Use Case - Health & Beauty
How a cosmetics partner decreased average ramp time by 66%
We saved a leading beauty industry brand time and money by expanding the customer experience management team in less than half of the standard training time during the 2020 holiday season.
Goals
Maintain a high-quality customer service experience while ramping up for an unexpectedly huge holiday season.
Challenges
During the 2020 holiday season, our partner experienced the combined challenge of a dramatic increase in the volume of online orders and unexpected delays in shipping.
Results
We streamlined our training processes and responded to the needs immediately. We represented the best of our partner’s brand and maintained excellent customer satisfaction.
Scaling customer experience management in half the time
Our customer experience management team has provided exceptional customer service for a large international beauty brand for several years. When a tough challenge came along, we faced it head-on and turned it into an opportunity for growth.
The challenge
During the 2020 holiday season, our client experienced an unexpected and sudden increase in the volume of online orders due to the pandemic. Not only was it the busiest time of the year for our client, but there was also a “perfect storm” of issues resulting in significant shipping delays: COVID, distribution centers shutting down, severe weather, and a sharp uptick in online orders nationwide.
Delivery delays translated into significant increases in the number of interactions as customers reached out for shipping updates; in particular, email volume spiked.
Our client needed a highly qualified customer experience management team to represent their brand during a critical time. Due to the sheer volume of customer inquiries and the urgency of the situation, the client needed our team to rapidly scale and train on these specific issues in a short period.
Our strategies
To rapidly scale, we implemented the following strategies:
- Sourcing Brand Specialists: We rapidly sourced account managers and additional team members, focusing on the specific challenges at hand. Clear and empathetic messaging underpinned customer interactions and ensured quality responses to the overwhelming flow of customer service emails.
- Streamline Training: While training typically consists of a holistic approach to take calls, live chat, text, and email, for this triage effort, we focused on the client’s key pain points and the most pressing needs of their customers.
- Improve Processes: We implemented key process improvements like identifying and removing duplicate emails (frustrated customers often write more than once). We drastically reduced the average response time with this streamlining strategy – ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction.
- Increase On-Demand Team: We increased the on-demand team by 40% to be even more accessible to customers. This strategy significantly shortened inquiries’ time in the queue and allowed live assistance.
- Maintain Transparency with Client: Our strong relationship with our client allowed for ease of communication and productivity, which aligned our goals and kept the client up-to-date on the status of the situation.
Our results
We cut ramp time by 66% and delivered across-the-board customer service gains with these strategies. We successfully deployed agents within two days vs. the average of five to seven days.
We rose to the challenge for our client during this crucial time, increasing the amount of on-demand customer care specialists by 40% and providing a high level of customer service.
We were not only able to tackle all email inquiries in a timely fashion but scaled a trained customer experience management team. This saved the client time and expenses while delivering an exceptional customer experience with minimal interruption during one of the busiest times of the year.
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