Scaling Customer Experience at Speed: Lessons from a Nationwide Communications Transformation

By Nicolas Saint-Remy, Deputy CIO, Saint-Gobain Distribution Bâtiment and Mitel User Group Board Member

Telephony remains the preferred channel for our customers, but for many organizations, legacy infrastructure is no longer able to support modern expectations. At Saint-Gobain Distribution Bâtiment, this was exactly the challenge we faced. With more than 2,000 retail shops across France, we were experiencing lost calls, frequent breakdowns, and increasing maintenance challenges due to obsolete PBX/IPBX systems. At the same time, we needed to anticipate the PSTN sunset and the phase-out of the copper network. It was clear that something needed to evolve.

The risk of standing still was significant. Telephony is critical to our business, and any degradation in service directly impacts customer satisfaction and ultimately, business performance. We needed a solution that could modernize our communications environment at scale while maintaining continuity for our customers and teams.

Managing Complexity at Scale

The single biggest challenge in our transformation was the scale of deployment. Rolling out a new communications platform across more than 2,000 sites is not simply a technical upgrade. It is a coordination challenge across infrastructure, people, and processes.

To meet this challenge, we established a dedicated project team and moved at a steady pace, migrating an average of 20 shops per week. This industrialized approach to deployment allowed us to maintain momentum while ensuring consistency across locations.

Organization as the Key to Success

The organization of the project has been fundamental to our success. We structured our approach around three main players:

• An external contractor to manage change management and migration operations in our shops
• Our Mitel partner to manage the communications platform
• Mitel to support us in resolving any issues as they arose

This clear division of responsibilities enabled us to move efficiently while maintaining strong governance. After successfully migrating 10% of our shops, we gained confidence that the rollout was on track and that the solution would meet our needs.

Driving Adoption Through Change Management

Technology deployment alone is not enough. User adoption is critical. To support this, we relied on an external contractor to drive change management and established business champions across our different brands to support adoption locally.

We also implemented regular satisfaction surveys and measured Net Promoter Score (NPS) to gather feedback and continuously improve the solution. This feedback loop has been essential in helping us quickly identify and resolve issues while refining the user experience.

Tailoring the Solution to the Business

One of the most important aspects of our approach was tailoring the solution to fit our operational needs. We implemented specific call flows aligned with our customer interactions and developed a “cockpit” tool that allows shop directors to manage their own configurations such as opening hours and welcome messages.

In addition, we built a dedicated reporting tool to track communication performance, particularly answer rates. This level of visibility allows us to monitor performance closely and take action where needed.

Early Results and Business Impact

While the deployment is still ongoing, we are already seeing meaningful results. We have increased our answer rate, leading to improved customer satisfaction. At the same time, employees benefit from a much simpler and more efficient user experience.

We have also reduced communication costs, which has been positively received by management. These outcomes demonstrate that this project is not just a technical upgrade. It is delivering real business value.

Lessons for Future Transformations

Looking back, there are no major changes I would make to our approach. The key lesson is the importance of preparation and organization. Projects of this scale require coordination across many actors and many actions, and success depends on being as prepared as possible from the start.

For other CTOs preparing for a similar rollout, my advice is simple. Invest time in planning, define clear roles and responsibilities, and ensure strong coordination across all stakeholders. Organization and preparation are not just helpful. They are essential to success.

Large-scale transformation is never easy, but with the right structure, partners, and focus on user adoption, it is possible to deliver meaningful improvements at speed without compromising the customer experience.