How Krones routes 85% of contract customers to the right expert with ROGER365.io

About Krones

Krones builds the machines that fill and package the world's drinks. Headquartered in Neutraubling, Germany, it designs and manufactures complete production lines for beverages and liquid foods, from filling and labelling to packing and palletising, alongside intralogistics systems and industrial PET recycling technology. Around 21,000 people work for the group, roughly 11,700 of them in Germany across plants in Neutraubling, Nittenau, Rosenheim, and Flensburg, and about 9,600 internationally. Because its machinery runs production lines around the clock, Krones operates a global service organisation across regions and time zones.

The Challenges

When a bottling line stops, a customer loses production by the minute. That makes service calls to Krones time-critical, technically demanding, and dependent on specialist knowledge. As an international machine builder, Krones serves customers worldwide, with support teams spread across regions and time zones, so the challenge is consistency: the same fast, expert help whether the call lands in Germany, Asia, or the Americas.

Krones set itself two hard quality targets. First, 95% of all incoming calls answered within 30 seconds. Second, for customers with a service contract, 85% of enquiries routed directly to the technically correct specialist. Meeting those numbers in one location is difficult enough. Meeting them globally, permanently, and inside Microsoft Teams, tightly coupled to the Salesforce-based service management system Krones already ran, was the real problem. Krones needed intelligent routing that understood skills, availability, shift models, and time zones, plus full transparency on performance and accessibility.

“Our service enquiries are time-critical and technically demanding. The challenge was meeting our targets not just locally, but worldwide and permanently, inside Microsoft Teams and coupled to Salesforce.” - Krones AG

The Solution

Krones extended Microsoft Teams with ROGER365.io, adding contact center and routing capability, then integrated Salesforce to turn it into a service platform rather than telephony.

Three things make it work. Context comes first: as a call arrives, Salesforce data appears in Teams, identifying the customer, whether they hold a service contract, and their open tickets, cases, and known equipment, so an agent can structure the conversation immediately. Skill-based routing then sends the call to the right technical specialist, taking product specialisation into account and avoiding unnecessary transfers.

Third, routing is time-zone intelligent. A call arriving at 16:30 German time is answered within 30 seconds, and the system decides whether handing it to a German colleague whose shift is ending makes sense, or whether a qualified colleague in Asia should take it and stay with the customer for a full shift. Pfalzcloud, a ROGER365.io Elite Partner, delivered it in stages, then handed administration to Krones' internal team.

The Results

Krones now hits the targets it set, and can prove it. 95% of incoming calls are answered within 30 seconds, and 85% of service-contract customers are connected directly to the technically correct specialist rather than passed around. The first-contact resolution rate is significantly higher, handovers are reduced, and resolution times are shorter, which for a customer with a stopped production line is what actually matters. Because routing accounts for skills, availability, and time zones, Krones delivers genuinely global service: a caller is supported continuously, without breaks between regions or shifts. Agents open every conversation informed, with the customer, their contract status, and their open cases already on screen from Salesforce. Supervisors and management get full transparency on service performance, accessibility, and KPIs worldwide. The shift is from simply being reachable to delivering qualified, uninterrupted help, at scale and inside the Microsoft environment Krones already governs.

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“We now answer 95% of calls within 30 seconds and get 85% of our contract customers straight to the right specialist. That is qualified help, not just reachability.” - Krones AG

Lessons Learned

The lesson from this project is that KPIs have to come before configuration. Krones started from two numbers, 95% of calls answered in 30 seconds and 85% routed correctly, then had those targets translated into call flows and routing rules rather than the other way around. The second lesson is to design for the whole clock. In a global service operation, availability and skills are not enough on their own: shift models and time zones decide whether a customer is supported to resolution or handed on. Training agents, supervisors, and IT together made the handover to internal administration straightforward.

The Future

With a measurable platform in place, Krones can extend it. The natural next steps are deeper use of the service data now flowing from Teams and Salesforce, more automation in routine service processes, and AI to support engineers with transcription, summaries, and case context so they spend their time on the technical problem rather than the admin. Microsoft Teams stays the foundation, with Power Platform tying systems together and room to add channels beyond voice as customers ask for them. The goal stays constant: qualified, uninterrupted help for every customer, anywhere, at any hour.

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