A Well Known Furniture Brand

Our assessment allowed the client to take prompt action to address fundamental issues and rethink its long-term strategy for expansion in the country.

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.

Our team then led the procurement activity with IT, business and marketing goals aligned to find the right solutions from the right partners, which fully considered the existing contractual arrangements.

As a part of this process, our team benchmarked investment levels and identified substantial savings and set out the delivery roadmap. As with many clients, we found that key stakeholders had differing priorities and perspectives on the investments required. Through the process of re-designing the customer journeys and linking the investment to tangible benefits was a positive force in helping to align priorities across the business.

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.

Ember Group is a specialist consulting, analytics and professional services group dedicated to transforming customer engagement and CX strategies and operations for major brands globally. With offices in London and Toronto, we deliver solutions to help organisations realise their customer service vision and increase commercial value from their service operations.

We have a team of specialists across various practices and disciplines, including service operations, digital, outsourcing, technology, commercial and finance, analytics, recruitment & search, training and L&D.

Contact Us:

We are ready and available to discuss your requirements further. If you have any questions about our offerings and the services, please contact us.

T: 020 7871 9797