Global Response boosts upsells, delivers superior customer service for MindWare

When you do the majority of your business in the holiday season, it doesn’t make sense to have a 100- person in-house call center in place year-round. Instead, you engage an outsourced call center.

But if you’re a company like MindWare whose number- one value is ensuring a first-rate customer experience, the challenge is to find the right outsourced call center—one that will treat your customers with the same care you do.

Finding a Long-Term, Like-Minded Partner

Founded in 1990 as a small retail store in Minneapolis, MindWare has evolved into an award-winning creator, manufacturer, and distributor of brainy toys for kids of all ages. The company’s goal is to place high-quality toys that teach and entertain into the hands of children and adults. MindWare’s diverse product line includes games, puzzles, brainteasers, arts and crafts activities, mysteries, mazes and more. In 2001, MindWare started offering its line of products to independent retailers nationwide. The company today is a cataloger, web retailer and distributor that mails catalogs to consumers and educators throughout the United States.

MindWare has an in-house call center with about 20 agents, but decided to outsource to be able to handle the greatly increased volume of calls during the peak holiday season. The point person for selecting an outsourced call center was Matt R, MindWare’s customer service manager. After evaluating call centers for several months, MindWare selected Global Response. “We chose them because they have many high-quality clients like us, they mirror our approach to taking care of customers, we were convinced they would do a good job at upselling, and they are very cost-effective,” says Matt. He says the visit to Global Response headquarters was another factor: “We observed and talked to their agents, and we saw and heard how much they enjoy working there. You come away with an overall positive feeling, and it was clear that we share the same culture and approach to taking care of customers.”

MindWare was already using another outsourced call center when it engaged Global Response. But after the end of the peak holiday selling season, it made Global its exclusive call center partner. “Frankly, that was our goal all along—to find a long-term partner that mirrors our philosophy of providing a first-class customer experience,” says Matt. “We found that in Global Response.”

Experience Makes for a Smooth Implementation

Regarding the implementation process after engaging Global Response, Matt says that “this isn’t the first call center I’ve worked with, so I had a detailed project plan on my side and Global Response had one on theirs. That made for a very smooth process—everything went off without a hitch.”

MindWare was already using another outsourced call center when it engaged Global Response, But after the end of the peak holiday season, It made Global Response it's exclusive call center partner.

Services that Global Response provides for MindWare include inbound sales and customer service. The process of training Global Response agents included having Global project managers travel to Minnesota to tour MindWare’s offices and participate in actual training sessions MindWare was conducting for its in-house agents. The Global managers then used that knowledge when they returned to Florida to train the agents that would be working on the MindWare account. “Bringing the project managers here to watch our agents in action and take part in train-the-trainer sessions really helps them understand our culture so they can communicate it to their staff,” says Matt.

As they work on the MindWare account, Global Response agents use the same Sigma Commerce system as in-house MindWare agents for taking orders and providing customer service. “That benefits us because everyone is tied into same back-end, including the website, so everything happens in the same system,” says Matt. “Inventory is up to date, which means that when orders are placed, even over the Internet, Global Response agents can handle the same customer service questions we can. There are no handoffs between systems or manual uploads. For our customers, that means better, faster, more accurate service.”

During last year’s holiday season, Global Response handled 75 percent of inbound sales calls for MindWare, which, for the two months when Global was the sole outsourced call center, represented 45,000 calls. MindWare expects that volume to increase in the next holiday season, given that Global is now the sole outsourced partner and will be active for the entire fourth quarter.

Boosting Client Profits Through Upselling

To help Global Response with upselling, a MindWare merchandiser visited Global’s offices and brought specific products MindWare wanted to use for upsells as well as a selection of best-selling games for Global agents to familiarize themselves with.

“The benefit of our being familiar with the products is that when a customer calls and asks for advice or recommendations on which games to buy, we can speak from first-hand experience because we’ve played them,” says Alice Marek, ACD Supervisor at Global Response.

MindWare’s previous outsourced call center did upsells on inbound sales calls, and in 2008, they added an average of $3.87 to every order. In comparison, Global Response Brand Care Specialists in 2009 added an average of $5.07 to every order by upselling. “We’re very pleased with Global’s performance in doing upsells,” says Matt.

Building a Lasting Relationship

“Last year was our first year with Global Response, but it was very successful,” Matt says. “We extended our contract with them for a couple more years—that’s a pretty clear sign that we think they’re doing a good job.”

Because he’s had experience with managing several outsourced call centers, Matt can speak about what makes Global Response stand out. “They’re easy to work with, we have a good relationship with the project managers, we feel taken care of, and we know they care about our business,” he says. “The best way to describe the relationship from our perspective is that we just feel comfortable and at home with them.”