Powering sales growth: How the Hoffmann Group uses chat and WhatsApp newsletters

Challenge: Customer-focused service is hard to pull off digitally with traditional contact channels

Like many other companies, the quality tool manufacturer realized during the pandemic how important it was to provide personal support to customers despite the necessary physical distance. Responding to inquiries only via email or telephone was inefficient and no longer met customers’ communication expectations. For example, telephone calls often posed too great a hurdle, especially for B2B customers, due to how time-consuming they were.

The traditional support channels no longer reflected the company’s brand philosophy of providing personal and customer-oriented services.

Solution: Communication software with chat and messaging

The Munich-based company aimed to provide its customers with tangible added value in terms of communication, offering them proactive and fast advice and technical support via website chat.

The Hoffmann Group didn’t have to search long for the right customer messaging solution. A partner company recommended Lime Connect, and after a brief trial period, the solution quickly won over Hoffmann’s eShop team as well.

Shortly thereafter, the company launched a pilot project in France. The chat feature was successfully implemented on the website in a short amount of time. The team was impressed that customers immediately began using the live chat feature and preferred it as a communication channel. Consequently, the quality tool manufacturer decided to roll out the chat tool on its corporate websites in Germany and other European countries.

As more and more customers value messaging apps as a way to contact companies, in addition to live chat, Hoffmann in Germany decided to introduce Lime Connect’s WhatsApp Campaigns. This allows Hoffmann to send company updates and personalized offers directly via WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is an additional channel through which Hoffmann can reach its target group and provide personalized support. WhatsApp is particularly promising due to its high open rate. So far, the open rate for Hoffmann’s newsletters has been more than 60%, which is significantly higher than for its “traditional” marketing channels, such as email.

Result: All-in-one solution for chat, messaging, and automation

The Hoffmann Group currently employs over 140 chat staff members across 24 locations. Given that the number of chats has already increased by 46% in one year, the retail group plans to expand the team further.

Complaints, product advice, after-sales support, and general inquiries are evenly distributed across all channels. However, customers primarily use chat when they cannot find products and need help with their search.

The ability to send message templates, images, videos, links, and documents makes chat exchanges entertaining and efficient for both employees and website visitors.

In addition to the positive reviews and high volume of incoming chats, the Hoffmann Group recognizes the value that Lime Connect brings to the company, particularly in terms of sales. Since implementing Lime Connect, the company has generated additional sales through the live chat channel.

In addition to live chat and WhatsApp, the tool manufacturer relies on automation. In Germany, customers can select whether they want to chat with the Hoffmann Group or one of its partners before chatting. Thanks to the group selection function, customers are then connected directly with the appropriate contact.

In Italy, Hoffmann takes it a step further. At the beginning of the chat, a chatbot asks the website visitor if they are a regular or prospective customer and what kind of inquiry they have, such as a technical problem, after-sales issue, or account question. Thanks to skills routing, the chat is then forwarded to the appropriate operator.

Hoffmann plans to further expand messaging and automation within the company in the future. “For example, we can imagine offering premium services via WhatsApp to specific customer groups and sending WhatsApp newsletters to other locations. Additionally, we want to put more focus on support automation using AI and deploy a chatbot through the Lime Connect AI Automation Hub. We are already working on this to enable flexible routing and an extended query function,” says Jessika Grunwald.