Helping Deliver “World Class Customer Service”
World Famous Premium Department Store
We assisted a renowned UK department store in enhancing their customer service by conducting a comprehensive assessment, developing a strategic roadmap, and implementing key proposals, which were largely adopted to support their goal of delivering "world class customer service."
Sector: Retail
Location: UK
Ownership: Overseas Wealth Fund
Duration: Short Term
Challenge
The client sought our support from a contact centre perspective to further their ambition to deliver “world class customer service”.
There had been significant investment in technology tools and platforms to support remote customer service, for both in-store and ecommerce customers. In parallel the in-house operation had been partially outsourced to help with the resourcing of both peak season and underlying contact volumes. Customer service had thus progressed from a ‘firefighting’ mode of crisis response and now a clarity of vision and ‘greenfield’ approach was sought from industry experts.
Solution
Initially we provided an assessment of how the client’ customer service delivery performed in comparison to ‘world class experience’ yardsticks. This generated a high-level framework on which to base a gap analysis, showing where they needed to improve.
We engaged on-site with both in-house and outsourced teams, and a variety of stakeholders including the ecommerce and technology teams consulted. The complex nature of demand generation, contact and date transfers and service resolution across the customer service proposition quickly became apparent and was investigated in depth.
Drawing on this insight we began to form, validate and test proposals to enhance Harrods’ customers experience whilst addressing root causes of service failure and customer frustration. Amongst the finalised proposals were:
Creation of roadmap for future customer service vision to provide an agreed, shared vision, underpinned by objective target performance metrics
Prioritisation of app functionality based on derived customer need, not internal aspirations
Development of business case modelling – based on lost sales opportunities – of missed and declined calls transferred to in-store departments and concessions
Deviation from standard ‘full service’ outsourced ecommerce service model to provide additional ownership and influence over the customer journey
Revision of internal and external (customer facing) terminology, reporting and the categorisation of contacts & queries to align with external, customer expectations
Focus on identification and consistent adoption of standard processes for query resolution, especially for customer queries requiring extended resolution and handling between teams
Structural re-design with the creation of an in-house Centre of Excellence to lead operational best practice and establishment of a new Head of Customer Service Experience role to provide impetus and direction to the new vision
Outcome
Our analysis and recommendations were presented to a sub-group of the Executive Team and largely adopted as part of its short and medium-term development customer service development strategy.
Client Quote
“[Steve] worked with our Customer Service teams engendering trust and confidence. The findings and recommendations they presented to myself and the C-Suite will support us in our CX ambitions”