The challenge

A global clothing and accessories retailer based in the United States struggled to manage a spike in interactions related to its hiring process.

The company had a team of TTEC associates based offshore that helped store managers during the hiring process. They posted job descriptions for open positions on the brand’s website, answered applicants’ questions, monitored the status of applicants’ background checks, and otherwise assisted applicants on their hiring journey.

The company had recently switched to a new human resource information system (HRIS) and associates had a hard time keeping up with a growing number of interactions, especially during seasonal hiring surges. When store managers had questions or problems and needed associates’ help, it took an average of 11 hours to get them resolved and about half that time was spent on back-and-forth emails.

Our solution

We started by assessing what was keeping our team of associates from working more quickly and efficiently.

To help speed up the hiring process and empower store managers to find the answers they needed more quickly, we developed job aids to help them navigate the new HRIS.

Within the program that associates and store managers used to communicate with each other, we also set up autoresponders on associates’ mailboxes. Now when store managers emailed associates, the managers immediately got an automatic reply that provided answers to frequently asked questions. Often, this gave managers the information they needed without having to wait for an associate to personally respond with next steps.

The results

While TTEC associates remained available to help store managers when needed, the job aid and autoresponders helped in several significant ways. They enabled store managers to find the information they needed on their own. This not only led to quicker resolutions, but also deflected many of the inquiries that had been overwhelming our associates; 16% of emails that had been sent to associates were deflected.

As a result, there was a 40% reduction in the time it took to resolve inquiries, and our closed/resolved email inquiries increased by 7%.

The client has been very pleased with the results, and we continue to work with the company and explore ways to grow and deepen our partnership.