Retail giant Fnac Darty cuts customer call times by 10% with better knowledge management

When growth puts customer service to the test

Fnac Darty is France's leading consumer electronics and home appliances retailer, running customer service across 11 sites. As that operation scaled, the knowledge behind it turned from a support into a brake, on advisors first and on customers immediately after.

• Outdated information. Advisors worked from obsolete content, which produced incorrect answers, repeat calls, and a steady loss of customer trust.
• Slow onboarding, constant turnover. Seasonal hiring and outsourced teams made fast training essential. Instead, new advisors leaned on supervisors for basic answers and took too long to become effective.
• Two brands, one confusing base. Running both Fnac and Darty meant advisors waded through material that did not apply to the call in front of them. Brand-specific processes were hard to find and important updates got missed.
• Every minute counted twice. Longer calls, repeat follow-ups and constant interruptions drove costs up, because manual processes had advisors searching rather than helping.

We've gone from advisors asking their colleagues questions to self-reliant professionals who find their answers instantly. Our 80% first-contact resolution rate proves it: when teams are given the right tools, they achieve remarkable results.

Intelligence built into the advisor's daily work

Rather than adding a system advisors had to remember to consult, Fnac Darty put knowledge inside the workflow and made it operational support rather than reference material.

• Verified answers, instantly. Contextual search and AI answers give advisors a checked response, with smart assistants pointing to the right one.
• A format for every level of experience. Multi-format articles carry step-by-step guidance for beginners and quick summaries for veterans. Decision trees walk anyone through a complex case, so the level of support matches the person, not the average.
• Updates reach the right people. Targeted notifications get critical changes, from store closures to process updates, to exactly the teams they affect.
• Training and operations share one source. Elium is used from the first day of onboarding, so trainers and advisors work from the same current procedures. Over 2,000 procedures are managed in one place, covering the everyday and the exceptional.
• A small team can hold the quality line. Obsolescence management flags what needs review, while analytics show which content has gone stale and which teams depend on it most.

We are a small, centralised team managing all the knowledge for 11 sites. Without these management tools, we would be overwhelmed. Now, we can immediately see what needs updating and prioritise our work based on its actual impact.

Demand now comes from outside customer service

800 advisors use the platform daily across 11 sites, first-contact resolution passed 80%, and average handle time and operational costs both fell by 10%.

Success created its own pull. Business units that were never part of the plan, including professional sales and anti-fraud, are asking for access. The deployment is now expanding to connect all 300 Darty stores, which turns a customer service tool into shared operating infrastructure.

Today, our advisors are truly autonomous. They no longer interrupt supervisors or rely on colleagues who might have outdated information. They go directly to Elium and find the current and correct process. This confidence translates directly into better customer service.

An outdated knowledge base does not slow a contact centre down. It gives wrong answers confidently, which is worse, and fixing that is what moved Fnac Darty's numbers.