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Quality, safety and functionality are keywords for the Danish baby interior brand, Sebra. Therefore, product warranty claims are also taken seriously; each complaint is one too many, despite the fact that they have a relatively low claim percentage. But why optimize the process when they already have a low claim rate? We asked Benny Kristiansen, Sales and Marketing Director at Sebra.
"All companies that sell physical goods know about claims, and they will always occur. It is a time-consuming and chaotic problem that often puts customers' patience to the test." - Benny Kristiansen
Specifically, Sebra experience that their B2B customers (retailers) submit half-documented claims via email. Often, 3 to 4 emails are sent back and fourth to get all the needed data, which prolongs the processing time and hurts the customer experience. Furthermore, this manual process creates unstructured data scattered though large excel sheets.
"To optimize your claim processes you need to have full overview. This is close to impossible when data is decentralized and scattered in huge excel sheets." - Benny Kristiansen
Sustainability is a top priority at Sebra. It was therefore considered a critical problem that they did not have a holistic overview over faulty products and structured about quality issues, which can be shared internally with their product development team and externally with manufacturers.
"If companies are to become sustainable, they need to have control over this part of the business. Many people use no-claim agreements, but it is unsustainable in the future because you do not take care of your own quality. It is not sustainable." - Benny Kristiansen
Sebra entered a partnership with Claimlane in April 2021 to achieve the desired control over their claim handling process.
The objectives of the collaboration are:
Sebra implemented Claimlane in two phases. First phase was Claimlane's B2B Claim Portal that was introduced to wholesale partners to streamline the flow of claims and ensure perfect data for the first time. In addition, the module Inbox & Workflows created a structured overview over all warranty claims.
In phase two, Sebra has integrated with Dynamics NAV (their ERP system) to automate the manual processes of the final part of claim handling (such as crediting, ordering spare parts, and so on). After 12 months, time consumption was reduced by up to 50% across the whole organization. The customer dialogue and entry into ERP has gone from taking approximately 5 minutes on average to only 1 minute with Claimlane on simpler claims.
"Before we started the project, our Service Center wanted an extra colleague - now the talk is instead about what the freed time should be used for." - Benny Kristiansen
In addition, Sebra was later introduced to Advanced Analytics for detailed insights into product quality issues across all product categories, which are shared throughout the organization.
"With Claimlane, we can process the cases significantly faster than before, and at the same time, we get the right data per claim and thus valuable insight for improvement." - Benny Kristiansen
The last stage is now in relation to targeted efforts for improvement opportunities based on documented knowledge and concrete insight, and here Sebra expects that the claim rate can be reduced by at least 25% - which, from a sustainability and economic perspective is fantastic.
Benny concludes with the most essential point. Sebra now sees claim handling as a value-creating activity, the ability to turn a negatively charged experience into a positive customer experience.
"The biggest challenge is that every claim is initially negatively charged. Here, the task of getting this turned into a positive. For example, suppose you have 1,000 customers with a bad experience due to claims. In that case, it can quickly spread to even more potential customers and ultimately mean lost sales. Turning a negative situation into a downright positive customer experience is the most crucial thing that Claimlane helps us with." - Benny Kristiansen
The focus has been on achieving an ROI within 12 months by implementing Claimlane as the primary software to handle the claim process, and it has been fully met. The investment, in addition to Claimlane, has been the internal time consumption as well as costs for an external consultant in relation to helping with integration to NAV.
