unique challenges that The Cookware Company faced in recent years.

The Cookware Company started as a manufacturing business in 2005 and, over time, shifted its focus to offer a range of innovative cookware solutions. Today, The Cookware Company boasts more than 25 brands and holds over 500 trademarks. It also has offices worldwide—from Belgium and the Netherlands to Japan and the United States.

As its rapid growth took off, The Cookware Company also had to deal with a surge in customer enquiries and communication channels for their support agents to manage. Previously, they might have received five emails and one call a day, but this quickly became hundreds of email tickets and over 150 calls per day in a short space of time.

It soon became clear to Ludovic Leleu, The Cookware Company’s Customer Support Manager, that they needed a solution that would enable them to deliver an effective omnichannel customer service experience—one that could scale with their growth.

However, Ludovic wasn’t looking for just any solution—he needed something that would meet all the company’s needs both now and in the future.

Delivering a 360 Experience for Customers and Clients

Before Aircall, the customer support team at The Cookware Company was almost at breaking point.

They had a backlog of 7,000 tickets and dozens of missed calls, with no software in place to keep track of them.

Ludovic needed an omnichannel solution that allowed his teams to:

• Identify who called

• Know if the customer had an existing ticket or had contacted them previously

• Quickly check the caller’s order status

In addition, The Cookware Company had both B2C customers and B2B clients, each with unique support and communication needs, so Ludovic needed a solution that could cater to both. He had been searching for a solution for over a year, but none seemed to fit.

Ludovic recalled:

“I tried competitors, and most of the time, the setup isn’t clear, because you have to do everything yourself. Secondly, the costs aren’t clear … and the price can end up being much higher than you initially expected.”

Eventually, Ludovic turned to their customer support partner, Premium Plus, for recommendations.

Premium Plus had previously helped them install and integrate Zendesk into their systems. With Zendesk, The Cookware Company gained consolidated overviews of their social media, website, and email customer support channels and could manage and track customer enquiries. They wanted a solution that would integrate with Zendesk, so Premium Plus suggested they consider Aircall.

In addition to tracking call metrics, collecting customer data, and providing international numbers, Aircall integrated seamlessly with The Cookware Company’s systems. This included Zendesk, which was also integrated with ShipUp and Magento.

By integrating Aircall and Zendesk into their internal team workflows and customer support channels, they were able to gain a 360-degree view of the customer support journey and offer their clients a truly omnichannel experience.

Taking Control of Customer Support Quality

Ludovic knew that Aircall was the best solution for his company because it integrated smoothly with their existing systems and was easy to use. He also valued Aircall’s clear and predictable pricing structure.

However, he had to overcome an internal challenge: convincing senior management of the value of an integrated cloud calling solution.

“I had to sell it internally and convince management it was necessary. Since I didn’t have an omnichannel solution, I didn’t have data to report. So I couldn’t clearly point to the number of customers being lost every day. The initial move to Zendesk helped to uncover that need internally, as it showed us the number of emails we were receiving every day. But we didn’t have the phone aspect.”

What made it harder was that management didn’t understand how investing in a cloud-based call solution would benefit them.

However, Ludovic and his team knew the risks of relying solely on a landline. He knew that if they continued down this path, they would lose more customers. So Ludovic began tracking every call that came into the company.

He found that out of 150 daily calls, they answered fewer than half. Through this exercise, Ludovic demonstrated the value of Aircall to his company.

Once Aircall was set up, Ludovic gained a dashboard showing all the data on his team’s activity, allowing him to track metrics like response time and how long customers waited on hold. He could also more accurately monitor team capacity and predict call trends so his teams could prepare for busy periods.

On top of this, moving to a cloud-based system enabled him to monitor and maintain the quality of customer support, even when working with an outsourced call centre.

Global Solutions for Global Challenges

Switching to Aircall had a major impact on Ludovic’s team.

“Within two months, we cleared our backlog of tickets. We had a negative NPS of -25 and we moved it to +45. We had a CSAT that was around 50%, and now we are at 85% to 90%. Availability on calls is fantastic—we have virtually no missed calls.”

Every new client The Cookware Company brings on can now have new dedicated local and international numbers through Aircall. That number will handle all product and market enquiries under the brand, making it easier for The Cookware Company to segment customers and deliver more personalised experiences.

Additionally, Aircall’s IVR and skill-based routing system allows customers to identify the specific issue they need help with before they even reach an agent. This has greatly improved their customer experience, as callers are immediately routed to a customer support agent who can resolve their enquiries at the first contact.

At the same time, the company’s support team became more efficient by handling calls best suited to their skill set, rather than having to work out during the call which department the customer should be transferred to. For example, Danish-speaking customers calling about a Smeg product can choose to speak to a Danish-speaking agent specialising in the Smeg brand.

Finally, Aircall’s 80+ integration partners will enable The Cookware Company to add more services to their customer team as they grow. Aircall can integrate with a wide range of platforms and tools, from e-commerce systems like Shopify to live chat platforms like Intercom.

Best of all? The Cookware Company won’t have to spend lots of time setting up these integrations and figuring out how they work, thanks to Aircall’s ease of use and user-friendly interface.

Ludovic has one final piece of advice for other customer support departments looking for a powerful cloud calling platform to enhance their service operations:

“Get a good integrator. You’ll always need to connect new channels, so choose a solution that allows you to keep doing this as you grow.”