At a Glance

Nidecker Group is a family-owned company, based out of Switzerland, that offers innovative and high-performance snowboarding and skateboarding products.

Who is Anna Negri

Meet Anna Negri, Customer Service and Warranty Manager at Nidecker Group!

About Nidecker Group

Nidecker Group is a family-owned business that’s been around for well over 100 years. In fact, it was founded back in 1886 creating wooden wheels and evolving over time into skis, cross-country skis, sledges, and finally snowboards. That’s not all they do, however, because Nidecker has now evolved into a range of outdoor sports products.

Anna’s CX Journey

Anna is currently the Customer Service Manager and the Warranty Manager for Nidecker Group, specifically for the European team in the snowboard brands. But this is definitely not her first experience in the industry. She’s actually been involved in the winter sports industry for several years, starting with her time at Burton Snowboards Europe.

Her time there allowed her to grow from being a guide all the way to management, which gave her the experience not just in the winter sports space, but in managing others. During her tenure with Burton Snowboards, she was able to grow as a leader, a coach, and as a snowboard enthusiast. She was even able to grow her experience further as a strategist, not only working in the customer service space, but creating a whole new customer service model and unifying several customer service leaders into one cohesive team.

Anna’s experience in the snowboard world, through several different companies, has allowed her also to nurture her passion, and to grow even stronger in a field that lets her encourage fun and excitement for their customers.

The CX Team at Nidecker Group

During peak season, Anna’s team in Europe includes 8 people, but during the slower seasons, the team size drops to 5. That’s what happens when you’re working with a smaller, family-owned business. Another big deal in this business is having everyone in-house and present right at the office in Switzerland.

For those who need to get in touch, it’s easy. Because they have customer service access through email, a contact form, live chat, WhatsApp, and phone. Whatever is most convenient for you is available to get your questions answered.

Building Up the Team

During that busy season, Nidecker Group actually reaches out to the local universities and builds up their workforce using fresh talent that’s looking for growth and experience, and a love for the outdoors is a big part of it as well. That’s what Anna is looking for most when it comes to bringing in new team members, people who fit well with the company in terms of interest, sport, activities, and knowledge.

Also, while the team is all coming into the office every day that doesn’t mean they’re all local to Switzerland. In fact, many people choose to move to the area temporarily for internships or peak seasons.

Another thing to think about when hiring new people for Nidecker is the training process, and it’s actually a very new process. Anna herself created a training plan and training documentation through Notion, but even still she knows there’s more to be done. She’s utilizing AI to help create something even better and even more interactive.

For new members of the team, walking into the office and working directly with the team is a great step in training. And adding in the training system and quizzes as well as weekly meetings makes it even more effective. The team is also required to do product presentations each week, which helps them to learn more about presenting and about the products.

CX Team Success Factors

What’s coming next for Nidecker Group and the customer service team specifically? Better training and specifically more structured training. Anna believes that the tools of customer service and eCommerce training are great, but it’s important to look at the products, especially since new ones are launched each year. Keeping up with product materials, updated products, and spare parts training are essential for the team and something that needs to be focused on even more.

Next up, when considering what makes the team successful, Gorgias. Nidecker Group uses Gorgias for all of their subsidiaries so that everyone on the team, no matter their location, can help each other. And with other platforms in the mix, like NetSuite for ERP, Shopify for the website, and JotForm for warranty, they’re set up well.

Another important aspect of the future of customer service, AI. But Anna isn’t as familiar with AI as the rest of her team. Still, she believes that it’s a major benefit to customer service and especially the way it’s integrated into Gorgias. Anna knows that AI is going to be a huge and vastly important aspect of her team but she still wants real people handling many of their requests and concerns. AI can handle the simpler tasks instead.

Looking to the Future

One big thing that Anna is looking to do is show the rest of the company that customer service isn’t just a cost center, it’s actually a revenue generation system. It gathers valuable data and then presents that data in ways that are useful to the company in shaping products, pages, the website, and so much more. She wants people to see that they are part of the process of retaining customers and even tailoring everything to what customers are looking for.

Revenue Generation/AI/topics of interest 

What about making sure that the next generation is fully prepared? Or making sure that leaders are ready for anything? Anna believes the best advice possible is to listen to your team and your employees. It’s all about making sure that you share with your team and you not only give them information but listen to what they have to say as well.

Being a leader means you’re not out there in the weeds of dealing with customers, which means you can miss things, but when you’re talking to your team you get so much more. And that information can be shared across departments as well. Listening, adapting, and continuing to learn all the time will help you and your business to thrive.