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From Home Furnishing Business

BostonFAM Appreciates Package.ai Onboarding and Effect

July 6, 2023  by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Industry   

The furniture and appliance retailer, which has a fleet of 34 delivery vehicles and makes an average of 250 daily deliveries, also witnessed higher levels of customer satisfaction thanks to auto notifications and two-way conversations with Package.ai's chatbot Jenny, and day-of-delivery tracking.

BostonFAM, the parent company of Furniture & ApplianceMart, ApplianceMart, and several Ashley HomeStores in Wisconsin, had initially enjoyed a lot of success using the industry-standard delivery management solution it implemented in 2012. But when it needed to adapt its business to cope with recession and then Covid, it found that the solution couldn't respond to its needs.

Package.ai presented the ideal solution, offering a feature-rich customer engagement platform capable of resolving the challenges BostonFAM was experiencing.

To ensure a smooth integration, Package.ai's developers worked with the team at BostonFAM to build the workflow out, customize the interface and connect to APIs in the existing POS system.

"The process was truly fast and seamless. The team at Package.ai allowed us to go at our own pace while figuring out how to replicate and improve our workflows and settings while being completely supportive every step of the way,” says Jim Queen, director of IT, BostonFAM.

“Throughout the process, Package.ai was always immediately responsive as we completed our training and onboarding steps. So, the process was so fast and efficient from our perspective."

Additional features were also developed to help resolve the pain points being experienced by BostonFAM.

"The implementation process was like changing the engine on a 747 in mid-flight, while ensuring none of the passengers were aware of it," explains Ralph Shulberg, Package.ai's General Manager for North America.

The BostonFAM team was prepared for the new system, which it found simple to use and easy to learn, through training sessions and documentation. After six months the switch was finalized, and Package.ai was rolled out to its main distribution center and a smaller depot used for service and delivery routing and tracking, to serve all 15 of BostonFAM retail locations.

Using Package.ai's chatbot Jenny to interact with customers radically reduced the workload on the customer support team and meant confirmation rates rapidly increased thanks to the ability for customers to reply directly to Jenny and engage in two-way conversations to reschedule deliveries and resolve other issues. The result was a 38% reduction in delivery scheduling call volume and a 30% reduction overall in call volume.

"The situational awareness that we gained regarding our customers through having their data available instantly through Package.ai's interface, and Jenny's chat stream in particular, has been invaluable," adds BostonFAM's Jim Queen.

After completing the rollout of Package.ai for its service technicians, the next phase of implementation is to incorporate sales discussions with customers, and use post-delivery customer feedback to boost social media and online reviews.

This will fully replace BostonFAM's current customer communications solution. It will then look to the future for additional POS scheduling features.