00:02
Ciaran
Hello and welcome to Customer Friendship Conversations, the show where we bring you the latest trends, tools and insights into delivering customer experience as it’s meant to be. I’m Ciaran Nolan and I run the customer business here at Dixa. Today I’m talking to Phillip Sønderskov, global customer service manager at HiFi Klubben. They’re a high-quality audio retailer, and now they sell home theatre equipment too. Founded in the 1980s, they pride themselves on selling high-quality products. And now, in addition to their web stores, they have more than 95 brick-and-mortar stores across Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. Phillip has been with HiFi Klubben for almost four years now, so he really knows the company and the unique needs of its customers, including over 1 million members of the HiFi Klubben Customer Club.
00:47
Ciaran
He spoke to us from their base in Denmark. Phillip, thank you for joining Customer Friendship Conversations. We’re delighted to have you today.
00:56
Phillip
Thank you for letting me join. It’s going to be exciting.
00:59
Ciaran
Yeah, we’re thrilled. A brand I personally really like, and I love visiting your beautiful stores when I’m visiting Copenhagen. So I’m very excited to learn more about what’s behind the scenes at HiFi Klubben. So, to kick off, why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and your role at HiFi Klubben.
01:20
Phillip
My name is Phillip and I’m the global customer service manager here in HiFi Klubben. And it sounds like a big, fancy title, but that just means that I’m customer service manager of all our markets, which is Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. I’ve been working here for almost four years. Started two weeks before Corona hit the world. So that was an exciting start of the job. And before that, I worked another company that is also selling cross border online, which is called SkatePro, where we sold action sport equipment to customers. And that was in most of Europe and also in the US and Canada. And I was actually started there as customer service agent, but worked my way up to be responsible for our returns and claims. And for the last six years, I was manager of the customer service there.
02:20
Ciaran
Yeah, Skatepro was a brand I also know well. And, yeah, very cool products, a very cool company. So when we look at HiFi Klubben, obviously I know what it is, but why don’t you give our international listeners a bit of. A bit of an understanding of what you guys do?
02:36
Phillip
HiFi Klubben started 43 years ago as a brand that sells sound equipment to customers. So speakers and amplifiers and now also TV turntables and other things. But the whole reason why HiFi Klubben started was actually because our founder, Peter, he was a big music enthusiast himself and started to import products from abroad to sell to friends and families. And he had a connection that they could use. And he saw a business opportunity here and started actually to sell to other HiFi Klubben similar stores in Denmark, but quickly was pretty dissatisfied with the reason why they wanted to sell products. They were in it more for the money, but he was really in it to deliver good sound to the population and making sure that everybody could have this experience that he had with the product.
03:35
Phillip
So he decided to disrupt the whole chain and cut out the middleman and sourcing directly from the manufacturer and selling it to the end consumer so that you could have a more affordable setup. But it still delivered really high-quality sound throughout the years that grew to the company we have today. Today we have around 90 to 95 stores, depending on when in the year you look. Because we are expanding in Germany and we are trimming our other markets a little bit to figure out, is it necessary to have a store here? Should we consolidate some or move some? And then we have the five different webshops in the different countries. They’re all one, but they’re split into local language, so it appears local.
04:20
Ciaran
Amazing. So you have a very passionate founder, somebody who is very much in it to make a change, it sounds like very much.
04:28
Phillip
I mean, he’s not running the company anymore, but he’s part of the Board of directors, and he is very involved in where we are going with the company, and he is very customer focused. Still, everything that we do have to be customer oriented or sound oriented, which is really nice, because that’s really the foundation of our culture in the company. And it makes it fun to work here, that you can actually work as the customer’s advocate and try to impact the company in ways that benefits the customer in the end.
05:01
Ciaran
I love that. Yeah. And I’ve actually visited one of your stores in Copenhagen and had a very nice feeling and experience when I visited, which was very obvious that you aren’t and the business isn’t just out there just to sell products. The team and the people seem very well briefed and very much understanding the products they’re selling, which I think nowadays is becoming less and less of a phenomenon. It’s more focused on just volumes rather than quality. I think it’s fair to say I’m.
05:37
Phillip
Happy you feel that way. And it’s also what we’re trying to do when you come into the store out of interest.
05:45
Ciaran
So, obviously, Phillip, I’ve known you for probably two years now, and I’m sure a number of our listeners and a lot of customers I work with here at Dixa have that challenge of running a store estate. So running physical stores and then an online shop, and sometimes the online shop eclipses the retail stores, or the retail stores eclipse the online shop. There seems to be no real rule as to who does better. How are you working with your online team and your retail team to ensure everybody’s up to speed and doing their best work on a product that is, I guess, highly technical?
06:23
Phillip
It is a challenge, and I don’t think we ever succeed 100% because there are always new products coming in or new trends online that you have to adapt to in customer service. But we try to be very close to our stores. And before I started here, we had a separate unit working only online, and was kind of like a separate store, which was good in one part because they had a very good sense of business for their own little department, but it was not so much communication between the other stores. And you could maybe get a different experience whether you enter a store or if you enter online, not in the majority of cases, but in the cases where we would have a claim or a warranty case or a conflict.
07:12
Phillip
So what I try to do is really to reach out to the stores, and every time we have a customer who have had an interaction with the store or online, to actually contact the store and get their side of the story first, both to educate ourselves and our staff how the world is in the store, but also to give the store a sense of feeling that we actually care what they said in this matter. And this communication back and forth has proven really well. Now, we also acknowledged that training for knowing all the products online, which the customer, of course, expects when they reach us on the phone, was so time-consuming. And you could spend the whole day just product training to make sure that you’re on top of this.
07:57
Phillip
And we had to figure out a way how to compensate for that so that we could take care of all the customers online and, but at the same time, also be up to date. And actually, during Corona, that pushed us into doing something, because we experienced a massive increase of tickets online, but a very big decrease of people coming into the stores. So I reached out to some of the stores and asked if I could borrow some of those employees that they had on the floor to help us out in Dixa, basically. So 45 minutes call with one of the employees, and he was up and running and could help customers online with product questions. And then we took care of all the order handling, and that actually became how we operate today because that worked really well.
08:47
Phillip
That we got the fresh product knowledge that you get when you are constantly demonstrating products for the customers. You get your training actually by working, and we can utilize that online so that we can benefit from this, that the customers who contact us can choose whether they have a question about product order. If you press product, you most likely end up in one of our stores where we have staff sitting and answering your product questions.
09:15
Ciaran
I love that. It’s a really good way to set things up, particularly, I guess, because purchases at the likes of HiFi Klubben are definitely more considered purchases. They’re not purchases. It’s not a candle. It’s not something you’re purchasing regularly. I presume when you purchase, you’re purchasing one big amount, and that is meant to last for a long time.
09:38
Phillip
That is one of the challenges with the products that we sell is that they actually last a lifetime, and they are an investment for people, so they really care about the details. And every speaker sounds differently, every amplifier have their own sound, and it’s difficult to convey this online to a customer. So we spend a lot of time advising them, but also after sales services, when they come home, to set it up properly, to tweak it. If there’s something that doesn’t work, we urge them to reach out to us and help them with it.
10:15
Ciaran
And you mentioned, Phillip, you joined HiFi Klubben about four years ago, so probably a baptism of fire in the sense that you arrived just around Corona, and I remember myself just around Corona. I’m pretty sure. I actually am 99% sure. I did purchase some home audio equipment. What was the customer experience like at HiFi Klubben before you joined?
10:38
Phillip
It was still good. It wasn’t bad. Before I joined, it was still very customer oriented. I remember myself being a customer years before I even considered that this would be a place I would work in the future. And always when I needed help with a repair or there was an issue with my product, I got really nice help and often better than I expected, because I knew according to consumer law, I have this and this rights. So now I have to go in and push for it. But I didn’t have to. The store just said like, oh, we will take care of it, don’t worry.
11:14
Phillip
Here’s a new product you can use instead, so you don’t have to wait for the repair time, or that was not every case, but it was just these experiences where you thought, wow, okay, that went a lot smoother than I had expected, and that was a really nice feeling as a customer. That was also what they had before I came. I think what I added to our customer service is the scalability and the tech part that I come from a background of a company that grew about 100% every year. So you had to constantly adapt to the scale. And I think that was a really great match during COVID where we basically exploded. And I had already learned how to cope and adapt in those situations.
12:00
Ciaran
Yeah, very good. Yeah, I can see that. And probably timing wise, it was great timing for the business to hire you, which is good. Were you very focused on maybe the more technology side? Is that fair to say?
12:13
Phillip
Before I started, we had a customer service or Webshop manager in each of the markets. So Denmark had their own separate unit with their own customer servicehop manager, and that worked great for a long time. But we started to see more and more business coming online and noticed that we had many different ways of doing it. Not every unit were using the same phone company or even the same email provider. So my objective when I came was actually to consolidate everything here in Scandinavia, or at least the Norwegian, Danish and the Swedish one, to put them together in Aarhus, where we are located in the headquarters, and make sure that we are streamlined in how we do things so we are more efficient and that we carry out our values in customer service in all the different markets. So that was the main thing.
13:14
Phillip
And then I think as a natural development, you just have to be very tech interested today when you want to be a customer service manager, because it’s not enough anymore, knowing that this is how you handle a conflict, or this is how you solve a case, or this is how you identify customer needs. You also have to be very on top of what kind of tech is in the market to help you, because otherwise you will not be able to meet the customer where they want to be met. And the tech always comes after the behavior from the customer comes. So you’re already a step behind, even if you are keeping up with the tech.
13:50
Ciaran
Yeah, I love the way you phrase that. And I guess your customer probably in particular, not that they’re a more challenging customer, but they’re probably a customer that knows a lot of what they’re talking about. So potentially has maybe a lot more questions, a lot more reach out. And also, I guess I’m thinking about this even from a personal experience. The products you sell are built to last, well, a lifetime. Does that mean, you would, I guess, experience a lot more reach out over time than you might do if you were selling a different product.
14:28
Phillip
Yes, we have customers who have been with us for decades and who purchased their first audio equipment here with us. And still every now and then parts break and you have to repair them. They can come in and we service the product. We have one of Europe’s biggest service stations for HiFi equipment that we are quite proud of. And we make quality control, but we also try to save spare parts from outdated models because we know that there is a person who bought this one who might in 15 years need a repair. And then it’s just a really great service if we can actually offer a repair instead of him having to throw out otherwise functional products. But we are lucky in the sense that there is also a big community of selling secondhand audio equipment.
15:13
Phillip
So what we see with many customers that they buy in at an entry level or how much they can afford, they have it for some years and then they sell it secondhand and then they reinvest in a better setup or a newer setup. So even though they last a lifetime, we still have reoccurring customers, fortunately.
15:32
Ciaran
Yeah. I never actually thought of that. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier as well that you’re in multiple markets, so you’re working across multiple geos and teams, and that obviously presents its own challenges as well. Do you see different customer behavior across different markets?
15:50
Phillip
Very. Even though the markets are really close to each other. Just take Scandinavia as an example. How Danish customers and Swedish customers operate and what they expect and how they communicate is very differently. Of course, there’s a lot of similarities, but there is a big difference in which type of payment method they use, how they would like to communicate if they want to use chat. And I feel that the biggest difference is probably in Germany, because Germany is, I think, accustomed to Amazon and how they operate. So they have a lot of expectations of payment methods and returns and they usually order maybe two products and figure out, okay, I like this one better, and then they return it.
16:42
Phillip
Where I think Danish customers, they are more thorough with their research before and usually keep the product that they then finally order, I guess moving on to.
16:52
Ciaran
We spoke a little bit, or you mentioned Dixa there a moment ago. How did you come to partnering with Dixa?
16:59
Phillip
It’s a bit funny story, actually, because when I was working at Skateboard in the previous company, that was where I got familiar with Dixa. And one of the last things I did was actually to make a contract with Dixa and that company, and then I changed to this company where they just signed with Dixa more or less the same time. So I didn’t make the choice in this company, but I would have if I was here. But I think we had it for three months before I started. So it was still very basic and things were not set up how I would want them to set up because I had a specific idea and the guy who implemented it here prior to me was more of, okay, now it’s done. We have email tickets, we have a phone, and we’re good to go.
17:47
Ciaran
Love it. So it was handed to you, but you were very happy to take it?
17:52
Phillip
Yeah, I would have gone with it if it wasn’t because they had the same challenges here as I faced in the other company. I was working that you have multiple channels where the customer wants to reach you, but if you don’t have everything the same place, you get hyper-focused on, for instance, emails, and you don’t realize that you have a chat waiting for you or that you have to sign into the chat or you have to sign into the phone. So it was very hard to manage the different platforms that we have to be in. And I think we spend lot of time trying to remember to go in here, remember to do this, remember to do that, and to just have an overview over what type of tickets and emails are we having.
18:30
Phillip
So they were facing the same problems here in HiFi Klubben, and I was in my previous job, so I think it was just nice for me to come over and take over a system that I was already familiar with and that I had already chosen myself.
18:44
Ciaran
And I know also from your perspective, you have very much continued to innovate with Dixa over the last four years. Three years. Four years. So what you took over now is probably very different than it was four years ago. So you definitely have been a good customer for us in that sense.
19:04
Phillip
One of the great things about your product is that it’s so easy to change it yourself. Before, when I had to rely on our internal development team to develop new features that we requested would just be a huge bottleneck because they also would have to develop features for other people in the company. And one of the things I like about Dixa is the way that you build flows. And it’s super easy as either technical person, but also as a non technical person to understand how rules and criteria work together because it’s visualized. So it’s really easy to go in and say, oh, we’re getting a lot of questions about this right now. We need to consolidate those and put them in a specific queue. You can easily go in and change the flow of your email rules and criteria.
19:49
Phillip
Sometimes it’s just nice to be able to do the things yourself. So you’re also doing it the right way.
19:53
Ciaran
And you can also, I guess, turn things around very quickly, which is good as well.
19:58
Phillip
Yeah.
19:59
Ciaran
So what’s next for customer experience at HiFi Klubben? What’s your eye on right now?
20:05
Phillip
Right now we have a big focus on AI and how we can use it in our daily work. I know that you and Dixa also have a huge focus on AI, and everybody who’s working in any industry last year have talked a lot about AI, but I find it very useful in a way to see how can we use it to make it easier for our agents to actually provide good service. Because I don’t think that we are there yet where we would see AI starting to giving product recommendations or really listening to our customer needs because it’s just not that developed yet. But we want to see if we can take some of the trivial, any Webshop question that we’re getting, like, where is my order? How do I return? Can you issue a refund?
20:48
Phillip
These kind of basic things that no matter if you’re selling speakers or automated litter boxes or whatever that you’re selling, you still get these questions because you have to ship products and those we would like to automate and help our agents have more time to actually give quality service to our customers that have product information or more sensitive matters.
21:11
Ciaran
Yeah. And are you thinking there very much like, and I like the way you put it, because you’re selling a premium product. If I was planning on buying something that cost 510, 15, 20,000 euro or whatever currency we want to deal in, I probably wouldn’t be overly impressed with an AI bot, but what I would be impressed with, if I wanted to know where my order was and I could turn it around in like 10 seconds, I’d be like, well, great. So it sounds like what you’re looking at is very much the human plus AI approach rather than AI only.
21:43
Phillip
Yeah, because I don’t believe that we could train a computer to take in all the nuances that we have to take in when we are dealing with the customer. That it’s not a strict, this is the question, this is the answer that you can get in any case, because there’s always, how is the tone of the customer? Is he upset? Is he patient? Is it a big product? Have we had issues with this customer before or has he had issues with us before? There are so many things that you need to take into account when you’re dealing with customers. No matter if it’s a 5000 or a five euro purchase, the customer still needs to be treated really nicely.
22:26
Phillip
So, yeah, we really have this AI plus human approach and I see it more as a tool that you have to learn how to work with. The same as when the computer came many years ago, that if you didn’t adapt and you didn’t learn how to use it, you will be miles behind everybody else in a few years because everybody else will follow this path and so will customer expectations.
22:50
Ciaran
Yeah, love it. Very good. And obviously you’re providing a very high level of service now. It’s very obvious across the board you’re providing a very high level of service. As the business continues to grow, how do you plan on maintaining that high level of service?
23:06
Phillip
We still measure our CSAT and our MPs and take that really seriously and try to get a lot of feedback from the customer and to have a discussion in the company why this is important. And I think as long as we acknowledge that customer service, not only from my department but in general for every part of the customer journey is important, we will continue to have this focus and as long as we have that culture, we will continue to try to strive to give really good service. And I train my guys to speak up when there is something that doesn’t feel correct, they have to do something that they feel. But this is not the best thing for the customer.
23:49
Phillip
And we discuss it and say, okay, but how can we then solve it for the customer in a way that it’s still good for business but the customer doesn’t suffer from it. We can never compromise on that part.
24:00
Ciaran
I love that. I love the way that you’re always putting the customer first, but then sometimes I’ve worked in customer experience myself. You need to also consider the business impact as well. And I like the way that you’re looking at both. But your CSAT and MPs, is that something that is reported across the business? Is that something that you wake up in the morning and I guess you think of your lovely newborn baby first, do you think of CSAT and MPs second?
24:29
Phillip
No, CSAT and MPs first. Then I say good morning to my kids.
24:34
Ciaran
I hope that it’s the inverse.
24:36
Phillip
I think it is a very big focus for us. And especially when I came into the company, we had a C set of around 80 out of 100, which was all right, but not very impressive. And now we really put focus on it and we had a lot of discussions and a lot of training on how to raise it. What should we do, in which cases do we have a low Rating from a customer and how can we turn those around so we don’t get them again? And now we are constantly above 90. So now I don’t look into it that much anymore because we have established that kind of culture where we just have this as a natural thing. We don’t have to fight to do it anymore.
25:15
Phillip
And then we have, of course, dips every now and then when we have shipping companies that are not providing the parcels as they should or other things that we can’t influence that much, but we still try to do. But we see those dips in the CSAT and then we react to it and we try to turn it around. But it’s not as a hyper focus as it was before because we already reached that threshold as well.
25:43
Ciaran
I guess a lot of the products are probably coming from quite far off places. Is that first?
25:47
Phillip
Yeah. I mean, most of our manufacturers are. Of course, it’s chips and technology. So a lot of it comes from Asia. Some also comes from us or warehouses, other places. But we have a central warehouse here in Denmark and one in Amsterdam where we ship everything from. So once it’s here, we have pretty good control over how the product comes to you. But during the pandemic where we had to wait months for chips for our products, but at the same time increased a very high increase in demand for the product, it was a huge Issue with our back order log because people, of course, were waiting and they were all right that the products were delayed once or twice. But when they start to be delayed the third and the fourth time, it becomes difficult to explain to the Customer.
26:43
Phillip
And I remember a case we had with a specific amplifier that was months on the way, and then they were finally on the way. The chip was sent to the manufacturer and it would be produced and the manufacturer factory actually burned down. And we had to wait even longer for the products and try to explain that to the Customers without making it sound like a lie you just made up. But fortunately, most of the customers, they were understanding. But it was tough times during the pandemic. We actually just moved office as well, that we are now together with the store. So we have office in the basement and store on the first floor.
27:22
Ciaran
Oh, that’s actually great. I didn’t know that. So you can also probably great for your team that they can pop upstairs and have a look at some of the problems, some of the things that might come in.
27:33
Phillip
Yes, we decided half a year ago or a little bit before, but that’s where we really started. Communicated to the rest of the company that we had an issue that the Back office functions were a bit further away from the reality in the stores, but also the other way that the stores didn’t always understand why we did certain things in back office and that also went for customer service. That when we are not close to our products or not close to the stores, the majority of the products, we never really touch or listen to and we have to advise customers on what to buy. So to Bridge that, we decided to merge those two. So we are now together with a store. And that has been great so far.
28:18
Phillip
For me it is just more speakers around and you can go up and listen to new things coming in and also Just have after hour chill evenings where it’s Thursday afternoon or Friday afternoon. And in Denmark at least, it’s normal to have a beer when you’re off work and go up into the store, listen to some speakers, take some of the guys from the team or from another department and just hang out and enjoy the products that we are selling.
28:47
Ciaran
Okay, so we’re coming to the end now and we have our quick fire questions. So Phillip, what do you know now that you wish you’d known at the start of your customer experience journey?
28:59
Phillip
That’s a tough one, because many of the things you have struggled with and learned is also what have shaped you for the one that you are today. But I guess it would be that I don’t need to know the answer to everything. I don’t need to be the Wikipedia of my department. I think I struggled in the beginning of trying to learn everything, be on top of everything and having the control, which now in the later years, I have pushed more out to my team and trusted them and urged them to find the solutions themselves. Instead of that, I having to know everything.
29:36
Ciaran
How do you measure success of your customer friendships at HiFi Klubben? I think we did refer to this.
29:41
Phillip
Yeah, as I mentioned before, we measure CSAT and NPS, but we also look at customers that are reoccurring that how many customers do we have coming back? And I think that’s our way how to do it. And we also listen quite a lot to our social media platforms and we host events for the customers where they come in or they join live shows. And I think we don’t measures specifically, but we get a gut feeling of are we liked or not? In this and then we have a very strong relation with our customers, also locally in the stores.
30:18
Ciaran
Given that you’re so good at really good customers experience, what’s your number one tip for other companies and organizations to get to as good as you are?
30:28
Phillip
Listen to your staff and let them make the decisions because they know the situation with the customer way better than you do as a CEO or someone on the top management. You hire people to be experts in customer service. Let them be experts and they will make sure to take care of the customer.
30:46
Ciaran
Final question, what is your favorite product from HiFi Klubben that you personally own and have in your own house?
30:54
Phillip
Probably my speakers that I recently bought. I bought a smaller speaker first, but now we moved into a house and then we have more space. And more space means that you have more space for bigger speakers. So I got some speakers that I have been wanting to have for a long time and I use them all the time and fortunately, my wife agrees. She really loves them as well.
31:22
Ciaran
Love it well, listen, Phillip, thank you so much for joining us today. It really was a pleasure and looking forward to catching up with you again in Denmark soon.
31:30
Phillip
Thanks for having me and it was a blast and looking forward to see you next time.
31:35
Ciaran
Thanks for listening today’s episode of Customer Friendship Conversations. If you’ve enjoyed the show, then make sure you’re following us on your podcast platform of choice. It means that you’ll get notified each time we release a new episode so you won’t miss out on any of the other amazing customer friendship heroes we’ll be showcasing in the coming months. Of course, our rating a review is a huge help to the show, so we always massively appreciate those as well. And if you’re interested in learning more about customer friendship, then head to Dixa.com to discover everything you want to know of a customer experience as it’s meant to be. I’m Ciaran Nolan and once again, thank you to Phillip for joining me on this episode. It really sounded fantastic. Until next time.