🏡 How Kees Smit assists more customers while reducing the burden on customer service

“Our office and distribution center has three floors and a total of 85,000 square meters of storage capacity. A little further away, we have a bulk location for extra storage, and then, of course, we have our Experience XXL Stores.”

Jan Karel Ekkel, the enthusiastic e-commerce specialist at Kees Smit Garden Furniture in Almelo, the Netherlands, calls himself data driven and it shows. But he only discovered what's truly behind all those goods and numbers when he started working with Aiden's guided selling software.

“I didn't know that our products were so complex,” says Jan Karel as we take a seat in the Kees Smit offices. “I figured: we sell garden furniture, it couldn't be much simpler. A chair is a chair. Period.” But during discussions with sales colleagues to gather information for the product finder, he learned how much there actually isto choose from.

“Have a look.” He opens his laptop and shows two almost identical garden chairs. Yet the difference in price is almost five hundred euros. “The pivot points of these chairs can be made of brass, plastic or aluminum. It's better not to leave plastic ones outside in the winter, because they are more sensitive to weather influences. So there is indeed a difference.”

Customers definitely don't immediately recognize these kinds of differences when they search online, which resulted in a lot of questions. During the high season, Kees Smit's customer service was sometimes overloaded, resulting in longer waiting times than desired. Frustrating for the customer and expensive for Kees Smit with all that extra staff. “"We looked into the type of questions customers were asking. A significant portion turned out to be related to product advice. That translated well into an online product finder," says Jan Karel.

Based on that need, Kees Smit started working with Aiden. A successful collaboration, according to the statistics that Jan Karel reveals. Over 8 percent of all browsing customers use a product finder. Jan Karel: “So it's used a lot and that certainly removes some of the questions when it comes to customer contact.”

By integrating Aiden with Kees Smit's customer data platform and email service provider, customers can now also receive the advice from the product finder by email. And users of the Garden Trend Quiz - also built using Aiden's guided selling software - will receive customized emails with “garden trend packages” based on the outcome of the quiz. It's a fun way to highlight products, although that's not the main goal.

At Kees Smit, it's all about the relationship with the customer, “it's holy”, says Jan Karel. And that is why the service must always be first class. “We work from an omnichannel perspective. Whether the customer is in touch with us via email, chat, phone, webshop or in-store — the customer experience must always be the same. Offline, we were already very good at giving advice, but we could do better online. With Aiden, that's now a reality.”

About Kees Smit‍

Kees Smit Tuinmeubelen is truly a family business, with a history spanning over 80 years. After being taken over by son Henk in 2011, the company rapidly transitioned from a regional player to a national one. Their Experience Stores XXL span 8,000 square meters in Almelo, Amersfoort, and Venlo, along with three online stores in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.