connexio.dk

Fres.land delivers around 50,000 boxes of fruit and vegetables to customers in several countries every week. Direct from the farmer on the farm to the consumer - no middleman. The company started as a hobby initiative because founder and CEO Mathilde Jakobsen wanted to help her Portuguese father-in-law sell his oranges in a better and more sustainable way.

"In short, the help was to remove the many intermediaries in the conventional harvest of oranges, which are typically picked green, artificially ripened, treated with pesticides, waxed, etc. Our approach is that the consumer receives the same product as the farmer. Without makeup, and the fruit hangs on the trees until they are sold," says Mathilde Jakobsen.

A business model that quickly bore fruit, so to speak, and grew to other fruits and vegetables, suppliers from different countries and markets outside Denmark.

Greater need for customer service

With growth, it also became more and more challenging and costly to be close to the customer.

"When we reached 500 customers a week, customer service became too big to be handheld, so we started building a customer service department in-house. A department with both a Danish and Swedish leg, which quickly gained many employees, as good customer service is crucial to us."

When the department reached twenty employees, Fresh.land realized that they had established a unit that, despite having employees who were good at personal contact with customers, lacked the flexibility to scale, expertise in professional customer service, and required a lot of training for new employees on an ongoing basis. 

The importance of the right match

That's why Fresh.land decided to find a partner for customer service.

"After testing several suppliers, we chose Connexio as our partner. The choice was easy for several reasons. Firstly, Connexio had better systems to support the task, they were more agile and generally very customer-oriented in relation to us as a company. In other words, a strong focus on what we as a customer need and the ability to tailor solutions to that."

Mathilde Jakobsen would recommend the approach of testing multiple suppliers before deciding on a partner, as it ensures that the choice is the right one. 

"For example, Connexio prioritized having their employees visit the farmers who supply us to gain an understanding of Fresh.land and our product. In addition, their international and growth-oriented profile matches our company. They are professional, but at the same time not too big to implement new solutions quickly if we identify a need for our customers. At Connexio, we're talking a week or two, whereas with others it can take months."

Joint development of app and online universe

Today, Fresh.land has therefore expanded the collaboration so that Connexio also handles SoMe, reputation management, email correspondence and, most recently, the so-called love calls to customers you haven't heard from for a while.

Although the cost of customer service is relatively higher when you outsource, it's cheaper in the long run as Fresh.land only pays for the actual time spent on customer service and can easily scale up during peak times and scale down during slow periods.

In addition, Fresh.land and Connexio have worked together to develop an app and an online universe where a large part of the contact with customers is handled through self-service - for example, by automatically offering you as a customer a solution that matches your inquiry.

An approach that is good in two ways. Firstly, most customers experience a fast and efficient service, which makes them more satisfied, and secondly, Connexio becomes cheaper to use as the amount of personal inquiries - which, it's important to say, is always an option - decreases.

"All in all, the highly professional and efficient collaboration with Connexio gives us at Fresh.land the time, peace of mind and energy to focus on our core service and on developing our business. Therefore, it is a good investment for us to invest in professional customer service."