How BSH boosted their knowledge power to deliver better customer service

The approximately 60,000 employees of BSH Home Appliances Group (BSH) would agree with a phrase invented more than 400 years ago by an Englishman, Sir Francis Bacon. For those employees striving to meet their company’s goal of improving customers’ quality of life at home, Bacon said it best, “Knowledge is power.”  

Based in Munich, Germany, BSH, a part of Bosch Group, has become one of the world’s top home appliance manufacturers – from large appliances such as ovens, dishwashers, washers, dryers, and refrigerators to small appliances such as vacuum cleaners and espresso machines. You may even be familiar with some of their brands, like Bosch, Siemens, Gaggenau, NEFF, and Thermador. BSH has 38 factories worldwide and a network of sales, production, and service companies.

Lacking a unified experience

In the past, BSH faced challenges in effectively utilizing consumer knowledge, which included understanding their preferences, purchasing history, service requirements, and product usage. This valuable information plays a crucial role in driving sales, marketing, service, and product development efforts, ultimately leading to satisfied customers and employees.

BSH recognized the need for a unified engagement platform to streamline consumer data management across all touchpoints in its direct-to-consumer (D2C) operations. Previously, the company relied on a collection of insufficiently connected legacy systems, making it difficult to identify consumers and cater to their specific needs.

Inefficiencies resulting from a knowledge void

Going deeper into the issues, the knowledge disconnect challenged the company to provide timely, complete responses to marketing and sales opportunities. BSH struggled to offer the level of self-service capabilities today’s consumers expect in terms of one ID, one portal, affecting consumer satisfaction. The lack of easily accessible data and BSH’s complex system landscape also affected the company’s ability to quickly and effectively implement improved customer relationship management solutions. This deficiency impacted the targeted marketing campaigns that would help boost the consumer experience (CX) and engagement. 

The insufficiently connected systems even prevented BSH from taking full advantage of what the Internet of Things and the company’s “smart” appliances have to offer. In short,  BSH could not leverage the potential of connected “smart” home appliances to gather application information for building loyalty and new business models.

The launch of an omni-channel CX revolution

To get connected, BSH reached out to SAP to create its OneConsumer (OCO) platform, a unified engagement platform that revolutionizes how the company handles consumer data. 

With the OCO project, BSH connected all relevant systems and processes through SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) to achieve holistic data integration and established a common consent and preference management solution based on SAP Customer Data Cloud. It connects and leverages consumer interactions from sales, service, and marketing through additional SAP Customer Experience solutions and smart home application integration, collecting and storing data for easy, centralized single-sign-on access. 

The company is now able to achieve real-time data exchange across all touchpoints and BSH brands quickly and completely. 

Creating a seamless experience with the goal of a holistic 360° approach

Through seamless integration and unique consumer identification, BSH breaks down silos to move toward holistic 360° consumer data capabilities combining customer profiles and smart home data of registered products. 

The new solution is designed to optimize the customer journey at all ends with a single ID. Customers gain a personalized view of their data, accessible through their web accounts or the Home Connect app. Self-service and customer engagement have been strongly enhanced. 

With OCO at work, the company has been able to create personalized emails to address shopping cart abandonment, leading to a 3x higher conversion rate – less consumer churn and higher D2C revenue. 

In addition, the dedicated BSH teams across touchpoints, from contact centers to showrooms and stores, can confidently engage with consumers, equipped with accurate information. 

Another milestone achieved

OCO and its SAP tools have also helped accelerate the time to market for better service, saving up to 40% in development time for CRM-related implementations and significantly increasing the efficiency of marketing campaign deployments. 

“With our new OneConsumer Engagement Platform we are creating a transparent win-win for both our consumers and our employees, leveraging unified data across brands, touchpoints, and processes to improve quality of life at home in every interaction. After pilots in a few of our markets so far and incorporating several further improvement ideas, we are now preparing the rollout to boost Customer Experience with our brands, products, service and Home Connect ecosystem around the globe,“ says Rainer Jersch, Global Head of B2C Analytics & Marketing at BSH Home Appliances Group.

OCO is more than just a project; it’s a strategic game changer. It lays the foundation for essential key capabilities such as state-of-the-art loyalty management, AI-powered personalized recommendations, and a seamless omnichannel purchase, smart home, and service experience.

Recognized for these achievements

At SAP Innovation Awards 2024, BSH and its employees were honored for elevating the consumer experience with OCO, receiving the “Experience Wizard” award. You can read more about how that powerful experience was created by checking out the BSH pitch deck.