BIC is a French company founded in 1944, renowned worldwide for its writing instruments, lighters and shavers. Sold in over 160 countries, BIC products stand out for their simplicity, reliability and accessibility. The company, based in Clichy, employs over 14,000 people worldwide and is actively engaged in sustainability initiatives to reduce its environmental impact, while remaining true to its mission of providing quality solutions for everyday life.
Senior Manager for HR IT and Process Automation, Jeffrey Darraillans has a dual role within BIC. Optimizing transactional processes within the various departments, harmonizing them and making them visible is the primary mission covered by the Process Automation role.
At BIC, Customer Service handles the various requests of mainly BtoB customers. It covers 16 European countries with 21 entities.
«Our European Customer Service had limited visibility of telephone interactions. While e-mail data was well exploited, call data remained unanalyzed: the types of requests, volumes and processing times were unknown. This was a major obstacle to optimizing our processes and offering better service to our customers, while simplifying the day-to-day work of our team members.»
«Faced with this situation, we undertook this project to centralize the management of the various channels (e-mails, telephone calls, tickets) in a single solution (ServiceNow) coupled with high-performance technology to capture and analyze telephone data,» explains Jeffrey Darraillans.
It was against this backdrop that BIC chose to collaborate with Activeo and AWS to meet the need for a single, simplified platform to collect relevant data and boost team performance. Compatibility with the ServiceNow environment was a must, as was the innovation dimension to continue modernizing the work environment.
«In choosing AWS's Amazon Connect solution and its integrated connector with ServiceNow, we opted for a solution capable of meeting our needs while offering innovative features. For example, the text-to-speech function via the “Amazon Polly” module gave us greater flexibility. Instead of using an agency to record our voice guides, we generate messages directly by simply entering text. This simplifies updates and enables us to quickly adapt our communications, particularly during busy periods such as the start of the new school year,» explains Jeffrey Darraillans.
In addition, the implementation of this new cloud architecture has streamlined access to tools without physical installation, offering a minimal footprint on workstations and greater agility.
The project, which began in May and was completed in September, followed a project methodology developed by the Activeo team: business workshops, technical scoping and progressive roll-out, not forgetting user training and support. A dedicated team of IT and business experts oversaw the implementation, with the support of an internal BIC project manager.
User training took place remotely, in customized sessions adapted to each country. The sessions enable teams to get to grips with the solution quickly, as they alternate theoretical input with practical workshops, a key format for facilitating adoption.
«This project was a success thanks to the joint commitment of the BIC and Activeo teams. It has met our main needs: to offer greater visibility over telephone interactions and to simplify the work of our agents. What's more, features like text-to-speech provide real added value in terms of flexibility and autonomy,» concludes Jeffrey Darraillans.
