The organization
As a leading manufacturer of electronic pet training products in the U.S. this company has an overall mission “to build the most trusted pet brands.” The company includes a family of brands for a variety of pet-related products. Driven by innovation and dedication to customers and communities, the company has grown into an international corporation selling in over 52 countries.
Motivation for change
As part of their mission to “build the most trusted pet brands,” the company has a unique culture and customer-centric focus to empower their service associates to assist customers quickly and intelligently. The company focuses on the health and wellbeing of their associates with wellness breaks and an onsite gym and clinic, as well as by designing office space that inspires a culture of collaboration and team-building – and, of course, encourages associates to bring their dogs to work.
As part of a focus on enhancing the customer experience, the company sought to upgrade their dated and siloed contact center technology which was spread over three contact center locations, serving over 150 associates. The previous contact center software had extensive issues with call quality, was out of support, and lacked omni-channel functionality. In particular, it did not offer chat support and provided little to no visibility into performance in the email channel. In addition, the company had a workforce management solution but performance and quality management were monitored manually.
Desired solution
Initially, the company wanted a workforce solution that could unify their contact centers with robust email and chat capabilities. They felt that this could help reduce their abandonment rate, improve the effectiveness of the call back option, and increase revenue as a result of better service levels and coaching.
Why Aspect
After evaluating several vendors, the company knew that Aspect was the right technology provider for their needs. Aspect has a full-featured contact center solution with an integrated workforce engagement management suite. While they originally had not intended to replace their workforce management solution, the company recognized the benefits of a fully integrated contact center and workforce engagement solution from Aspect. They selected to deploy Aspect WorkforceOS™, including Aspect Workforce™ for accurate forecasting and scheduling, AspectPerformance™ for improved reporting, and Aspect Quality™ for improved service levels and coaching. In addition, the company engaged the Aspect support team to deploy the latest version of Microsoft connectors in their contact centers and across the company.
The Results
Once going live with Aspect’s WEM solutions, each of the company’s brands experienced significant improvements in performance. Associates were able to focus exclusively on the customer experience and transform customers into raving fans, whether the interaction starts over the phone, chat, email, or a callback option. Further enhancing the associates’ view of the customer is the ease-of-use of the customized agent desktops. It became easier to view caller information and quickly begin servicing their customers’ needs.
The company fully integrated the email channel and has visibility into service levels, number of emails, and average handle time. The issues they were experiencing with call quality were resolved as well. The coaching of specialists became more effective due to screen and voice capture as well as quality assurance scoring within Aspect. The company was also pleased with the improved forecasting accuracy in Aspect Workforce™. The system constantly re-forecasts based on current trends and they can run various models within minutes. Reporting and monitoring both in real-time and historically reached excellent levels. Two of the company’s individual brands experienced a call volume decrease of 22% year-over-year after the deployment of Aspect technology, resulting in higher service levels which mean that customers don’t abandon and then call back. Other key overall company results include:
- Service levels increasing from 59% to 74%
- A 33% reduction in abandon rate
- Average speed of answer dropped from 85 seconds to 51 seconds
One of the company’s brands saw additional performance wins, including:
- Service levels increasing from 76% to 93%
- Abandon rate dropped from 7% to 3%
- Average speed of answer dropped from 49 seconds to 11 seconds
The future
The introduction of the chat channel was a welcomed addition for both contact center associates and their customers. When customers chat with associates, the conversion rate was nearly double that of regular website conversion and the average sale is 50% higher. Looking ahead, the company sees opportunities to continue scaling this channel and continuing to deliver on their mission to be the most trusted pet brands in the marketplace.
