Holmen Skog is part of the Holmen Group and one of Sweden’s largest forestry companies with more than one million hectares of productive forest land that it manages and processes. Demand for timber is high and in order to grow they need to reach more private forest owners. With the ambition to be a leader in its industry, and the best forestry business partner, Holmen Skog developed a new strategy that puts the customer first, improves communication and identifies customer challenges and wishes.
To achieve the goals of the customer-centric strategy, Holmen Skog partnered up with digital full-service agency Nexer Maverick. Through initial workshops, they started to identify and find possible solutions to problems in the customer journey, and move from assumption to insight.
The next step was to conduct interviews with actual customers to explore hypotheses, test the emotional experience and identify potential gaps, pains and gains. It turned out that many of the assumptions about the customers were based on gut feelings, and through the interviews it was possible to identify a number of gaps in the customer journey. With these insights as a foundation for the creation of a strong strategy, the project moved into the next phase, focusing on solutions.
“The understanding that we should always consider the customer perspective is super big in our organisation today. The results are improved internal processes, higher well-being, more transparent dialogues and above all: customer focus instead of ones and zeros””
As part of the acceleration of Holmen Skogs development, a business case was created with the goal of identifying specific solutions to gaps in the communication. To this purpose, a team was formed with experts from Nexer Maverick and employees from Holmen Skog. For more than two weeks, the team worked together in a concentrated manner to develop and perform customer tests. The case was then presented to the management team before roll-out.
The finished customer journey then became a campfire for the whole organisation to gather around. With the new insights and a visualisation of the journey, all employees could be engaged and trained with the aim of becoming more customer-centric. Regardless of their role, the employees are now able to understand the customer’s needs, and see their own part in these; what gaps they can fill themselves and how they can exceed customer expectations.
– Customer insights
– Quality interviews with customers
– Change Communication
– Acceleration of innovation and solution
– Strategy and digital transformation
– Customer Journey mapping
– Visualise the Customer Journey
– Test and validation
– Copy and design
– Workshops with stakeholders
A better digital customer experience
With a refined experience process that supports the landowner throughout the customer journey, Holmen Skog has gained customer insights that help them communicate with their customers in a more targeted way. They can now be precise in their communications, and thanks to the newly acquired in-depth knowledge about their customers, they are empowered to meet their them where they are. The project provided new perspectives, deeper understanding of the customers and the opportunity to close communication gaps. The next stage of the collaboration with Nexer Maverick will contain the implementation of a new CRM system to further enable a seamless customer experience and increased insights.
Collaboration and partnership
Through the close collaboration with Nexer Maverick, Holmen Skog found opportunities for innovation initiatives that can be run in an accelerating fashion. One of the key outcomes and a prerequisite for the success of the project was that the entire organisation embraced the changes and new ways of working. The company now lives its customer journey and, as a key success indicator, the vision of a campfire was fulfilled.
Improved Employer Branding
Holmen Skog has embraced the new customer journey wholeheartedly and now uses it when on-boarding new employees. To top it off, thanks to the organisation’s embrace of the new way of working and customer insights, Holmen Skog has also strengthened its role as an attractive employer. This is measured in motivated, healthy employees and an increased number of applications for positions within the company. A stronger brand both towards customers and future talent is a valuable bonus.
