Building efficiency in the cloud

B&O Service is part of the B&O Group, which has its origins in roof and facade renovation. Today, B&O Service specialises in the maintenance and modernisation of housing, making it one of the most important players in the German housing industry and the market leader in technical services. As a full-service provider, B&O Service handles all technical services, from the general maintenance to modernisation and damage repair of rental apartments.

B&O Service currently provides these services for more than 600,000 residential units for private and municipal housing companies throughout Germany and carries out around one million repairs per year. This high number of projects can only be managed because the company cooperates with almost 2,000 specialised contractors in addition to its own 1,000 craftsmen.

Tenants of B&O Service can call the service centre 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to report damage to their homes. To ensure the highest level of service stability, B&O Service uses the Genesys Cloud platform.

The leaks of a legacy solution

Since 2006, B&O Service has been handling claims through its own customer centre. Many customers report non-functioning garage doors, defunct heating systems, dripping faucets and other unpleasant issues that need to be handled in a timely manner. Unfortunately, its legacy contact centre solution was neither up to date nor able to keep up with the dynamic developments of the sector, which forced B&O Service to invest in a new contact centre solution.

“In light of current market conditions, our old on-premises deployment simply proved too costly,” said Christoph Otto, Head of IT Infrastructure and Service at B&O Service. “It was also based on outdated ISDN technology, which couldn’t support additional functionality.”

Another driving force behind the move was the old system’s lack of scalability. There was simply no way to increase queue capacity without considerable expenses. And call centre managers had to facilitate the shift to remote working. “We desperately wanted to find a solution that would enable our agents to work from home,” said Otto. “Nowadays, this is considered standard.”

A fast decision with a clear winner

After a short evaluation period, B&O Service chose the Genesys Cloud platform. And current developments prove the company’s decision was the right move. When the housing industry is impacted by unforeseeable events like the energy crisis, the service centre hub must run just as well as it does on days with low call volumes. “We can be contacted 24/7,” said Gert Acker, the Project Manager at B&O Service overseeing implementation of the new solution. “There should be no issues caused by unpredictable spikes or expected rises in call volumes due to factors like the utility usage due to changing seasons.”

With the majority of its interactions originating over the inbound voice channel, B&O Service needed strong voice routing capabilities. “In light of this, a completely reliable inbound channel was our highest priority in the decision process,” said Acker.

The number of outbound phone interactions — such as agents contacting tenants or assigning tasks to contractors — constitutes a significant volume. Additionally, B&O Service uses SMS functions to send confirmations and feedback messages to its clients.

Agents now have access to a planning tool that enables them to assign tasks to maintenance groups, arrange appointments with clients and organise individual messages. For example, they can specify whether reported “water damage” is caused by a burst pipe or a smaller defect that merely requires simple maintenance work. As a result, each incoming call to the B&O Service hotline can be rapidly assessed and routed to first-, second- or third-level support agents based on clear guidelines.

“Is the issue not that urgent or is it necessary to quickly book a mechanic?” said Acker. “How should it be categorised, and which maintenance group is responsible? And finally, the availability calendar is also an important part of these processes that must run perfectly at all times.”

Continuous process optimisation

Genesys Cloud meets all these requirements. The cloud-based solution serves as a unified platform for all B&O Service agents and enables them to route calls to other teams if necessary. And the technically savvy B&O Service staff members make great use of Genesys Cloud Architect.

B&O Service is now able to develop customer-specific functions that can easily be integrated into the standardised workflows. So, it’s possible to implement dedicated prompts or service hours. Genesys Cloud also played an important role when B&O Service agents switched to remote work during the pandemic.

“The pandemic posed no challenge whatsoever,” said Otto. “Even newly recruited employees transitioned smoothly because the platform is very intuitive, and its use therefore only requires minimal training. Thanks to the workforce training provided by Genesys partner Deliberate, we are able to quickly develop and adapt functions as needed.”

As a result, agents benefit from streamlined processes with consistent stability and reliability, and the new contact centre is better able to cope with higher demand. B&O Service can scale at any time without switching contracts.

B&O Service now has a clear vision for the future of its new contact centre. Managers plan to gradually increase the number of available channels and are currently evaluating use cases for bots.

“For our business, switching to Genesys Cloud was absolutely the best decision,” concluded Otto.