Customer Service Call Center Benchmark Study

Competitive Benchmark Study:
Defining a World-Class
Customer Service Call Center
Presented By:
Chris Scafario

Getting Started…
Current State:
A manufacturer and global distributor of premium-quality
hardware for kitchen, coffee, washroom, beverage, and
foodservice systems, seeks to improve efficiencies and
operations within its regional customer service call center.

Getting Started…
Current State:
The Company understands that effective customer service is
an important means of reinforcing brand equity. As a result this
work has been formatted to support and present an optimal call
center structure including:
Standard operating procedures (SOPs)
A move towards full transparency connecting call center
management in a clear chain of communication with the rest
of the organization as a whole.

Initial Findings….
 A retail arrangement with Lowes fails to make use of standard
technology to streamline ordering .
 No means of capturing, calculating, or communicating Key
Performance Indicators ( No KPIs).
 A lack of awareness of industry best practices to guide
performance improvement .
 Nonexistent outgoing information flow from customer service
to the customers they support .

Initial Findings….
 Need for Improved Organizational Communication.
 Documentation that is not in an easily searchable form.
 Confusion as a result of product- and model changes that are
not communicated.
 Unpredictable spare parts inventories.

Scope of Our Work….
In an effort to remedy these shortcomings, DVIRC has collected:
A list of companies that are renowned for customer service.
 An overview of call center best practices.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Call Center Management Job Descriptions.
 Division-Specific Recommendations.

Customer Service Superstars
L.L.Bean, the Freeport-Maine mail-
order giant, has made service
excellence and product quality the
cornerstones of its operating
philosophy and strategy for almost
100 years.
In terms of product/service scope,
consider the fact that the company
offers more than 16,000 items, 200
of which it manufacturers itself.

 L.L.Bean’s reputation for outstanding customer service is primarily
built upon its unlimited, “no-questions-asked” return policy—which
permits unlimited returns on all items—and for its legendary
willingness to perpetually replace the rubber soles of its Maine
Hunting Shoe.

 Customer loyalty is a primary concern for L.L.Bean. As such, call
center agents often engage in conversations that are not directly
sales-related.
- It is a way to identify clients’ needs, it is seen as an opportunity to
increase brand value. Despite this conversational approach (or
perhaps because of it), agents maintain low average order times.

 L.L.Bean does the bulk of its sales over the phone. Due to this fact,
and because the business is largely seasonal, call volumes can
exceed 155,000/day during busy periods.
- In addition, with their heavy reliance on catalogs, (not to mention
customers’ tendency to save catalogs for years), the company
recently undertook an initiative to expand the functionality of their
order-taking software to support more complex inquiry calls.

 The goal of the initiative was to reduce both the number of call
transfers, and the amount of training required to handle many of
these calls, while continuing to maintain traditionally high customer
service and employee satisfaction standards.
The result was a redesigned screen layout that focused on design,
HTML prototyping, task-based user testing, and reviews with expert
users, businesses, and technical team members.

The redesigned screens had a measurable impact on service, including:
Improved customer and employee satisfaction
 A five-second reduction in average call time
 A 37% reduction information queue requests
 A more than 50% reduction in new-user training time
A 50% reduction in call center training costs
L.L.Bean also streamlined its call center by commissioning forecasting
models to predict incoming calls so that staffing schedules could be
produced farther in advance. The company expects to save $300,000 as
a result of the move.

L.L.Bean refers to the “Customer Service” function as their “Customer
Satisfaction” department, effectively underscoring the group’s ultimate
goal. President Chris McCormick says that: "Superior customer
service has always been and always will be the cornerstone of our
brand. . .”

The company serves customers with
“knowledgeable employees who are highly
customer focused.”
-It’s a matter of quality over quantity.
Customer service agents are trained to spend
whatever time is necessary to make every
customer feel valued.
- Each service channel has been designed to
enable the company’s guarantee of 100%
satisfaction.

 The Customer Satisfaction department operates 24 hours a day,
365 days a year, out of three customer contact centers in Maine.
- During the peak holiday season in 2009, L.L.Bean employed
nearly 3,000 customer service representatives. The size of their
customer satisfaction enterprise is considerably larger than
the client’s but there are lessons to be learned from the way
L.L.Bean approaches customer satisfaction……..

Lessons From the Superstars…
Use what you know to develop long-term relationships.
- By making customer information easily accessible to frontline service
reps, L.L.Bean hopes to enable personalized interactions with
customers. Key information elements include:
a) Past Purchases
b) Returns
c) Length of customer/vendor relationship
d) Past problems with products or services (if any)
e) Type(s) of catalogs received
f) Purchase channels (telephone, Internet, store, etc.)

 Technology can have a dramatic impact
- L.L.Bean undertook a simple screen redesign project. The result will
help the company to realize significant benefits in terms of cost
savings, overall service impression, and employee and customer
satisfaction.
- The Client has a similar opportunity to leverage technology to replace
outdated processes and possibly enjoy similar service improvements.

“Every employee can affect your
company’s brand.
We decided that we wanted to
build our brand to be about the
very best customer service and
the very best customer
experience.
We believe that customer service
shouldn’t be just a department, it
should be the entire company.”

Zappos boasts 10 core values that define
the company culture. They are as follows:
1. Deliver WOW through service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun and a little weirdness
4. Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
7. Build a positive team and family spirit
8. Do more with less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble

Zappos views the phone experience as a branding device and
urges customers to call about nearly everything. Their call center
takes 5,000 calls per day, and employees work independent of
scripts, quotas, or call time limits. The longest call to date has
been four hours.

Zappos made a deliberate decision to redirect its marketing
budget towards delivering exceptional customer service with
a great company culture, in hopes that the move would help
the business to thrive where others had failed.
To that; every new hire—spends four weeks handling calls as
a customer-service rep and one week in the Kentucky
warehouse before starting work.
Zappos is also one of the many call centers turning to cloud
computing technology and social media networking to
increase the amount and efficiency of interdepartmental
communication.

Lessons from the Superstars:
Go long…
Zappos’ customer-service employees are not
encouraged to keep calls short.
 They are encouraged to essentially take
ownership of the call, spending whatever time
and effort are necessary to ensure a positive
outcome.

The client’s goal in the case of the customer
service center is to create an environment in
Which representatives are encouraged to have
customer service conversations. Giving these
interactions time to unfold will be a key part of
this transition.

Southwest’s customer service
department is "proactive,” with
workers taught to anticipate
dissatisfaction and act
preemptively.
Every passenger on a significantly
delayed flight, for example,
receives a letter of apology. In
severe cases, they go so far as to
toss in coupons.
.

 Integrating Technology…..Southwest created a custom
graphical user interface, using Java Swing components, that
allows individuals to review every alert before it is sent out
and customize the message that will be fed into their Varolii
text-to-speech engine.
Southwest has chosen to inject a little human judgment into
the process.

 Anticipate problems & act accordingly...
Southwest’s anticipation strategy extends
to an automatic call system that alerts
customers about cancellations and gate
changes.

To the client, late shipments are directly
analogous to Southwest’s delayed flights. Taking a
cue from the airline, we see that an excellent way
to resolve problems is to anticipate them and head
them off.
If the cleint’s customer service division can
coordinate with shipping, they will be able to first
identify shipments that will miss their due dates
and then react to that knowledge in the form of a
phone call (preferred) or email to the customer
alerting them to the delay.

West Chester, PA -based QVC was
recently recognized as a top-10
retailer for customer service.
With daily live broadcasts to 84
million households in the U.S. and
another 40+ million overseas,
nearly $4 billion in sales, 133 million
calls answered and 92 million
packages shipped in 2009, QVC is
very, very big business.

Communicate….Gary Ormont, QVC's vice president of
operations, says that the company places high importance on
fostering an environment in which call center agents feel
comfortable with their coworkers.
“Customer service is only as good as those who deliver it,”
he says. “We're really employee-sensitive. Our people
interact on a first-name basis, and we have constant
teamwork, communication, and numerous roundtables and
forum meetings at which we discuss issues and trends.”

Just as important for the client is the matter of
communication between call center staff and corporate
managers.
Client call center representatives play a key role in forming
customers’ perceptions about the client, its brand promise,
and the status of the enterprise as a whole.
 It is imperative that those charged with brand development
at Franke pay close attention to those on the front lines.

The cleint is a premium brand with prices that correspond
to that high level of quality. Management must take an active
role in educating customer service representatives in the
proper terminology, and the correct way of replying to
customers/guiding the conversations into areas that will
enable the agent to offer solutions.

Conclusions…
 The general lessons learned from these enterprises can have a
direct relevance to the client’s stated goal of improving customer
service performance and leveraging that superior service in order to
provide high-end customer experiences and develop a stronger brand
identity.
In the following section, we will outline call center best practices and
show the specific ways that each can be used to move the client’s
service offering to a point that more closely reflects the company’s
“premium product” brand position.

Best of Best Practices
The first step in the transformation to an efficient call center is to
understand the best practices associated with its operation. They are:
A. Develop a customer access strategy
B. Employ targeted, strategic training
C. Measure the effectiveness of that training
D. Use call center reps as idea collectors and sales agents
E. Consider implementing a balanced scorecard
F. Monitor social networking sites
G. Use call center agents to keep mailing/contact lists up-to-date

A. Develop a customer access strategy… A tailored customer
access strategy consists of a set of standards or guidelines, and
processes that define the ways customers can access information.
Although these strategies can take many different forms, most
cover the following components:
Customer Segmentation: Summarize how current customers and
prospects are segmented (e.g., by geography, demographics,
volume of business, or unique requirements) and how the client will
serve each segment.

A. Develop a customer access strategy… Although these
strategies can take many different forms, most cover the following
components:
Contact types: Anticipate and identify major types of interactions
that will occur, such as placing orders, changing orders, answering
inquiries, providing technical support, etc. Each type of interaction
should be analyzed for opportunities to enhance customer
satisfaction and loyalty.

components:
Hours of operation: Identify hours of operation, outlining how they
may vary for different contact channels or customer segments.
Decisions will be driven by cost and service considerations defined
in the plan.
Service level: Summarize the organization's service level (the
percentage of calls answered within a predetermined period of
time, generally 80% in 30 seconds) and response time objectives.

components:
People/technology resources required: This step marks the
transition from proper call/email/other request routing to the
deployment of agents and systems needed for each customer
segment and contact type.
Information required: Perhaps the most important part of the plan,
this segment outlines the customer and product information that
must be available to agents.

B. Employ targeted, strategic training …Considering the amount of
visibility that call center agents have with customers, it is critical
that all agents be trained properly in order to minimize the
differences in productivity between new and experienced
employees. Training will help agents to understand:
1. Their role within the business structure;
2. What their performance means to the organization as a whole;
3. The ways they can contribute to sales and customer service goals;
4. How their customer interactions help to deliver on the brand promise;
5. What they are supposed to do; and
6. Why their job is important.

C. Use call center reps as sales agents and idea collectors…Some of the
best product and service ideas come from customers. Call center agents,
have the most direct contact with your customers and are ideally situated
to spot these innovative ideas.
Management also consider spending some time with the staff of the call
center. This tactic has a twofold benefit: first, by putting senior staff in
direct contact with customers and call center agents, they will gain fist-
hand, in-the-trenches knowledge of the ways this function operates—as
well as the ways it should not operate. Second, having higher-ups working
alongside the service representatives will show the latter just how
important their job is, and possibly inspire them to better understand the
ways they serve the greater corporate goals.

C. Use call center reps as sales agents and idea collectors… Management also
consider spending some time with the staff of the call center. This tactic has a
twofold benefit:
First, by putting senior staff in direct contact with customers and call center
agents, they will gain fist-hand, in-the-trenches knowledge of the ways this
function operates—as well as the ways it should not operate.
Second, having higher-ups working alongside the service representatives will
show the latter just how important their job is, and possibly inspire them to
better understand the ways they serve the greater corporate goals.

D. Capture customer feedback…You must remember to capture customer
feedback through any channel that customers can use to interact with your
organization. With this feedback captured, it should be passed along to those
who are in a position to act on it.
 E. Monitor social networking sites….Considering the ease with which
dissatisfied customers can publicize their experiences in the marketplace, it is a
customer service best practice to monitor complaints on social networking
sites. Whether or not those complaints are valid is largely irrelevant; just as in
the blogosphere, perception in the social networking space is reality, and there
are endless examples of companies that have been embarrassed—publicly and
virally—as a result of poor customer service.

F. Use call center agents to keep mailing/contact lists up-to-date…If the
client plans to build a mailing list for the distribution of eNewsletters or
similar active communications, call center agents are in an excellent
position to capture phone and email information, along with permission to
send promotional emails.
This information can also be used to update customers on order delivery
status and push content regarding new products and services.

G. Consider implementing a balanced scorecard… In a call center
environment where a number of key performance indicators are captured, it
may be helpful to pursue the “Balanced Scorecard” approach.
The balanced scorecard is a means helping managers focus on those
performance metrics that most directly lead to success. Rather than measuring
strictly financial outcomes, in this case we will focus the human issues that drive
successful customer service outcomes as a means of improving brand identity.

G. Consider implementing a balanced scorecard…
1. Identify the Key Performance Indicators to be measured
2. Determine the weighting (expressed as a percentage) for each KPI.
3. Establish the upper- and lower performance levels; these may come from
benchmarking of peer groups, similar businesses, internal historic date, etc.
4. Collect internal call center data for each metric
5. Calculate the Metric Score: (worst case – actual) / (worst case – best case) x
100
6. Calculate the Balanced Score: (Metric Score x Weighting)

Key Performance Indicator Weighting
Performance Range
Actual
Performance
Metric
Score
Balanced
ScoreBest Case Worst Case
Service Level (% answered in 20 sec.) 30% 90% 65% 81% 64.0% 19.2%
First Call Resolution (%) 25% 80% 60% 63% 15.0% 3.8%
Abandon Rate (%) 15% 3% 10% 5% 71.4% 10.7%
Average Talk Time (seconds) 10% 180 360 255 58.3% 5.8%
After Call Work (seconds) 10% 180 360 345 63.9% 6.3%
Average Handle Time (seconds) 10% 360 720 600 33.3% 3.3%
Total 100% 49.1%

Conclusion….
The specific best practices listed above hold a great deal of promise for the
client. As effective, proven means of structuring the call center operation in a
way that reflects the overall brand promise, enables a premium customer
experience, and outlines ways that the call center operation can serve both
business- and branding goals, these are each applicable to future improvement
efforts in the call center.
In the next section, we will learn more about the metrics that will allow the client to
measure performance in the six areas that most effectively track performance in critical
areas.

Call Center KPIs
 Effective Integration of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)…Call center
operations include a unique set of activities that are defined by the
responsibilities and challenges associated with after-sales service related to
management, technology, and staffing.
By structuring a clear, frequent mechanism for measuring relevant KPIs, the
client will have a tracking tool that addresses each of the important areas in the
form of indicators, to which you can assign upper- and lower “target”
performance figures.

Call Center KPIs
Effective Integration of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)… Gauging KPIS
through s “balanced score” will enable the client to continually:
1. Monitor call center efficiency
2. Track agent effectiveness;
3. Perform targeted performance-improvement training where needed; and
4. Ensure that the call center performance is serving larger corporate brand-
development and business goals.

Call Center KPIs
 Effective Integration of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)… Although dozens of
possible KPIs exist, DVIRC has identified six that we believe will give the client a simple
way to initiate a scoring system that is simultaneously effective and uncomplicated.
Key Performance Indicator Definition
Service Level (SLA) and
Average Speed of Answer (ASA)
Percentage of calls answered in a given period of time (typically 20 or 30 seconds)
First Call Resolution (FCR) Percentage of calls resolved without the need for escalation
Abandon Rate/Customer Loss Rate Number of calls that hang up before connecting to an agent
Average Talk Time (ATT) Average amount of time agents spend talking to callers
After Call Work (ACW) Average amount of time required to wrap-up call
Average Handle Time (AHT) Sum of Average Talk Time and After Call Work

Call Center KPIs
 Effective Integration of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)… Although dozens
of possible KPIs exist, DVIRC has identified six that we believe will provide a
simple way to initiate a scoring system that is simultaneously effective and
uncomplicated.
1. Service Level and Average Speed of Answer (ASA)…Service level is usually
defined as the percentage of calls answered within a predetermined number of
seconds. For example, a Service Level target of 80/20 indicates that you seek to
answer 80% of all calls within 20 seconds (approximately 5-6 rings). Service
Level is impacted (positively) by agents’ ability to answer calls faster than the
designated time limit.

Call Center KPIs
uncomplicated.
2. First Call Resolution….First Call Resolution (FCR) is a relatively new metric.
Expressed as a percentage, this is the proportion of calls that are resolved
without the need for either escalation (sending the call to a more senior
operator) or callback. Note: Benchmark values for FCR will vary with the
complexity of calls handled.

Call Center KPIs
uncomplicated.
3. Abandon Rate (aka “Customer Loss Rate”)…The Abandon Rate, expressed as
a percentage, is the number of calls that hang up before connecting to an
agent (not including those calls that receive a busy signal).
4. Average Talk Time (ATT)
5. After Call Work (ACW)
6. Average Handle Time (AHT) (aka Resolve Time)

Effective Management Job Description Suggestions
 Call center managers, given their role on the leading edge of customer
communication and in-depth product/service knowledge, have a unique
position within companies like the client.
With this blend of knowledge and market expertise, it is important to leverage
call center managers to filter trend data, serve as a conduit for that information,
and have a finger on the pulse of relevant call center metrics. Furthermore,
each of these responsibilities must be guided by the client’s stated aim to
develop a call center that promotes a positive brand identity and enables
superior call experiences.

 Call center managers, given their role on the leading edge of customer
communication and in-depth product/service knowledge, have a unique
position within companies such like the client.
With this blend of knowledge and market expertise, it is important to leverage
call center managers to filter trend data, serve as a conduit for that information,
and have a finger on the pulse of relevant call center metrics. Furthermore,
each of these responsibilities must be guided by the client’s stated aim to
develop a call center that promotes a positive brand identity and enables
superior call experiences.

 Overarching Call Center Responsibilities….In the crush of incoming calls, it is
all too easy to either ignore the management best practices that will drive the
call center to succeed, or collect data without circulating the findings.
In many cases, companies believe that their customer service is better than it
really is. A recent survey by Bain & Company, which included the customers of
362 companies, yielded some startling results. While 80% of the customer
surveyed described their customer service as “superior,” just 8% of customers
agreed with them.

 Overarching Call Center Responsibilities….Clearly, call center performance is
not something that a company can hope to assess objectively without a
champion to drive the various processes within the department. The following
primary responsibilities should fall to the center manager:
1) Managing center staffing and personnel issues;
2) Collecting and analyzing balanced scorecard data;
3) Gathering and reporting on product damage/failure rates;
4) Coordinating staff education and training;
5) Developing and implementing cross-department communication; and
6) Evaluating and recommending software additions/upgrades for more
effective call center operation.

1) Staffing and Personnel Responsibilities…These duties include the standard
managerial roles as defined by the client’s senior management.
2) Scorecard Responsibilities...
-Establishing metrics to be included in the scorecard;
-Determining the weighted importance of each metric;
-Benchmarking the selected metrics against a standard determined by Franke;
-Tracking actual performance;
-Calculating the Metric- and Balanced scores; and
-Communicating the resulting performance figures to the appropriate parties.

 3) Gathering/Reporting on Product Failures…The manager should be charged
with the collection of data on product failures.
4) Coordinate Staff Training…The manager’s primary responsibility with regard
to training will be to assess and rank team members in order to facilitate effective
training (see page 19 re: Independents, Strivers, etc.)
5) Develop/Implement Cross-Departmental Communication
As a back-end portion of the product failure role, the manager should convene
regular meetings with call center staff (to educate them on products, revisions,
engineering changes, etc.), and engineering/technical support in order to
coordinate regular updates of the product drawings, parts lists, bills of materials,
etc. used by the call center agents.

 6) Recommend Software Upgrades/Additions… The center manager’s day-to-
day familiarity with the challenges and opportunities that exist within various call
center departments make them the most logical choice to: a) determine whether
or not additional software is needed, b) weigh the options available, and c) make
a recommendation regarding the purchase of new software. - Please Refer to
Supporting List

Closing Recommendations
The Luxury Division….
The Client’s luxury support division—the department that has potentially the
most to lose through subpar customer support and interaction—has a number of
responsibilities that can be improved by a bit of automation.
With representatives from this department taking ownership of orders from their
entry point and manually guiding them through the confirmation of customer
status, bill to-, ship-to, and other required information, price, order release, and
return of order acknowledgement, a number of opportunities to automate
become apparent.

Concern: Handwritten order notes can be inconsistent.
 Recommendation: Create a shared database to enable direct entry. Team with
retail customer support to brainstorm a list of possible comments that apply to
various aspects of the order. Program these as drop-down menu choices in order
to standardize the options available.

Concern: Agents must compare customer names to a manual lookup table in
order to identify/confirm direct customers.
Recommendation: A searchable, network-accessible table with a list of all
direct customers will dramatically reduce the amount of time required for
this step. Note: In order to preserve the integrity of the list while still
allowing regular updates, management must coordinate with luxury
customer service management to determine appropriate permissions for
write-access to the file.

Concern: Corporate sales forms lack email addresses
Recommendation: Include email addresses as a “required information” field on
new order forms. Instruct agents to ask customers for both email addresses (in
order to notify them of changes in delivery status) and permission to include the
customer on an eNewsletter list.

Concern: Manual commission code lookups add unnecessary time to After Call
Work.
Recommendation: Delegate offline lookups to an intern/administrative
assistant-level employee who can aid multiple customer service representatives
at one time, avoiding the need for CSRs to break focus and move (physically and
psychologically) from the phone bank.

Concern: Customer service representatives are being asked to make shipping
payment decisions (prepaid vs. collect).
Recommendation: A simple matrix of allowable freight charges (differentiated
by product type and/or model) will allow CSRs to make informed decisions. This
approach will also give an opportunity to control shipping-associated costs. Note:
This solution will also benefit the tech. support and retail/customer support
departments.

Concern: The online faucet ordering function does not list all models currently
for sale.
Recommendation: The Client should include a marketing/web development
representative as part of cross-departmental meetings. As new models are
brought online and/or removed from the product roster, marketing should be
coordinating with the internal (or third-party) web development team to make
sure the site does not offer faucets that are no longer for sale, and vice versa.

Technical Support….
The Client’s Technical Support group handles warranty issues (including lifetime
warranty support for some of the company’s luxury items). In this role, they
confirm that inbound calls should be handled by tech. support, answer questions,
provide parts as necessary, and talk customers through the repair/replacement
processes.
Technical support call center agents struggle with a lack of communication
between product design/marketing departments, as product changes and new
specs are not always explained adequately to those who are expected to support
those products. The resulting miscommunication manifests through confusion
regarding parts availability, and a lack of inventory from which to replace/repair
existing models.

Concern: A recent vendor switch resulted in supply shortages for many spare
parts. Technical support sometimes has no choice but to a) disassemble faucets
from inventory supply and send parts to customers, or b) replace whole faucets
because spares are not available.
Recommendation: The Client was ill-advised to switch vendors without a
contingency plan for either stocking sufficient spares or maintaining a supply
chain for parts to service product in the field. In a competitive environment—
particularly one in which the client needs to maintain a brand image that is in
alignment with its price point.

Concern: Paper-based change documentation—collected in binders only—is
frequently incorrect; product family-based troubleshooting procedures should be
available online
Recommendation: Create an interactive, searchable, online document library to
replace hard copies. Documents should be: a) verified as correct by engineering
prior to publication, b) subject to strict document control practices, c) labeled
with part numbers and descriptions, and d) offer users the ability to view parts
with mouse-over.

Concern: Replacement parts and drawings are not available/CSRs are not aware
of new products prior to launch.
Recommendation: Regular meetings between call center staff and
engineering/product development should include every effort to make new
documentation available (in a searchable, .pdf or other online format) at the time
of product launch.

Concern: Product manuals and parts trends are available in printed format only
(see binder comment above), not searchable/trackable online.
Recommendation: DVIRC recommends that the responsibility for
gathering/tracking and reporting part failures, tech support trends, etc. fall under
the job description of the call center manager. By collecting this raw data in a
network-accessible spreadsheet (or other means), the data will become readily
available to those with read access to the file.
.

Concern: Delivery delays are not proactively communicated to customers.
Recommendation: This concern in particular runs counter to efforts to enhance
the brand identity and build a culture of world-class service and support. As
discussed in the Luxury Division recommendations, an opportunity exists to task
an administrative assistant-level employee with the responsibility to gather
shipment date changes (whether querying an online database or communicating
offline with shipping) and distribute that information to CSRs who can update
customers accordingly.

Retail Customer Support…
In addition to routine EDI order handling for non-Lowe’s retail orders, the
Retail/Customer Support Division is responsible for handling incoming “Lowe’s
Link” orders (as many as 200 on Mondays). This task includes printing new orders
and cancellations, checking stock to confirm/correct delivery dates, entering,
printing, and acknowledging orders, and fielding calls from Lowe’s associates
regarding tracking information.

Additional Recommendations:
Despite the fact that the retail/customer service, luxury, and technical support
call centers are separate entities, they should strive to work as a team across
locations, they should hold regular cross-team summits in order to share best
practices and encourage the sharing of ideas. This will be especially helpful once
the marketing survey initiative is underway; as the individuals with actual phone
contact with customers, call center agents will have unique perspective on the
issues. They may be able to shed additional light on the data collected by the
surveys.

Additional Recommendations:
Avoid excessive printing; as a matter of policy, CSRs should be instructed to print
only those orders that require a signature to confirm prepaid shipping or other
special exceptions. Order acknowledgements should be sent by email whenever
possible.

Customer Service Call Center Benchmark Study

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