Customer service channels blended deliciously for Hotel Chocolat

About the client in short

Hotel Chocolat is a luxury cacao grower with stores across the UK and US, as well as cafes, restaurants and a hotel on its working cacao farm in Saint Lucia. It also has an online store, and sells popular chocolate and home barista subscription services as well as the ALL NEW Velvetiser®, an at-home, barista-grade hot and cold drinking chocolate system.

Key figures

10+

years of growing our services and deepening our relationship

81%

first call resolution rate

+26,000

calls in Q4 2024

+53,000

emails handled smoothly in Q4 2024

Since becoming one of the UK’s first ‘e-tailers’ in the 1990s, Hotel Chocolat has grown its business and reputation all over the world. Konecta takes every opportunity to support its growth, for example, by initially starting with outbound-only activity for its subscriptions service, and then expanding to inbound telephony. The deeper partnership turned our agents into brand experts, in a way that also boosted outbound success.

In 2024, Hotel Chocolat was looking to enhance its customer services and efficiency still further, through:

a single-partner customer service operation covering multi-contact channels
visibility of analytics and insights to drive continuous improvement
flexibility to efficiently handle demand peaks around Christmas, Easter and other holiday and celebration times, while delivering good customer experiences.

Konecta was on hand with the ideas and expertise to do all this.

We offered Hotel Chocolat a single operation covering all major channels, including a centralized email solution. Through bringing all these channels together, we can streamline and personalize Hotel Chocolat’s customer journeys to a high degree.

The solution is set up on multiple queues to improve supervision flexibility, providing the agility to prioritize key customers, channels, queries or issues. Increased agent visibility of all historic communications further augments the personalization options.

We also offered Hotel Chocolat a range of innovative technology solutions to enhance customer experience, such as the use of AI, chatbots, and also TechSee, a visual tool solution that allows our trained agents to see, guide and solve customers’ issues in real time.

And while delivering all of this, our solution provides effective and accelerated ramp-ups, whenever needed, through access to multiple Konecta sites and trained staff.

Our first full quarter of delivering single-operation, multi-channel services to Hotel Chocolat included the busy Christmas period when customer queries soar. Through cross-training on all channels, Konecta’s dedicated team quickly reached good levels of service, and handled +26,000 calls and +53,000 emails.

We also completed a TechSee pilot trial. 95% of customers offered the service were happy to make use of it, on queries ranging from technical support for their Velvetiser, Hotel Chocolate hot chocolate machine, to questions about damaged orders. The trial saw a good increase in first contact resolution, and we will now roll it out more widely to support Hotel Chocolat and its customers.

Other next-steps include the use of AI-driven chatbots integrated with the Hotel Chocolat knowledge base. This will allow our agents to answer customer queries more speedily and effectively than ever, while also offering enhanced value for Hotel Chocolat. It’s a tasty mix!

Success stories

Retail & E-commerce

Elevating El Palacio de Hierro’s collection recovery

Struggling with rising late payment post-pandemic, Mexican department store El Palacio de Hierro sought a modern solution beyond their traditional internal approach. Konecta was selected as their partner, offering a tailored blend of cutting-edge technology and skilled agents. This collaboration aimed to optimize debt recovery while maintaining El Palacio de Hierro's recognized customer experience. The partnership focused on integrating advanced systems and a customer-centric approach to redefine their collection management.

Learn more

Retail & E-commerce

Talks, a personal space with Ferrnando Garcia, Customer Experience Sr Director at Mercado Libre

Konecta supports all Mercado Libre units (Pago, Envíos, Mediaciones, Marketplace) with high customer experience services via chat, C2C, and email, following their guidelines and based on a "continuous beta" operational model, matching Mercado Libre's approach.

Learn more

Retail & E-commerce | Customer Experience

Scalable customer support model for a fashion giant

A global retailer and e-commerce brand asked Konecta to provide multilingual customer support for online and in-person customers. Through its agile management model, Konecta now supports the client on 3 continents in 13 languages, and is still expanding. All while delivering a global quality rate of almost 9 out of 10.

Learn more

Retail & E-commerce | Products & Solutions, Customer Experience

How innovation can support customer service in retail

Innovation and excellent customer service increasingly go hand in hand. Nowhere is that more evidently so than in the retail sector, where fierce competition in the face of inflationary pressures has made customer experience a key differentiator for brands.

Learn more

Financial & Insurance | Customer Experience, Sales, Sales conversion

Boosting customer satisfaction and sales for UCI

Unión de Créditos Inmobiliarios (UCI) partnered with Konecta to manage complex after-sales and loan inquiries. Their joint mission was to boost efficiency, improve customer satisfaction, and strengthen UCI’s market position.

Learn more

Browse all success stories