A renowned manufacturer of GPS tracking devices for pets wanted to expand their global operations and customer base. To accomplish this they needed diverse, multilingual support to supplement their internal team. Their decision to outsource key functions ultimately enabled them to establish their brand in new regions around the world. This is how they achieved their goals while improving their overall customer experience.
Who is Tractive?
Tractive develops advanced GPS trackers for dogs, cats. They have used a tech solution to enable pet parents the world over to view their fur babies’ real-time location, create virtual fences, monitor pet activity, view sleep patterns, and track their calories, all by means of a user-friendly smartphone application. So, no matter where you are, you’ll always know where your pets are – and you can access the info live on your phone.
The company was founded in 2012 and became headquartered in Austria. Their products and services immediately appealed to the needs of those who cared for their beloved pets. Tractive quickly pawed its way to the top as Europe’s biggest supplier of GPS pet trackers and has subsequently become the second biggest supplier in the US, already reaching 190 countries globally. At the same time, its number of users continues to grow.
Why they decided to partner with a BPO
Tractive was on a quest to become a global market leader in the GPS pet tracking industry, which entailed growing its business in Europe while establishing its brand in the US market. After securing $37m in venture capital funding, Tractive set out to expand operations in North America.
As part of their strategic growth plan, they made the decision to outsource some of their customer support to an external company. They also had to find a partner that would appreciate their approach to CX.
“When it’s about pets, people should feel that personal feeling with the customer service agent,” explained Luca Fracchia, Tractive’s External Support Coordinator, while on a recent visit to Boldr’s offices in the Philippines. “We teach our agents, the first thing is how to personalize their answers, how to give the feeling to people that they’re interacting with a real human being that can feel their emotions, can feel their concerns, and can help them in the best possible way.”
Tractive decided early on to concentrate on email and chat engagement, not traditional phone support, which is why Zendesk became their preferred CRM.
“We provide customer support mainly in written form, mainly emails and chats. We tried phone support for a short time but then decided that’s not the way we will go. Zendesk is the best tool to provide brief support to the customer, because of an easy UI and different tools and features that help us with customer requests. It offers us the possibility to check statistics that help us to measure our success.”
Boldr and Tractive partner up
They partnered with Boldr in 2020. We were able to provide Tractive with 24/7 support in several languages at competitive rates, thus enabling the internal team to focus on their growth strategy.
We initially recruited six team members to match Tractive’s needs. The Boldr team was quick to embrace Tractive’s unique culture and human-centric approach to CX, which meant consistently providing exceptional customer experiences, as well as reporting on customer trends. Following a successful pilot phase, Tractive saw an opportunity to further grow its operations. They simultaneously decided to grow their Boldr team rather than placing more pressure on their internal teams and allowing them the capacity to transition to a 4-day working week.
“The company grew, the sales numbers grew, but together, also the team grew internally. The Tractive customer service team, but also our external Boldr team grew this year. I believe we will be able to face the peaks of Black Friday and Cyber Monday as we did last year.”
The team now consists of 24 team members that provide support by answering customer emails and chats in multiple languages, such as English, Italian, Spanish, French, and German. We have 4 team members allocated to helping with technical troubleshooting queries. During April, 5 team members from the queue began dispatching tickets, as opposed to answering ticket inquiries. This increased the productivity of the entire Tractive team because it reduced time spent on responding to tickets.
Boldr has continuously achieved and exceeded the productivity, efficiency, and CSAT targets put forward by the Tractive team. First Response Time (FRT) and resolution time to chats and emails are the top metrics that Tractive look into, as these directly impact customer satisfaction. For Tractive’s chat support, our FRT has been between 30 – 35 seconds, which is well below the required 60 seconds, while our resolution times average between 9 to 10 minutes per chat, which is below the goal of 14 minutes. For their email Support, we have consistently performed better than the FRT goal of 24 hours, as well as the resolution time goal of 24 hours.
We look forward to exploring new ways to help Tractive grow and expand its business, as we do with all our valued clients. If you’re looking for an outsourcing partner that will enable your teams to have 4-day work weeks while providing your customers with 24/7 multilingual support, let us show you how.
James Fouche is the Content Manager at Boldr, as well as an author and a columnist. He is passionate about sharing his love of reading and writing with others.
