Our client, a leading technology manufacturer, sells thousands of products around the world and interacts with thousands of customers daily through phone calls, email, chat, and online forums. In any given month, the company handles questions for about 650 different products, ranging from a computer mouse to keyboards to remote control devices.

With 14 different customer care vendors operating in more than 20 locations, our client lacked consistency in its care operations. The company could not guarantee uniform, optimal service across the board, and costs were rising without any real improvement in customer satisfaction. The company decided to make customer satisfaction and Net Promoter Score (NPS) a top priority, choosing TTEC as its sole EMEA care partner because of our shared passion for delivering the best customer experience while maintaining operational efficiencies.

We launched a technical support site in Belfast, Northern Ireland, that supports EMEA customers in 17 languages. There, the support staff provides email and phone support for the company’s product lines. We expedited the associate recruiting and training process to launch the new site within two months. Yet, we still maintain a commitment to creating expert associates. We conduct continuous associate training and individual performance-based coaching, along with four evaluations per month. We also do “mystery shopper” activities to test the knowledge of the associates.

Before making any operational decisions, we analyzed post-service customer questionnaires to gather actionable insight on how to improve service levels. Service issues were addressed by the TTEC teams, while product and channel questions were directed to the company’s product groups. One quick hit the team uncovered was the ability to dramatically enhance self-help channels based on customers’ feedback, ensuring that customers were able to find the information they needed quickly. The team also created a Detractor Reduction Program to immediately reach out to dissatisfied customers to address problems and find speedy solutions.

The associates continue to meet the firm’s performance metric goals and the average absenteeism rate has been a low 2.8%.

With customer satisfaction top of mind, the company consolidated actions across all 20 centers, streamlined service procedures around NPS drivers, and promoted a closed-loop Voice of the Customer feedback process. The NPS scale serves as the basis for the company’s quality assurance (QA) program, and associates are able to relate the QA evaluations with the NPS scores awarded to their calls, reflected in their monthly incentive plan. This has helped employees relate to and recognize the importance of NPS.

By improving the customer experience, the company enhance its service levels and cut average handle times by up to 25%. Focusing on the customer thereby enabled the company to improve both customer satisfaction and make its operations more efficient.