How Ratioparts is building a profit center with babelforce
Ratioparts, a seasoned outdoor equipment retailer, had a major transformation in its operations when it partnered with babelforce. Previously weighed down by a sluggish and unreliable telephony system, their customer service agents were set free when babelforce stepped into the picture.
€25k per day
6x increase
Reduced
Seasonal peaks
About Ratioparts
Ratioparts is a leading distributor of spare parts for outdoor power equipment in Germany and Sweden. In business for over 30 years, Ratioparts operates in 25 countries and have 60,000 different items in their stock list. Their goal is to make repairs affordable and practical for their customers.
Ratioparts’ orders and customer service requests peak during the summer months, placing a strain on their customer service team. With 500 to 800 highly specialized daily customer requests during their high season, Ratioparts needed to streamline its processes and find a way to accommodate seasonal demand peaks.
Industry:
Size:
Location:
Use Case:
Gardening, forestry and landscaping equipment
150+ employees
Germany
CCaaS with Zendesk integration and automated outbound dialling
Breathing new life into Ratioparts' customer service
Before babelforce, Ratioparts’ customer service processes were fragmented, with some teams unable to see the full customer journey. Naturally, this led to an inconsistent and disjointed experience for customers at times. To make matters more challenging, their old phone system lacked overflow between queues. Customers couldn’t always reach representatives during peak seasonal demand, and could even be disconnected without warning. These callers would sometimes circle to the sales team to complain.
Their first step towards a better customer journey was to seek out Zendesk. They knew that adopting a ticketing system would be a major move towards understanding their callers better. However, that wasn’t the end of the story; they still had major issues with their phone system. As Ralf Maus, Customer Service Manager at Ratioparts, put it: “we were lucky if it was working even one day without disturbances!”
The old system offered only a partial integration with Zendesk which could create tickets, but only after the call ended. This was a major time sink for the agents who had to manually fill in these tickets between calls when they should have been talking to customers.
Daily issues with call quality made it harder to provide reassuring customer service. On top of this, the frequent disconnections broke the smooth flow of conversations, leaving customers frustrated and issues unresolved. All these issues had the potential to erode trust, satisfaction and brand reputation.
Features that their old telephony provider promised were either absent or required even more investment. It was time to search for a better solution.
Ratioparts, Meet babelforce
Ralf needed a reliable telephony provider that was built to work together with Zendesk. Since this was one of his biggest concerns, it made sense to reach out to Zendesk directly to see if they had any suggestions.
babelforce was the name they came back with and, after some initial research, Ralf was intrigued. He got in touch, and after learning that babelforce could auto-create Zendesk tickets before and during the call, he was sold.
“We have people working already with babelforce on our Swedish team. And the rest of the team is very jealous of them.”
Ralf Maus
Customer Service Manager at Ratioparts
babelforce sprang into action, and completed the implementation for the Swedish branch of the department in just over two months. According to Ralf, everything was “superb” from start to finish, which gave him the confidence to roll babelforce out for the German customer service reps as well.
From cost center to profit center
With the telephony issues sorted, it was time to use the new system to expand the department’s capabilities and make smarter use of quiet periods.
Ralf firmly believes in directing time and effort to the most impactful areas and he also wanted his agents to be able to make better use of their time. With this in mind, he took steps to understand which customers were most valuable to the business.
Ratioparts had realized that just one agent working outbound for half a day could generate up to €5,000. The old system had been too restrictive for this kind of functionality, but with babelforce’s automated outbound dialler it was much easier to scale this up. The customer service department is now on track for a daily revenue from outbound of more than €25,000.
The shift Ralf and his team were working on was significant – aiming to adjust the inbound to outbound call ratio to from 95-5, to 70-30. “Our dream is to change the customer service from a kind of a cost center to a profit center,” Ralf said. With babelforce, that dream was finally within reach.
Space to innovate: How Ratioparts benefits from babelforce
babelforce’s implementation had an immediate impact on the Ratioparts team. Agents were more efficient, and the new technology was such a step up from their previous system, that the entire team felt instantly less frustrated. But it wasn’t just about the team’s experience – Ratioparts’ customers were seeing changes too.
Fewer Abandoned Calls, Happier Customers
With a stable phone system in place, customers could rely on uninterrupted interactions when they needed support. Random disconnections were a thing of the past, and a better overall experience helped lower the call abandon rate. Now, they could track abandonment rate more closely and work to reduce it. Gone were the days of customer complaints about not being able to contact a customer service representative.
Ratioparts can draw up reports, and monitor their abandonment rate in the wider context of all customer service activities.
Less Frustration for Everybody
The switch to babelforce reduced frustration across the board. So who benefits the most? “Our customers,” Ralf says. “And honestly, it will make life easier for all of us, especially for the agents.”
“When we have an idea, it’s easy to adjust the system and extend the functions. No issues, no service problems, and directly a ticket “
Ralf Maus
Customer Service Manager at Ratioparts
In the old days, their agents would sometimes get six calls in a row, and then try to remember “what happened in the second call?”. This is no longer a concern, with automated ticketing and the ability to add an internal note in the system and assign it automatically to the warehouse or product marketing – wherever it needs to go.
More Time for Innovation
At Ratioparts, the team’s ingenuity could now go at full throttle, with babelforce providing the engine for change. They could fine-tune their customer service hotline, and were delighted to finally have a system to help them do that. As Ralf Maus explains, they can now do “fancy stuff” like directing certain customer groups to their website, their voicemail, or ticket support.
But for Ralf, the true value of babelforce has been its ability to free him from getting bogged down in the day-to-day demands of support. Before, it would be a constant firefight against technical issues. Troubleshooting was a daily drill and keeping his team’s morale high took a lot of effort. With hundreds of other areas needing his attention, he wanted a system that would run smoothly without his constant oversight. He now has exactly that, and this autonomy has enabled him to explore all the other things he couldn’t get to before.
Growth is On The Horizon
Looking ahead, Ratioparts plans to take full advantage of everything babelforce has to offer; Ralf is keen to do more with AI. He wants to automate simple, repetitive requests, like asking for a copy of an invoice or a delivery note. “The customer just needs to answer some questions in the system and then it’s sent out, ticket documented, boom! Ready. And the agents can take care of other important stuff.”
But what he’s most excited about is the transition from a reactive service model to a proactive, revenue-generating force. With a more streamlined system, he plans to dedicate additional agents full-time to reach out to customers. This is an opportunity he couldn’t have imagined before implementing babelforce.
Book your demo today
We’re super proud of our no-code contact center platform, and we’d love to show you everything it can do. During your free demo we’ll:
- Show you key features designed to make your agents’ lives easier
- Demonstrate how babelforce’s intuitive builder puts contact center optimization in your hands
- Assess your requirements and recommend your ideal babelforce use case
- Answer any questions you might have!
