Case Study: Consumer electronics
HGS website portal achieves 97% resolution rate online in just 90 days
Consumer electronics company realizes reduced costs via fewer calls, more questions answered with HGS Web+Help
QUOTE
“Please know that HGS has been a ‘trusted advisor’ since we started our partnership, and they continue to play a mission critical role in spear heading advancements in our multi-channel customer engagements as we work together on improving the customer experience and reduce operating costs.
We couldn’t be more delighted in our HGS partnership and we look forward to the future and what it holds for our customer.”
— Director, Customer Experience
Consumer Electronics Company
The solution
The partnership has been strong, as evidenced by services expansion. In late 2014, the client’s executive team added to HGS’s DVD and TV solutions portfolio, by rewarding HGS Philippines with another product line. This HGS solution is consumer centric, starting with an HGS-designed,-built, and -managed consumer self-service portal branded as “client” USA. Additionally, HGS provides multichannel support services for FAQs, downloads, auto chat, video, and live chat, with our breakthrough DNA solution. This device-agnostic platform is designed with a mobile-enabled customer in mind. DNA leverages company knowledge and bridges channels of interaction with an emphasis on empowering self-service while seamlessly integrating agent assistance. Comprising knowledge management, CRM, and analytics capabilities, DNA empowers self-service and addresses this client’s customer queries at the earliest touchpoint, for optimized customer experience.
Cost containment
How we do it
- Troubleshooting lab: HGS reduced costs and eased the offshore transition process with the client, as we worked diligently to bring the client into the program with a branded contact center. HGS has configured a full-service consumer electronics laboratory for use by agents, to troubleshoot consumer product issues real time. This lab also provides agent training and certification.
- Staffing digital agents: HGS searched for agents with an affinity for consumer electronics and client brands to support the ideal client-HGS cultural fit. We keep our employee base intact through optimized hiring and a focus on employee retention. We strictly adhere to HGS recruitment and training standards to ensure that agents in the Philippines offer a cultural affinity with Western markets and customs. Team members possess excellent communication skills, interpersonal warmth, customer service orientation, problem-solving skills, and the ability to neutralize accent. To evaluate the progress of the agents during training, HGS administers checkpoint quizzes daily with an exam at the end of the course. Additionally, HGS’s eSCM-SP certification is used as a key differentiator for the client, one that improves consistency across the sourcing lifecycle. Recent achievement of Capability Level 5 certification indicates that HGS has successfully implemented consistent procedures for two years in the 84 eSCM-SP practices across multiple geographies (USA, India, and Philippines) under the scope of the certification.
- HGS web-help, self-service portal: HGS implemented a portal to deflect call volume from higher cost channels to a lower cost channel and self-service solution. An integrated self-service portal was developed and implemented by HGS with negligible involvement from client IT. The self-service portal offered an omnichannel solution across FAQs, videos, virtual chat, assisted chat, and email fully integrated with one another providing a seamless customer experience. As an outcome of this solution, a 97% resolution rate was achieved and 92%–93% of customer contact traffic was managed by the self-service solution.
Business result
- HGS reduced costs by nearly 70 percent by employing the self-service portal.
- As further evidence of this account’s success, in 2015, HGS was recognized for this partnership with a first-place customer service win at the Contact Center World (CCW) Americas Awards, also earning a silver at the world finals contest.
- Additionally, this partnership was recognized by the Outsourcing Institute as Best in Outsourcing Thought Leadership for Cost Reduction.
- From day one, HGS understood this client’s requirement and key priorities: to reduce operational costs and provide customers with the best experience. The client’s partnership with HGS was one that thrived on qualities of listening, challenging odds, executing the right solutions, analyzing performance, and recalibrating solutions. “Reduction in operational costs meant bringing down resource cost by relying more on self-serve platforms,” said Best Outsourcing Partnership presenter, HGS Director of Business Development Keith Brickell. “This is what we did for this client: we used data on customer call drivers and sentiment in designing the self-help portal. Quality customer service required us to have the executive goals clearly stated and communicated to us by the client. This gave us maximum understanding of the issues and the best channels in which to help consumers resolve them.” “Our association with this client has been truly a rewarding experience and is the embodiment of how a business partnership between a company and a BPO can be made beneficial,” Brickell summarized.
Reduced average handle time (AHT)
How we do it
HGS realized the need for more data to reduce call abandonment and AHT and so, established benchmarks in the first six months. After this exercise, HGS developed strategies for gaining product and consumer insight, selfservice, and call deflection.
Business result
HGS helped this client to achieve significant results in less than a year. As a result of HGS’s efforts, the client now has diverted contacts for 20,000 fewer calls/month. And average handle time (AHT) has been reduced to 477 seconds from 683 seconds.
Improved operational and IT resources
How we do it
To align with the client mission, HGS-client collaboration has included building solutions infrastructure, with:
- Development of a self-help portal
- Thought leadership in the transition to a new CRM
- Writing of training curriculum tailored to the client’s DVD, TV, and other product lines
- Adding an onsite product showroom used for training and simulations as well as occasional product troubleshooting
Business result
Innovation via new tools and resources.
Accurate, reliable information
How we do it
HGS committed to run the program for six months. HGS collected data, to be used starting in month four. This data provided the client a successful customer engagement plan.
Business result
With HGS data collection and analysis, we have been able to achieve, for this client, consistent standards and benchmarks for measurement of growth and use in strategic solution planning
Results
This partnership has showed strong performance for the client, specifically in terms of AHT, service level, abandon rate, quality monitoring, customer satisfaction, sales conversion, first contact resolution, and cost-per-contact.
97% of customer inquiries are resolved online with no agent interaction
~70% reduction on total operation cost due to our award-winning performance
20,000 fewer calls/month
477 seconds average handle time (AHT), from 632 seconds in the first six months of operations
37% decrease in operational and IT resources,
from 110 agents to 69
consistent standards
and benchmarks for measurement of
growth and use in strategic solution planning
Unified engagement
In addition to the self-service web portal, HGS helped unify customer engagement by creating a new agent training curriculum tailored to the client’s DVD, TV, and other product lines. This enhanced training program, combined with a comprehensive back-end knowledge base allows agents to provide exceptional knowledge-based assistance.
- At the close of 2014, service level response was above 80 percent and CSAT was 91.6 percent.
- HGS introduced First Call Resolution (FCR) as a key performance indicator, meeting 85 percent servicelevel targets.
- Average talk time decreased by 30 percent in Q1 and Q4.
- In June 2016, the Philips TV and Home Video support for the US market was awarded to HGS.
- We added business of more than 20,000 contacts per month for Phone and Chat support.
- Transition was completed in October 2016, and a steady state was achieved after six months of transition.
- In the first full fiscal year April 2017 through March 2018, we exceeded NPS targets 12 out of 12 months.
- We passed Service Level and Answer Rate targets 12 out of 12 months.
In only the first year of this partnership, HGS created a best-of-breed customer care operation. The seamless transition of call center locations has delivered a strong brand experience across multiple contact channels, with innovation playing a significant role in expansion of these channels. As HGS continues to focus on multi-channel consumer and product insights, we have spent several months working with the client on the design and launch of a new consumer printer self-help portal. This portal employs the HGS Intelligent Contact Monitoring algorithms to identify customer needs and communicate product-relevant information in the preferred consumer channel. This includes channels of Auto Chat and Product How-To Videos produced by HGS, and a host of other self-service tools.
The client-HGS partnership is built on a strong foundation. The client’s decision to expand this partnership to another product line is one early signpost of success.
