The company was able to build a robust customer service system, with more availability and flexibility to develop other solutions in the future, in addition to maintaining what is highly precious to Natura’s core business: customer relationship.
Offering well-being to its consumers is Natura’s mission and “that translates into in the harmonious relationships that individuals establish with themselves, with others and with nature”. The sale of cosmetics takes place with a big emphasis on environmental, economic and social awareness.
Founded in the city of São Paulo in 1969, the company grew from a small factory to becoming the largest Brazilian cosmetics multinational, present in seven countries in Latin America, in addition to France and the United States. In addition to its 7,000 employees, it relies on a network of 1.7 million beauty consultants, as well as a wide range of suppliers and partners to reach approximately 100 million consumers.
Technology driving customer care
Investing in innovation has always been one of Natura’s pillars, and it has been strengthened by the company’s growth. Paula Pimenta, Director of Customer Care, explains that innovation, at Natura, has a unique quality to it, since it is closely linked to a long-established culture of attention and care in the relationship with its consultants and customers. «The search for innovation is related to offering the best service to our customers, which, consequently, involves both productivity and efficiency in the chain,» she explains.
Also according to Paula, this linked chain is one of Natura’s corner stones. “The first link in the chain is the relationship itself, since Natura was really born from the relationship with the customer,” she adds. Thus, the company sought the support of Microsoft and partners Accenture and Avanade to develop a new service system that could be integrated with legacy platforms and be more resolute.
The company found the answer in a centralized single-channel service, with integration, a robust system that allowed a template to be created to simplify the development of other processes in the future. One the integrations made available on platform is a chatbot, which conveys not only the company’s culture, but also an air of sophistication «The virtual assistant was created to be a persona, called ‘Nat’, to establish a connection with our consultants. Nat is not a like any other robot, she represents that relationship in the digital environment», Paula says.
The structure of the service
The base solution for service is Dynamics 365, which combines business intelligence applications that help manage the company as a whole, such as sales, marketing, service, operations, and commerce. The tool offers a comprehensive view of these organizations and also real-time insights that can be predictive and AI-driven.
Andrea Thiago, Director at Accenture, explains that the tool was chosen because it meets several needs that Natura wanted to address. «The platform allowed the creation of more parameterizable flows and processes, which simplified Natura’s vision for the future,» she says.
The Dynamics 365 platform runs on the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, a service where users can connect to and use Cloud-based applications over the Internet. «Together with Microsoft, we made a real effort to work with the standard capacity and we saw that Natura actually had some specific needs,» says Mario Santiago, Director of Applications at Natura.
Thus, the company developed a customized component in the solution: the complementary capabilities were developed on Azure, Microsoft’s Cloud platform that brings together more than 200 products and services to help companies and individuals address business challenges. Part of the platform was then customized and integrated into Dynamics 365. “The fact that Dynamics had the ability to integrate with Natura’s systems and with Microsoft’s customized components running on Azure was very important,” says Mario.
Benefits provided by the solution
André Fiorilli, Managing Director at Accenture, explains that the implementation process was done remotely via Microsoft Teams. “We trained more than 400 people to work with the new system and reviewed more than a thousand process flows – and it as all done remotely, without any impact on the levels of quality and demand,” he says.
The process involved an average of 200 IT and Business professionals, in addition to 900 users, who tested the solution simultaneously, performing more than 50,000 test steps – and it wall done via Teams.
The building of a channel that centralized customer information is an important achievement that was celebrated by Andrea Thiago. “The company has all the information centralized in one system, which reduces fraud. Dynamics also enables flexibility and productivity”, she explains. The chatbot, for instant, began to enable consultants to have access to their own vouchers, accelerating a process that previously involved a call center.
Mario believes that the solution brought gains in terms of availability and flexibility in the development of future projects. “It’s a robust solution for Natura, and it provides us with the flexibility to quickly develop new features and new service flows,” he says.
Paula celebrates the partnership with Microsoft, which was present at all stages of the process. “This partnership has definitely worked. We really benefited from having Microsoft involved in the discussions with the developers,” she concludes.
“It’s a robust solution for Natura, and it provides us with the flexibility to quickly develop new features and new service flows.”
Mario Santiago: Director of Applications, Natura
“The company has all the information centralized in one system, which reduces fraud. Dynamics also enables flexibility and productivity.”
Andrea Thiago: Director, Accenture
“This partnership has definitely worked. We really benefited from having Microsoft involved in the discussions with the developers.”
Paula Pimenta: Customer Care Director, Natura
