Client Success Story

Innovation journey takes flight with tech and training


HGS delivers a decade of first-class customer experience for CPG brand



True innovation is a journey, not a destination.


That’s something one consumer packaged goods company learned in 2011 after embarking on a cross-country search for a partner that would help them elevate their customer experience.

After visiting four potential partners on both coasts, the company landed in America’s Heartland – Peoria, IL – where HGS would spend the next 10 years helping the brand soar.

During the course of its decade-long partnership, HGS has helped this innovative brand expand the channels through which it communicates with customers; launch new services; gain insights into customer needs; and refine products it sells.

Learn how HGS helped this brand fly high by delivering first-class customer experience to meet ever-changing consumer expectations.



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Unique destination: A tailored experience

The first stop on the innovation itinerary for this major CPG company? A uniquely branded customer service experience. In 2011, HGS assumed management of the brand’s customer service operations based out of its Orange Prairie facility in Peoria, IL.

Each company that HGS serves within the facility has its own branded space, giving agents a distinctive, defined area in which to support each company’s unique customer needs.

Taking off with increased training

As the growing CPG company added more product offerings, HGS created a dedicated agent environment within the contact center so that its 97 agents could focus exclusively on the needs of the brand.

HGS provides dedicated agents with ongoing training and education, with a focus on honing customer service skills, understanding product issues, adopting cross-selling and upselling tactics and navigating the CRM system.

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Piloting productivity with agent specialization

As the top CPG company continued to expand and grow, HGS facilitated performance and best-in-class customer experience by assigning agents to three core business lines.  Providing agents with more specialized training to refine their understanding of individual products served to sharpen their focus on customer experience and enhanced their ability to handle inquiries.

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Taking flight with social media innovation

In 2019, the brand realized that in order to climb to greater customer experience heights, it needed to adopt a strategic social media plan. Leveraging valuable data from social media channels was critical to its continued success.

HGS supported the company in this goal by recommending and implementing the social media management tool Sprinklr.

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Real-time results: 40% reporting efficiency improvement

In 2020, HGS helped the brand’s team navigate out of the unknown and foster an organization that makes better decisions with contact center real-time reporting.

Contact center reports — including switch reports, quality reports, and workforce management reports — provided the brand with reams of data, but because the data must be manually retrieved, the reports were outdated by the time the company received them.

To enable faster decision-making, HGS deployed HGS PULSE™, its award-winning customer experience analytics platform that provides real-time data analytics and insights within a dynamic, configurable dashboard.

Data that would initially take weeks with a team spending 80 manual hours on the report is now being generated digitally in real time with no manual intervention. The team which was responsible for creating these reports is now analyzing and culling insights from the reports. A simple change of output enabled higher tier work and generated significant savings for the brand.

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Navigating a new route: Remote work

Like most brands, the CPG company navigated some turbulence in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Within two weeks, HGS launched a work-at-home environment for the brand’s 100 agents, setting up the company for future remote-work success and wider-scale recruiting.

Data from HGS’s Center of Excellence reveals no sacrifice in quality of customer service, or in resolution speed and success, despite the new environment. Additionally, the HGS team of trainers quickly converted brick-and-mortar training materials for new hires into a virtual training program.

This effective work-at-home strategy will allow the brand to employ fully remote agents going forward and cast a wider net when recruiting workforce talent.

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Video Brand Ambassadors: A great idea takes flight

In 2020, as COVID-19 restrictions kept the brand team from connecting with prospects and customers at public venues like festivals, concerts and events, HGS launched a Video Brand Ambassador program to forge connections with new customers and retain the loyalty of existing fans.

Customers can video-chat with experts about the brand’s offerings and learn the best options for their preferences before they make a purchase.

Blue skies ahead: Innovating the customer experience

Innovation is an iterative process and HGS continues to implement innovative ways to help this major CPG brand modernize its contact center operations.

Plans are underway to implement Smart IVR in 2022, which will direct some customers to self-service options, enabling faster resolutions for queries that don’t require agent intervention.

Additionally, HGS will expand customer service chat on the brand’s website, providing customers another option for contacting the company.

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