We manufacture products so that you, can use them – so of course your satisfaction is extremely important to us. We know that you have high expectations on the performance, safety and ecological manufacturing of our products. After all, you want to have fun engaging in outdoor activities safely – with products that are as "clean" as possible.
And to be honest, we really care about our customers coming back and telling us about their experiences with our products – both positive and negative. We see your feedback as a chance to improve our products and services.
After all, we know that only a small percentage of dissatisfied customers express their concerns to us and that we often don’t get a chance to hear about their frustrations. These customers will probably avoid our products in the future and share their disappointment in their own circle of friends. On the one hand, this eliminates our chance for improvement, and on the other hand, it curbs these potential customers from buying our products.
Retailers are also important partners. They are our direct link between ourselves and you. They receive unfiltered customer feedback on our products and pass this on to us. In order to sell our products successfully, our partners must have confidence in VAUDE and in VAUDE products. A good partnership and long-term cooperation with our retailers is therefore of utmost importance to us.
We at VAUDE rely on contact with our customers that is as direct as possible – with retailers as well as with customers. Our sales representatives’ close contact with retail as well as regular meetings with major customers provides us with a precise picture of our customers’ needs and their level of satisfaction. This feedback flows directly into the development of our product collections.
Based on seasonal complaint rates, we can see where we are not meeting our customers’ needs. These evaluations provide us with valuable feedback on customer satisfaction and are incorporated into the development of future product collections. Significant issues are also included in our internal documentation and training programs. These documents for quality standards are reviewed and updated annually.
For customers who do not want to file a complaint but rather have questions, VAUDE has set up a service customer portal (Zendesk). Customers can contact us over our website and ask us their questions. These inquiries are answered by someone from the VAUDE sales team. The topics range from inquiries about the optimal product for specific tours, spare parts, questions about substances in our products, repair requests for older VAUDE products, to suggestions for product improvements. In 2023, we handled 23,589 tickets. You can reach us at service.vaude.com.
This information and feedback is incorporated directly back into our product development and quality requirements.
While in the past we primarily evaluated complaint figures systematically and directed this information into the development of our collections, quality documents and training, we are now evaluating all of the information from Zendesk systematically and using it to improve our products and performance. We still see potential here to gain more meaningful information for increasing customer satisfaction.
For 2023, we once again evaluated customer satisfaction with the Zendesk Satisfaction Score to draw conclusions about our service.
The satisfaction score also reached 88.9 % in 2023, surpassing our set goal of 80% once again.
There were poor ratings, for example, due to manufacturing defects.
There, not only do they comment on and share our pictures, videos, and posts, but many also use these channels to directly message us. We value your feedback and in some cases, we refer you to our support platform, service.vaude.com.
Just in time for ISPO (end of November 2022), TextilWirtschaft (TW), Germany's leading textile trade magazine, published its first comprehensive study in the field of sports and outdoor. The results were extremely positive for VAUDE. We performed very well in the evaluation by retailers (108 respondents) in almost all dimensions, sometimes with a significant lead over our competitors.
For the first time, TW shed light on the sports and outdoor market with its own study. It provided insights into the current status and perspectives as seen by the retail industry. In addition, it offered an overview of the suppliers that, from the retailers' perspective, excel in their job. The online survey took place from September 15 to October 10, 2022, with a total of 108 purchasing managers from sports specialty stores and major retail formats participating. The survey was conducted by the Marketing Research team of TextilWirtschaft.
Rankings from the study:
You can find the article about the study here.
| GRI: | 2-29 |
| GRI: | 3-3 |
