Each era’s challenges are successfully faced when teams operate in an organised way, using the best technological tools available. The Lockdown was a state that unavoidably carried away retail trade, as fighting for public health was the number one priority. Thousands of employees found themselves working from home. Can a company with closed stores serve this many customers? Every team challenge, every daring mission requires a plan with methodical steps and suitable tools, so that the “players” can achieve results. Kotsovolos’ team immediately put the plan into action. For all employees to operate, suddenly, without daily human contact, with everyone in their home living room, seemed incredibly difficult. How do you complete a sale, provide any service, fulfil a request by a customer without having direct contact with your colleague?

In a different time, such questions would cause terror. At present, however, with the use of Microsoft Teams, teams can “communicate” with each other, without losing time, while maintaining a high level of communication. Indicatively, we should mention that Kotsovolos’ call centre teams answer more than 20,000 calls a day, successfully meeting customer needs. With the help of Microsoft Teams, the employee teams maintain the high quality of customer service provided to retail and wholesale customers at incredibly high levels, given the conditions of such a difficult time. We should also stress another clearly human dimension that the specific programme added to the daily life of Kotsovolos employees: It was used to organise events, such as ‘Secret Santa’, which, through 1250 “blind dates”, brought colleagues from all over Greece together, helping them get to know each other better, and meetings to cut the New Year’s Cake, to exchange wishes and promises to hug in person in soon.

Furthermore, we should underline that the use of Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications ensures the uniform and continuous operation of the supply chain, while maintaining the high quality of retail and wholesale customer service. During times of necessary “distancing”, Kotsovolos’ workflow continues unimpeded and the daily collaboration of our people is not limited.

Until about a year ago, 90% of Kotsovolos purchases were carried out in-store, and the remaining 10% was via the online store and call centre. The pandemic succeeded in causing an impressive reversal. Hundreds of thousands of purchase transactions are carried out at kotsovolos.gr and then each customer can monitor the progress of their order’s delivery in real time. Specifically, for the months of November – December, in total, 4 million unique users visited the company’s digital store, with more than 10 million visits, numbers that translate to the perfect trade storm. All the difference in these exceptionally demanding circumstances was made by the hospitality of the most important computing applications on Microsoft Azure. Thanks to the versatility, excellent performance, and immediate expandability of Microsoft cloud computing, the Kotsovolos site responded fully to the requirements or each customer.

We are living in 2021 and technology is proving to be our most reliable ally in every social, corporate, and human challenge. The adoption of advanced services and innovations, such as those provided by Microsoft, achieves the creation of work groups that both implement every project effectively and on time, and also come closer together, creating substantial and quality communication and cooperation.Link:https://www.news247.gr/epixeiriseis/kotsovolos-microsoft-mia-symmachia-technologias.9155188.html