Challenge.
Marabu is the number one choice for colours for everything from special printing methods to creative hobbies. Wherever you are in the world, Marabou brings colour to your day. Headquartered in the town of Tamm, Baden-Württemberg, the company has conquered the global market thanks to its many years of experience and consistent innovation. Marabou’s wide-ranging portfolio serves multiple industries—from packaging and glass and ceramic finishing to advertising and amateur artists’ supplies. It’s not only Marabu’s products that stand out from the crowd, but also its customer service, renowned for being proficient and reliable. Its clients around the world appreciate the comprehensive consulting and fast service, but increasing digitalisation has made it clear the Marabu not only needed to make great colours, but also give its customers the best possible access to them. With this in mind, Marabu made the decision to take communication with its customers to a new level. The idea was to make information about its products available as quickly and easily as possible, at any time, from anywhere and in the customers’ language. Always with a finger on the pulse of technology, Marabu saw artificial intelligence as the perfect tool to turn the idea into reality, and so a vision of an intelligent chatbot was born, which would able to answer customer questions in a snap using an extensive pool of product information and data. With its philosophy of always being one step ahead and providing its customers with the best possible solutions through the efficient use of digitalisation, the solution was the perfect fit for Marabou.
We were very positively surprised with how well Marabu Smartbase works thanks to Bechtle. The chatbot was introduced to interested parties when we opened our new production facility in Tamm, and the feedback was extremely positive. Customers now have a solution they can use to search for information themselves and the chatbot covers the entire product range. We are constantly learning and will continue to work with Bechtle into the future.
Stefan Würtemberger, Executive Vice President, Marabu GmbH & Co. KG
Solution.
Marabu turned to Bechtle to make its vision of an intelligent chatbot a reality. The two came together in several sessions to develop a solution with Microsoft AI services as Marabu was already using Microsoft Azure. Bechtle chose Microsoft OpenAI Service and Microsoft AI Search to deliver the relevant data to the chatbot and ensure that it answers reliably and accurately. The smart bot also needed to be able to access over 8,000 documents made up of product information, data sheets and other documentation to deliver fast responses to questions related to characteristics and specifications of Marabu’s paints. To make this happen, Bechtle and Marabu worked together to analyse the pool of data before structuring it in such a way that it could be used for an AI-based system. Marabu’s experts spent several weeks training the chatbot, testing it and optimising its features and ultimately its answers, setting great store in it giving not only standardised answers, but also responding flexibly to customers’ individual queries by fine-tuning prompts. After all, all answers have to be correct and if the Marabu Smartbase bot doesn’t know an answer, it should refer the customer to support rather than try to supply one itself. Marabu’s paint specialists therefore invested considerable time in training the bot to respond to all possible questions. One the training phase was complete, Bechtle integrated the new Marabu Smartbase into the company’s existing IT environment. Since then, the chatbot gives detailed answers to Marabu’s customers’ questions around the clock with just a few clicks.
Business benefits.
Marabu Smartbase has optimised the company’s customer service. Made possible by Microsoft AI services, implemented by Bechtle and trained by Marabu, the chatbot today provides fast and accurate answers to questions related to products, specifications, application areas and specific characteristics around the clock. What’s more, recurring queries can be answered automatically allowing customer service staff to focus on more complex issues and providing personalised consultations. This has sped up the handling of customer enquiries, which has boosted satisfaction and allowed Marabu to set a new benchmark in digital customer communications.