The pandemic brought increased urgency in shifting omnichannel services between customers and suppliers. This acceleration has also been experienced in Stora Enso Paper with our digital sales & customer service portal eFlowOnline. The service has been available for our customers for more than four years offering the possibility for 24/7 visibility and control of their order-to-invoice processes.
While business to business adoption of digital self-service channels has lagged business to consumer adoption, Loes van Leeuwen, SVP Customer Service, Supply Chain and IT, Paper Division, believes the sense of urgency brought by the pandemic may have led some customers to make the transition to digital faster than they might otherwise have done. “But now they are seeing how helpful tools like ours can be for gaining efficiencies, catching information early and reducing administrative work,” she enthuses.
However, the acceleration in new sign-ups wasn’t immediate. Van Leeuwen remembers being surprised by an initial downturn in digital service usage during the first months of the pandemic, in 2020. “We put this down to the generic slowdown in nearly all business activity at that time, as customers tried to make sense of what was happening.” Already by summer the pace of new signups and customer usage was rising steadily and continues to rise.
We are listening to you – eFlowOnline is evolving based on the customer feedback
The customer portal has had strong net promoter scores from Stora Enso Paper customers so far. According to feedback they particularly appreciate the truck visualization which shows how full a truck is becoming while creating a delivery request, which supports the sustainability of the deliveries. Customers also use eFlowOnline for order booking, accounting and stock control, among many other possibilities. “Being able to ‘tailor-make’ my own reports and save them on a dashboard is very useful, especially for stock reporting,” reports one customer; “Downloading invoice copies for account statements really helps my daily work,” says another. And the tool’s functionality is always evolving based on customer feedback.
The latest addition, claim entry, was launched during this month and is a response to customers’ request. “By using eFlowOnline to enter a claim, customers’ requests are handled more quickly. In addition, the customer can follow the status of the claim” explains Martin Gercke, VP Technical Sales, Paper Division.
Van Leeuwen is urging customers who haven’t signed up yet to give the service a try. “Some customers start small with one or two functions, then they start branching out,” she says. “It’s all about reliability, knowing that the tool will work, is easy to use and that the information will be correct.”
If you are want to understand how eFlowOnline can support your daily business, please fill in the form here to request a free demo and our experts will come back to you.
