Hellon partnered with Metsä Group, leading forestry industry player in Finland, to design and deliver a global customer service renewal. For Metsä Group - a global 5,5 billion euro forestry company - transforming customer service wasn’t a technology-first project. It was a people-first project, with technology enabling a greater future success.
When Metsä Group decided to redesign how the company handles B2B customer queries, they didn't just need a new operating model. They needed a transformation that would bring people with them, and demonstrate what AI-native customer service operations could look like in practice.
Each of Metsä Group's four business lines had evolved its own way of handling customer queries, including independent processes, separate tools, and different standards for what good service looked like. The ambition was significant: define a unified Target Operating Model that would improve customer satisfaction, increase operational efficiency through AI-powered tools and automation, and position Metsä Group's customer service as a true competitive advantage by 2030.
But the scale of the challenge was matched by the complexity of the change. Getting four, multi-billion, global business lines to align around a shared vision, and commit to it, required more than a strategy document.
Where traditional business consulting might have focused on process mapping and IT system selection, Hellon brought a different approach: treat this first and foremost as a human-centric AI-transformation program, not a technical exercise, with customer experience and employee experience as the key measures of success.
The work was structured across four phases; mobilisation, defining the target state vision and objectives, designing the target operating model, and building the implementation roadmap, and delivered over six months with a cross-functional project team of 30 people from across Metsä Group and Hellon.
Crucially, Hellon kept the change tangible throughout. Rather than presenting recommendations at the end, we ran 12 co-design workshops to build shared ownership of the solution as it took shape. To demonstrate what AI-enabled customer service could actually feel like we built a working demo showcasing the future customer service technology, including AI agent capabilities, as part of the engagement.
The Metsä Group engagement reflects how Hellon approaches AI transformation differently. Deploying AI in processes and IT systems is only part of the challenge. The harder part is building an organisation that understands what is changing, why, and believes in the set direction.
Hellon’s unique approach for leading AI transformation combined with making the future tangible through concrete examples and service design methodologies, co-designing with people rather than for them, and by anchoring every decision in customer and business value. In the end we helped Metsä Group turn a complex, multi-line transformation into something their people could see, shape, and commit to.
Ready to lead your own AI transformation in a way that brings your people with you?