Part of the Accor Group, Astore is a leading hospitality procurement organisation. With their shopping and reference center Astore Shop, they bring together nearly 3,500 suppliers to deliver any product or service a hotel or restaurant might need. With such vast operations, it’s only natural that they stay in touch with their customers. Something they achieve through both traditional and digital feedback, which is where Mopinion comes in handy!
We sat down with Christophe Costa, Senior Product Manager for Astore Shop, to discuss how Astore uses digital customer feedback to perfect their product.
Christophe explains that the goal of Astore Shop is to have a product that is easily deployed in every country with a specialised catalogue of articles and services.
This is why they have set out to understand their customers and what they think about the platform even better. Christophe explains:
“To achieve this, we are using Mopinion for online surveys within the product while simultaneously conducting face-to-face interviews with our customers. The idea is to have qualitative interviews and surveys with a mix of quantitative and qualitative data.”
Customer feedback gives valuable insights into stock availability
Before Astore found Mopinion, they were using another platform that was mainly focused on email surveys. However, Astore discovered that this method didn’t generate the amount of replies and insights needed to draw helpful conclusions.
“This solution didn’t suit our needs, so we decided to find another software that could help us to display feedback forms easily on Astore Shop.”
Christophe explains that their main challenge today is focused around performance and the availability of products.
“That’s why we need to collect feedback. Because if a hotel doesn’t find the product they are looking for, they will search for another B2B player who can provide this product. Or go directly to the supplier. It’s really important for us to know what the customers are thinking.”
Feedback affects the product roadmap
Gathering feedback also helps Astore implement changes and features in Astore Shop that will raise customer satisfaction.
“Some feedback allows us to retain more budget. For example, if tons of hotels are asking us to deploy a specific feature, we can of course do that, but it comes at a cost. Customer feedback allows us to go to our top management and say, for example: ‘Okay, this feature might cost several thousands of euros. But look, we have 200 hotels asking us for it.’ This gives the argument weight and we can back up the decision.”
One recent Astore Shop feature that was developed this way is their stock notification. It’s now possible for Astore Shop customers to request to be notified when the stock availability for a certain product has been updated. Christophe explains:
“This new feature was a direct result of feedback and we believe it will have a big impact on customer satisfaction.“
Easy to use in more ways than one!
Currently, Astore uses Mopinion to collect feedback from customers after they have completed an order in Astore Shop. Christophe explains that the flexibility and ease of putting up feedback forms wherever they want on their website is a big plus for them.
“The feedback form feature is nice and easy to set up. And we have tons of configuration options available. For example, we can choose to display a form every month or every two months.”
Uniquely, Astore Shop also uses Mopinion to display maintenance information or messages to their customers in pop-up notifications.
“Previously, if we had a message to display to our customers, we had to input the code and the maintenance banner directly in the CSS. It was really painful. With Mopinion it’s easy to display a banner. We can enable and disable it with one click.
When you have to switch on or manage a message manually on seven websites, there is a risk that you make a mistake that causes the website to crash. If you make a mistake in Mopinion, however, it doesn’t affect the website.”
“Mopinion’s a powerful software for gathering feedback”
Lastly, we asked Christophe if he would recommend Mopinion to other companies looking for a digital feedback software:
“Yes, I would. It’s a powerful software for gathering feedback from users through surveys. It’s also really easy to set up and the people and service at Mopinion are very nice too. Always a pleasure to speak with them.”
Lovely words from Christophe and the feeling is entirely mutual, of course! We look forward to seeing how Astore Shop will continue to develop their feedback programme.
Thank you to Christophe Costa and the Astore team for helping us tell their story.
Ready to see Mopinion in action?
Want to learn more about Mopinion’s all-in-1 user feedback platform? Don’t be shy and take our software for a spin! Do you prefer it a bit more personal? Just book a demo. One of our feedback pro’s will guide you through the software and answer any questions you may have.
