People Issues Leading to Poor Performance in Retail Call Centers During Peak Times

Peak shopping times are great for retailers. They can drive significant profits on their merchandise and customers will buy due to a specific need rather than a promotion launched by that particular retailer. In many cases, customers will even buy if the service received is less than stellar, as they lack the necessary time to shop around.

That dynamic could be changing however, as retailers are looking at ways to capture more of the consumer dollar during peak times. To gain an understanding of the current status of customer service within the industry, RXP & Foviance jointly tested 25 leading UK retailers. The research included looking at both the online and offline customer support receive, by e-mail and telephony, at peak shopping periods. 

 

While the study found a wide range of strategies being employed across sectors and retailers, only a few cases were identified where the online and offline channels were truly integrated. For the overall customer experience, John Lewis, Amazon and Argos were the top performers.

John Lewis not only delivered an excellent online experience, it also handled calls within its call center very well. Amazon seemed to provide no way of contacting them by phone*, but the online experience was good and the company’s response to e-mail so fast that the overall experience was positive and consistent. Argos had good response times and knowledgeable call center agents who seized the opportunity to cross-sell.

The study overall found a lack of integration and joined-up thinking across the retail channels. This lack of integration is negatively impacting the quality of customer experience.

The study found enormous variation in contact handling quality outside of the catalogue companies, whose call centers were generally very good. Poor performing retailers included Asda, who failed to respond at all to inquiries by e-mail and phone before Christmas; Woolworths who required registration before it was possible to e-mail about general product inquiries; and HMV whose out of hours IVR call handling was very poor.

Many of the problems that were encountered during the Foviance/RXP research were due to people-related issues. Most often, either customer service staff were not trained well enough, not rewarded correctly or simply not available in sufficient numbers to cope with seasonal peaks in demand.

Paul Blunden, CEO of Foviance, shared in a company statement: "Most retail organizations are organized by channel or product silos. As a result few if any have a single view of the customer or a clear understanding of how their customers want to interact with them through the various channels available.”

 

“Multi-channel is high on many retailers' agendas but so far the solutions have only extended to simply creating additional channels rather than designing an integrated customer experience."

Paul Weald, managing director of RXP, added: "Retailers need to consider the multi-channel customer experience more holistically using a contact strategy that reinforces their brand."

*On a side note, in my personal dealings with Amazon, certain interactions required live conversations. When I clicked on the link to contact an agent on the website, a prompt immediately appeared asking for my phone number. After providing the number and pressing enter, my phone immediately rang and I was connected to a live agent, thereby providing an excellent experience.