How Sebra Made Product Claim Handling a Value-creating Activity

The challenge: low claim rate, chaotic process

Specifically, Sebra experience that their B2B customers (retailers) submit half-documented claims via email. Often, 3 to 4 emails are sent back and fourth to get all the needed data, which prolongs the processing time and hurts the customer experience. Furthermore, this manual process creates unstructured data scattered though large excel sheets.

Sustainability is a top priority at Sebra. It was therefore considered a critical problem that they did not have a holistic overview over faulty products and structured about quality issues, which can be shared internally with their product development team and externally with manufacturers.

Objective

Sebra entered a partnership with Claimlane in April 2021 to achieve the desired control over their claim handling process.

The objectives of the collaboration are:

Solution and results

Sebra implemented Claimlane in two phases. First phase was Claimlane's B2B Claim Portal that was introduced to wholesale partners to streamline the flow of claims and ensure perfect data for the first time. In addition, the module Inbox & Workflows created a structured overview over all warranty claims.

In phase two, Sebra has integrated with Dynamics NAV (their ERP system) to automate the manual processes of the final part of claim handling (such as crediting, ordering spare parts, and so on). After 12 months, time consumption was reduced by up to 50% across the whole organization. The customer dialogue and entry into ERP has gone from taking approximately 5 minutes on average to only 1 minute with Claimlane on simpler claims.

In addition, Sebra was later introduced to Advanced Analytics for detailed insights into product quality issues across all product categories, which are shared throughout the organization.

The last stage is now in relation to targeted efforts for improvement opportunities based on documented knowledge and concrete insight, and here Sebra expects that the claim rate can be reduced by at least 25% - which, from a sustainability and economic perspective is fantastic.

Benny concludes with the most essential point. Sebra now sees claim handling as a value-creating activity, the ability to turn a negatively charged experience into a positive customer experience.

An investment with a good ROI

The focus has been on achieving an ROI within 12 months by implementing Claimlane as the primary software to handle the claim process, and it has been fully met. The investment, in addition to Claimlane, has been the internal time consumption as well as costs for an external consultant in relation to helping with integration to NAV.