Contact centres
Carrefour Argentina case study: Cloud Contact
How a cloud-based contact centre reduced absenteeism and cut costs for retail giant Carrefour.
May 06, 2018
4 minutes
When employees were sick, it was very hard for them to get in touch with their store or health centre.
One phone call to a freephone number and everyone in the chain is immediately notified – reducing hassle.
Since its implementation, the system has saved nearly £600,000 and cut absenteeism by 0.25%.
When you’re feeling ill, the last thing you want is to be hanging on the phone trying to get a message through to your boss. And your boss has enough to think about without bothering with HR processes.
Carrefour, a major employer in Argentina, called on us to cure this problem – and we thought Cloud Contact could be just the ticket. Now, employees dial a freephone number when they’re sick, and everything’s handled in one conversation.
Email notifications go out to the boss, to HR and the medical centre, so it’s easy to follow up with each employee when they return to work.
The challenge
French retail giant Carrefour is well known across Europe, with operations in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. It’s a major employer in Argentina, with around 20,000 staff across almost 600 outlets.
For most of the company’s 38-year history in the country, employees have had to phone their workplace to say they’re sick.
However, workers couldn’t always get in touch with their store or with the Carrefour health centre where they could get free treatment, making it difficult to justify absence.
The system was just about workable in hypermarkets, but in smaller shops – like Carrefour Express – they needed more sick leave control.
Diego Aranguri Díaz, head of personnel health and security at Carrefour Argentina, explains: “At such outlets there are only two or three workers per shift, so if one wasn’t there they could barely operate.”
Another problem was that the cost of sick absenteeism had risen sharply in recent years. Carrefour estimates it increased from 7% to 14% between 1997 and 2014.
Before, sick-leave notification was decentralised and there wasn’t a single process. Now it only requires one free call, with minimal hassle.
The solution
The result
The SAM has exceeded our expectations. We were looking for an economic benefit but this is a sustainable, long-term project.
