Customer presence will increase in K-food stores and Kesko

Customers are still able to submit their feedback and wishes through the channel of their choice. The messages will be automatically forwarded to Hymy and answered by the store manager, retail employee or another person from Kesko. Customers are also able to contact other stakeholders such as suppliers, other retailers and Kesko office personnel if needed. The K-food store customer sees the effects of Hymy as faster response time and quicker delivery of product wishes.

Hymy was developed by the digital engineering company Nitor. Nitor cooperated closely with K-retailers and Kesko personnel in the planning and development process. The future users were highly involved from the very first stages of planning. This way, the new software would be beneficial for its most important users and support customer experience development in various stores.

Hymy is available on smartphones and computers, which enables responding to customer messages directly from anywhere.

”Retailers and Kesko personnel have been especially thankful for the speed, convenience and platform independence. If a customer requests a certain product the retailer can resolve the situation anywhere and contact the necessary suppliers directly through Hymy. Previously these kinds of situations required sending messages to multiple sources,” explains Hanna Kortsröm the Development Manager from Kesko.

”Customers want good service both in-store and digitally. Hymy brings K-retailers and customers closer together. In addition to improving individual customer experience, it helps the strategic development of Kesko. All written feedback is collected, analyzed, and reported. This amount of customer insight can be utilized in development of individual stores, retail chains, and even at Kesko. A single feedback may have a positive effect on the shopping experience of several customers,” continues Anna Törrönen from Nitor, who oversaw user experience development.

In addition to retailers, customer feedback is processed through Hymy by Kesko management. Customer experience development has become a strong theme within all areas of their business.

”We are especially interested to know what our customers think about us and how can we become even more customer oriented. We are continuously developing our consumer customer services by utilizing the received feedback,” Kortström says.

Digitally collected feedback from K-food store customers has increased 50 times over during the last two years. Hymy has become a valuable tool in daily operations. It is extensively utilized in K-stores and in almost 1400 K-food stores that have around 1.2 million customers a day. Hymy has decreased response time by half even though the amount of written feedback has increased by 20%.

Watch, how Hymy is transformed from a service into a lamb roast at the Koistinen family dinner:

For more information

Otto Manninen, Nitor
+358 10 323 5630
otto.manninen@nitor.fi

Hanna Kortström
Development manager, Kesko Oyj
+358 10 53 22327
hanna.kortstrom@kesko.fi