The Requirement

When a well-known furniture retailer was conducting a global review of its contact centres, we were asked to help with the operational assessment. One of the reviews focused on the centre that supported the retailer’s rapidly expanding operation in China. It was planning to launch e-commerce and open 5 new stores a year; we were asked to assess whether it was ready.

The Solution

Our expert team spent 8 days on site assessing all aspects of the contact centre operations: its resource planning capability, HR processes, team leader and operations manager workload, customer and employee feedback, call listening and analysing CLI data. What we found was an operation that had been substantially under forecast.

The Result

With additional pressures of very high attrition in new recruits, recruitment in a heavily industrialised area with little in the way of a customer service sector was proving extremely challenging. The expansion of the service centre and high number of inexperienced co-workers meant that call quality had reduced, with nearly 50% repeat contacts and almost as many outbound as inbound calls to resolve issues.

Based on this data, we re-forecast the likely service level – which indicated performance tumbling into single figures This on top of an IT infrastructure that wasn’t fit for purpose meant the planned expansion was very unlikely to be supported effectively.

Crucially, the data we were able to collate demonstrated clearly the risks and gaps. This allowed the retailer to take prompt action to address fundamental issues and rethink its long-term strategy for expansion in the country.

Related case studies