Fonterra
CONTACT helps Fonterra manage high-volume order processing and improve customer service.
Fonterra Brands New Zealand receives 3500 phone and fax orders
every day from supermarkets, shops and other food outlets for its
well-known range of consumer dairy products. These often complex
orders are always fulfilled the following day. By moving from a
paper-based fax system to using Datasquirt's contact management
system, CONTACT™, to manage incoming orders, Fonterra has reduced
wastage and redeployed its call centre staff.
Jessica Seamark, Fonterra Brands' national customer services
manager, says her working life used to be a nightmare. Part of her
responsibility is to manage the company's centralised order-taking
facility at its Penrose headquarters and then relay this
information to the depots in Takanini, Palmerston North and
Christchurch.
Each day her staff handles 3500 incoming phone calls and faxes
from supermarkets and other outlets ordering her company's consumer
dairy products. She says her 30 contact centre staff worked long
shifts under huge time pressure, but all too often these orders,
printed on paper, would go missing.
"We used two physical fax machines in our office, which we share
with other company divisions. Because the system was paper-based,
we couldn't always tell if orders had or hadn't arrived. But there
was a worse problem, if there was a query over an order - say a
customer received goods which they said they didn't order - we
couldn't really investigate their claim because we simply couldn't
find the original order to confirm matters. Most of the time that
meant we had to wear the cost," she says.
Searchable order database
Today, Fonterra Brands uses CONTACT to manage faxes in the
company's call centre. Seamark says each incoming fax is now
immediately converted to PDF format and archived. "We have
thousands of orders - about a year's worth in total is stored on
the system at any time. The database is completely searchable -
which is something we simply didn't have before. When a customer
queries a delivery we can key in the name of the store and quickly
retrieve the original purchase order document," she says.
Seamark says orders no longer get lost in the system, although
there is the occasional operator error. She says this is hardly
surprising given the scale of Fonterra's distribution operation. In
a typical week, her staff would key-in more than 140,000 separate
lines into the main ordering system at Fonterra Brands' New Zealand
headquarters in Penrose. Each line represents an individual product
order from one of the hundreds of supermarkets, grocery stores and
other shops and food business located throughout the country. Just
to complicate matters, some supermarket departments submit separate
orders - as many as five per store.
"Many orders are so large and complicated we can't view them on
a single screen without scrolling down," she says.
Apart from eliminating lost orders, Fonterra Brands has seen
other benefits. The company has reduced its call centre to just 19
seats - four dealing with consumer relations and 15 dealing with
orders. It's also driving more business. Seamark says the system
gives her a report one hour before the daily order deadline. Her
staff can then chase-up those who haven't ordered by phone.
Seamark says another benefit is that there are no longer
hold-ups in the warehouse as the deadline approaches and paperwork
gets lost or mislaid.
Key solution features/benefits
- CONTACT converts all Fonterra Brands' incoming orders to PDF
format, allowing them to be archived and easily searched
- Orders are no longer lost in the system as operators can now
quickly store and retrieve original documents when a customer
queries an order
- CONTACT has helped Fonterra brands speed up order processing,
reduce cost and has allowed it to redeploy call centre staff.
About Fonterra Brands
Fonterra Brands is a subsidiary of the Fonterra Co-operative
Group Limited, which is New Zealand's largest company by turnover.
It is also the world's fifth-largest dairy company and the largest
dairy exporter - 95 percent of its New Zealand production is
exported. The Fonterra Group's annual turnover is approximately
US$10 billion. Fonterra Brands sells consumer-oriented dairy
products, including those under the well-known Anchor, Fernleaf,
Tip Top and Mainland labels. It operates a number of wholly-owned
subsidiaries as well as joint-venture companies in markets around
the world. For more information please visit www.fonterra.com
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