From call centre to an Experience Centre: Retail leader reduces AHT by 43%

The client is one of Australia’s largest department store retailers across multiple large locations nationally. As such, their Contact Centre activity is high, so quality, efficiency and customer experience needed to be equally high at all times.

Having been at the very forefront of Australian retail for decades, our client is a brand that is loved and trusted by its customers. But, they realised that they had reached a point at which their relationship needed to be taken to the next level. 

They needed a partner who could transform their call centre of the past into an Experience Contact centre of the present and the future.

Their existing call centre was working, however, there was a need to increase efficiencies and reduce costs. While problems were being solved, a focus on identifying and solving the root cause was absent and as a result, customers waited longer for resolution. They knew this needed to change. The most notable symptoms of the problem included:

• Higher AHT due to repetitive manual ID checks
• Increased operational costs requiring more agent time per customer
• Customer frustration due to lengthy and inefficient procedures

Our client wanted for their people to be able to devote their time to better serving customers, rather than spending their time trying to fix problems. They wanted a single, efficient point of contact that could be scaled over time.

Probe CX was challenged to help achieve the following:

• Free up team members’ time to better serve in-store customers
• Move less complex calls into lower-cost channels while offering differentiated services.
• Provide a single point of contact for customers.
• Build flexible and scalable solutions to meet current and future needs.

The Customer First Plan had already begun as a way of maintaining and gaining ground in the fiercely competitive major retail space. 

And a vital part of the process of putting their customers first was working with someone who could implement the type of contact centre they needed. In fact, across their entire business they recognised the need to go from having vendors and suppliers to having partners.

So, they invited Probe CX to submit a plan to take their customer experience approach forward.

After a careful and in-depth analysis of the key call drivers and workforce management processes, we found:

• A lack of automation and proactive contact
• Complex pathways and a lack of insights or real-time reporting
• High average handling times (AHT) 
• Low operational control

To address these, Probe CX:

• Established three digital-first Contact Centres 
• Implemented Oration by Convai to deflect calls and determine caller intent
• Developed a virtual agent that acted as a self-service option.

Significant and positive change took place, including AHT reducing from 15 minutes to 8.5 minutes, automated identification and order information gathering for over 40% of callers. And a decrease in returns contacts of 32% in traditional channels.

In addition, customer demand for live human agent assistance decreased by 46% following interactions with the virtual agent, while online chatbot self-service rates increased to 92%.

94% of calls were directed to the right department in the right store, and saved our client an estimated $640,000 in labour costs.