Sonepar is transforming its customer experience with a next-generation contact centre
How Sonepar modernised its contact centre to boost efficiency and sales performance and prepare for AI at scale.
Sonepar: a market leader facing increasing customer interactions
As a global leader in the distribution of electrical equipment, services and related solutions, Sonepar handles a massive volume of customer interactions every day through its Inside Sales teams. In France alone, this amounts to nearly 10,000 calls per day, spread across more than 40 sales hubs and involving almost 700 in-house sales representatives.
Historically, a significant proportion of these interactions relied on the telephone, without a unified tool linking telephony, customer data and sales processes. This resulted in an increase in abandoned calls, a fragmented view of the customer at the point of interaction, a lack of real-time actionable metrics, and more broadly, difficulties in building a truly omnichannel customer relationship.
Against a backdrop of profound commercial transformation, Sonepar needed to evolve its model: moving from a transactional support function to a value-creating contact centre, capable of supporting commercial performance while enhancing the customer experience. With this in mind, Sonepar chose to deploy a Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS) solution, designed as a strategic pillar of its customer relationship strategy.
A CCaaS solution integrated at the heart of the Microsoft ecosystem
With support from Hitachi Solutions, Sonepar deployed Microsoft Contact Center, natively integrated with Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Teams. The aim was to provide a unified platform that is easy for teams to use, yet robust enough for large-scale deployment.
The solution connects telephony, CRM and collaboration tools in real time, providing agents with a comprehensive view of the customer from the moment a call is answered: interaction history, recent quotes, orders, and even sales opportunities.
In practical terms, the platform is built on a set of key features: intelligent call routing combined with automatic caller recognition, a 360° customer view directly accessible in Dynamics 365, an automatic callback mechanism ensuring no call goes unanswered, as well as advanced real-time monitoring and reporting capabilities to manage operational performance. Agent onboarding and offboarding have also been simplified to enable rapid scaling, while native synchronisation with Microsoft Teams and other tools ensures seamless operational continuity.
The rollout was carried out in a phased and pragmatic manner: an operational platform up and running within two days, up to 70 agents onboarded each week, and 700 agents deployed in just four months, site by site, with strong management support.
Measurable results delivered quickly
The implementation of the Contact Centre quickly generated tangible benefits, both for teams and customers.
Operationally, performance indicators have improved significantly: the service level has risen from 65% to 77.83%, the call recognition rate has increased from 54% to 67.9%, and missed calls are now systematically returned, turning every interaction into a sales opportunity.
On the ground, Inside Sales teams have noticed an immediate boost in productivity and ease of use:
“Now, as soon as a customer calls, I know who’s on the line. I have the history, the quotes, the context. I save a huge amount of time and conversations flow much more smoothly.”
The solution has also laid the foundations for more refined sales management, enabling better identification of opportunities, supporting upselling and cross-selling, and enhancing the quality of customer relationships.
And looking ahead: AI and omnichannel as drivers of performance
Beyond the immediate benefits, this project is paving the way for the future. From 2026, Sonepar plans to roll out advanced artificial intelligence capabilities.
These developments will include automatic call transcription and summarisation, sentiment analysis, intelligent classification of interactions, as well as a real-time assistant designed to support advisors during interactions. The customer experience will also be enhanced through an expansion towards a fully omnichannel model, integrating chat, email and messaging.
The Contact Centre thus becomes much more than a tool: it is a strategic lever for business transformation, driving a smoother, more personalised and more effective customer relationship. With the support of Hitachi Solutions, Sonepar demonstrates that a modern contact centre can combine operational excellence, business performance and innovation, while remaining closely aligned with real-world operational needs.