Global Response Brand Care Specialists connect with
Lord & Taylor shoppers
The typical Lord & Taylor shopper is a sophisticated, experienced, professional woman accustomed to being treated with courtesy and respect. When she calls Lord & Taylor for customer service, she expects to be treated that way and to speak to someone who understands her questions and responds quickly with the correct answers.
With Brand Care Specialists from Global Response now handling all customer service calls for Lord & Taylor, that’s exactly what she receives—every time.
A Key Partner in an E-Commerce Relaunch
In business since 1826, Lord & Taylor has built a reputation for service, quality, and style. The company was the first retailer with the vision to move to Fifth Avenue— and the first to install an elevator. It was also the first to open a branch store, first to develop the concept of offering personal shopping services, and first to create Christmas windows for pure delight rather than selling merchandise. By creating a unique mix of the latest trends and timeless classics, Lord & Taylor has become the favorite store of generations of shoppers.
To improve sales from its online channel, lordandtaylor. com, the company decided to relaunch its e-commerce site in late 2008. Components of the relaunch included a new third-party fulfillment center, new website design, new e-commerce platform, new marketing initiatives, a new management team and a new call center—Global Response.
To help with the transition, Global Response assigned an implementation manager and a project manager who together managed everything from helping design the business rules and service level agreements to the technology integration. That integration gives Global Response’s Brand Care Specialists access to Lord & Taylor’s platform administrative tool, so they can view orders, check inventory, place orders, and answer questions about existing orders. The next integration step, already in the works, will give them access to the order management system so they can affect orders already placed.
“Global Response now takes calls for us on a 24/7 basis,” says Christina C, Vice President of eCommerce for Lord & Taylor, “and for our busiest contact hours, we have dedicated Global Response Brand Care Specialists who are trained specifically to work with Lord & Taylor customers. They know our business, our products, and our policies and procedures. Most important of all, they know what our customers expect and how to meet those expectations.”
Speaking the Lord & Taylor Brand
To ensure a consistently high quality of service,Christina holds weekly conference calls with the Global Response project manager and listens to a random selection of calls between customers and the Global Response Brand Care Specialists who take calls and answer emails from Lord & Taylor customers. “They really know how to represent
our brand,” she says. “It’s one of the things I like best about Global Response. I bet if you asked one of their Brand Care Specialists who they work for, they’d say Lord & Taylor. That’s really important.”
Christina says that outsourcing the call center function gives Lord & Taylor the ability to cost-effectively deliver high-quality customer service on a 24×7 basis. She adds that “it also frees up management attention to focus on our e-commerce business, which is in a high-growth phase. We can do that because we know Global Response is there for our customers when we need them to be.”
Christina frequently receives proposals to move Lord & Taylor’s call center function offshore, but prefers to keep the function in the U.S. “We’re not a volume business,” she says. “Our average call lasts about five minutes, and it’s an in-depth conversation that requires a great deal of attention to detail, brand knowledge, product
"Our average call is an in-depth conversation.. We think our upscale customer are better served by a premier U.S.-based call center that speaks our brand as well as we do."
knowledge and customer service skills. We think our upscale U.S. customers are better served by a premier U.S.-based call center that speaks our brand as well as we do.”
Among the benefits Global Response delivers for Lord & Taylor are reduced checkout errors, because online shoppers frequently call for and receive assistance with checkout, and an increase in repeat purchases. “Brand Care Specialists give the right answers,” says Christina, “which means customers are more likely to make the purchase and more likely to come back for repeat purchases— and repeat purchasers are money in the bank for any retailer.”
Escalated Comments from Satisfied Customers
Lord & Taylor has a very loyal, very vocal customer base that considers the retailer a friend of the family. “So when we make a mistake,” says Christina, “they call up and offer constructive criticism that sounds much more like ‘Excuse me, your slip is showing,’ rather than ‘I’m really upset with you.’ But they’re also quick to compliment us, and I get a lot of escalated compliments about the great quality of the Global Response customer service.”
Christina also says that “there’s a level of enthusiasm at the Brand Care Specialist level that I haven’t seen at other call centers. I know that’s the case because customers tell me so and because it comes through very clearly when I listen to calls. Overall, my level of satisfaction with Global Response is very high—they represent our brand well and they’re there for our customer when she needs them.”
