Thailand: SCG improves customer convenience
SCG Cement-Building Materials, a unit of Siam Cement Group, has revamped its key online and offline customer contact points as part improving its customer services.
"The main purpose is to enhance convenience for our customers, rather than for sales," said Nithi Pattarachoke, vice president for the domestic market of SCG Cement-Building Materials.
Previously, SCG only manufactured and sold its products to its customers, but in recent years it has started to pay attention to the whole customer journey, from the pre-purchase stage to the post-purchase experience, Mr Pattarachoke said.
"Customer-centricity is our bottom line. For us, customers come before sales and profit, since we believe that if customers are satisfied, sales and profit will follow," he said.
Nonetheless, he said the e-commerce capability was just a trial. Building materials are bulky, and even in foreign markets, sales of such products through e-commerce channels are still low.
The three key platforms that underwent revision were the SCG Building Materials website, the SCG Contact Centre, and the SCG Experience Store, its flagship store in Bangkok. The SCG Building Materials website now consolidates all the information that was previously assigned to some 50 product websites of the group.
Launched two years ago, the newly improved SCG Contact Centre now centralises all communication channels, telephone, e-mail, text messaging, plus live chat, and now can also provide customers with information on product availability and take their orders. About 200-300 stock-keeping units, from faucets to concrete blocks and other building materials, are being offered on the website and the contact centre.
The company has spent more than THB20m (US$569,000) on a major renovation of the 6200m2 SCG Experience Store, which now includes a new "SCG Village" that presents four showcases of popular housing trends: Inspiration House, Comfort House, Acoustic House, and Elderly House.
Visitors can seek free advice from some 20 architects SCG has deployed to the store, as well as via the website.
Chatchawan Sethaputra, managing director of SCG Experience, said that although customers still prefer to see and touch the real products before buying, the company had no plan to expand its flagship store to other locations. "The main channel will actually be online. Our perspective is to stay closest to the customers," for which a physical presence is unnecessary, he said.
Alternatively, customers upcountry can visit SCG Home Solutions, which are dealer-owned, company-operated stores. The company currently has 40 SCG Home Solutions stores in many provinces.
Traffic to the company's website has doubled to about 200,000-250,000 visitors per month since it was upgraded in January. The SCG Brand Facebook fanpage currently has nearly 1.5 million "likes", while the SCG experience fanpage has about 500,000 "likes."
Mr Pattarachoke said SCG would use the feedback it gathers from these customer touch points to develop and improve its products and service.
