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High-End Retailer Ensures Rapid Growth During Holiday Season

Against the clock

The holiday selling season is critically important for retailers, with some high-end companies generating nearly 75 percent of annual revenue between November and year-end. To limit possible technical problems with online and catalog phone sales, many retailers observe a strict “IT lockdown” between November and January each year.

The Situation:

Thus, the stakes were high in the summer and early fall of 2014 when a prestigious international luxury retailer faced a potential disaster following an enterprise-wide phone system upgrade. With the clock ticking, the retailer worked closely with system integrator Dimension Data to institute the Cisco Unified Contact Center (UCCE) platform upgrade. Through this process, the retail company’s contact center realized that it would have to upgrade their contact center solutions which would give them the added bonus of improving their customer engagement. With Dimension Data’s help, they took steps to procure the hardware needed to support the contact center upgrade.

Then the incumbent vendor did the unthinkable: they informed
the retailer and Dimension Data staff that they would not be undertaking the necessary upgrade before the lockdown deadline—despite the retailer’s previous agreement to their higher prices and procurement of required hardware.

“It could have been a disaster,” explains Dimension Data Northeast Senior Sales Consultant, Ali Kahn. “The client simply could not go into the holiday selling season, which includes many seasonal contact center workers, without call recording and screen capture capabilities.”

“We knew we had to generate a successful outcome, which is why we immediately recommended Calabrio without hesitation. Calabrio is our ‘go to’ partner and they have repeatedly demonstrated their commitment and follow-through with multiple shared clients in the past.”

Undaunted by the challenge, Calabrio knew it could give the retailer 100 percent customer interaction capture while providing customer engagement and analytics solutions—all within the one month timeframe.

The retailer’s senior IT manager carefully considered Dimension Data’s recommendation, but insisted on meeting with Calabrio representatives before agreeing. Within 24 hours, Calabrio CEO, Tom Goodmanson, Vice President of Support Operations, Tim Kraskey and Senior Sales Engineer, Alex Reaume, were on a plane to New Jersey to meet with senior business and IT leaders for the retailer and Dimension Data.

“I knew I could say with confidence that Calabrio would deliver,” Kahn recalls. “But when three of the company’s most senior executives made it a top priority to show up in person and promise that not only would they deliver, but also stay personally involved to make sure the implementation went smoothly, it clinched the deal.”

The Solution

One week after the senior meeting, Calabrio received a purchase order for Calabrio Quality Management which includes call recording as a standard feature. The client also purchased Calabrio Analytics which they agreed would be installed after the lockdown due to the short installation timeframe.

Within three weeks, Calabrio had fulfilled its promise. The retailer’s contact center went into full production with 100 percent call recording and screen capture in place. Using the same hardware that the client had purchased for the upgrade promised, but never delivered by the previous vendor, Calabrio was able to provide a fully redundant Calabrio system plus a full analytics suite with the same footprint as the previous non-redundant competitive system which did not include an analytics solution. Calabrio also provided full training during this time.

Results

“The client’s team has been impressed with our tools and find them easy to use,” says Calabrio Vice President of Support Operations, Tim Kraskey. “They’ve also commented that our engineers are great to work with and they appreciate the continued engagement of Calabrio’s CEO.”

“It’s going very well,” agrees Dimension Data’s Ali Kahn. “The client is very happy with what we’ve done. They are delighted that Calabrio not only answers every time they call, but that everyone is genuinely committed to making sure their team gets what they need exactly when they need it.”

Most importantly, the prestigious retailer went into its crucial 2014 holiday retail season confident in the ability of its contact center to deliver superlative customer service and growth from every customer interaction. With many individual sales exceeding six figures for this luxury retailer, getting it right in the contact center is beyond mission critical. Calabrio Analytics can analyze 100 percent of customer interactions which means every single call can be reviewed and seasonal workers who need support or coaching receive it in a timely manner. To learn more about how Calabrio gives this insight, read our complete guide to customer interaction analytics.

Heading into this holiday season, the client has a few voice-of-the-customer analytics projects under its belt. With Calabrio Analytics, the contact center was able to gauge customer sentiment about new marketing campaigns and to make recommendations to the merchandising department based on actual data, rather than anecdotal evidence. Visual dashboards plus easy-to-export recordings make sharing information across the organization effortless – leading to faster, data-driven decisions.

Calabrio’s proven ability to meet tight deadlines, honor promises and provide cost-effective, easy-to-use customer engagement and analytics solutions has spurred the retailer’s interest in exploring how Calabrio’s tools can further enhance its customer-conscious brand promise through state-of-the-art Workforce Management tools.

Dave Hoekstra has spent his entire professional career in customer service, but it wasn’t until he found WFM that he found his true passion. With over 20 years in WFM, Dave has gained insight into the real world challenges of working in today’s customer service. He is one of the few people who truly gets excited when someone wants to talk about Real Time Adherence or Net Staffing reports.
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