Home24 Outlet improves customer experience and streamlines store growth with Next Matter

Frank Diete, Managing Director of Home24 Outlet, realized in October 2018 that he needed a scalable platform to power his company’s ongoing growth wave. This platform would need to connect all of the different functions, teams and locations across his organization to ensure consistently exceptional customer experience.

Home24 Outlet is a German concept store for the online furniture and homeware retailer Home24. They are one of the eCommerce success stories, with more than a thousand employees in an industry that sceptics viewed as a stationary market. At this time, they had just opened their third location in Neu-Ulm and were set to open an additional two 8,000m² locations within the coming months.
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Finding a solution that’s built for scale

Their objective was to make the customer experience from purchase to handover as quick and pleasant as possible. At Home24 Outlets, this process happens thousands of times every week, and customers expect consistently high levels of performance and service. Frank and his teams had previously tried a number of solutions to manage this core business process, but found nothing that was flexible or scalable enough to fit their needs.
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In the past, we used shared spreadsheets, a shared messaging app when we needed photos, and a task manager. We soon realized that it was not operationally efficient.

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The ideal process management platform

Next Matter was successfully rolled out only a few days before the opening of Neu-Ulm - Home24’s second largest outlet. Guided by the Next Matter team, Frank created 80% of the process in only two hours. With a few small iterations based on feedback from store managers over the next couple of days, and only ten minutes of onboarding with the staff the day before, Next Matter was successfully rolled out across the team, helping to facilitate a smooth store opening.

Following the success of the opening in Neu-Ulm, Frank used the same process when opening the next two Home24 Outlet locations in Cologne and Hannover. After swiftly replicating the process within Next Matter, Frank adjusted it to fit local needs and was able to onboard the respective teams in a matter of minutes.

Store admins used Next Matter to assign work packages to staff and made sure that everyone had access to the app on their mobile devices. “We had a one day test with friends and family, and that helped a lot to streamline the process,” he explains. During the opening weekend, the Cologne store made over half of an average month’s revenue.
He received positive feedback from store operations about Next Matter, and they continue to enthusiastically use it in their stores today.
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The store managers are super happy! It’s easy to use, not hard to explain, and it works.

He encourages his store leaders to make their own iterations for the specific needs of their stores, so their individual Next Matter processes are always improving. Once the process is laid out and running, it’s easy to spot optimization opportunities for local experts.

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Processes are now managed in minutes

Frank describes Next Matter as an enabler for his staff. Sales advisors no longer need to wait with customers until their item is picked up by the logistics staff, and can help the next customers purchase the items they’re looking for. Logistics staff can begin bringing purchased items to the pickup point as soon as they have been paid for, and they are able to effectively prioritize their work. Each step is transparent to the whole team and updated live.

Crucially, there are zero errors when entering codes and receipt numbers because of photo uploading and storage functionality, making the entire experience much smoother and faster for both staff and customers.
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Next Matter was the only solution that solved the problem.

Four core processes and hundreds of instances across the business

Home24 Outlet has gradually increased their use of Next Matter on their own. “We started with one process, now we have three to four core processes across five outlets,” says Frank. They’ve also moved other processes, such as returns and insurance claims, onto Next Matter.
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What’s great is that it’s not dependant on systems or consultants - it’s cross-functional.

For other organizations who are looking for a simple way to manage processes that involve multiple teams and flows of information, Frank would recommend that they use Next Matter. “It’s simple, flexible, and super easy to use,” he concludes. “That’s the biggest advantage.”