The challenge

A retailer specializing in grocery home delivery struggled to answer customers’ questions about expiration dates efficiently.

The company’s frozen food products didn’t have expiration dates on them; instead they had codes on the packaging that customers didn’t understand. Customers who wanted to know the expiration dates had to call customer support. Every time, associates had to manually look up when an item was packaged and how long its shelf life was, then use a calendar to calculate the expiration date.

Not only was this repetitive and tedious for associates, but some didn’t know how to properly calculate expiration dates this way. Average handle time climbed and associates provided inaccurate information. Also, associates had to transfer many calls to the product quality team for further help.

Our solution

After examining where roadblocks were in the customer and associate experience, TTEC’s Learning and Development Enablement Team identified and implemented a technology solution to improve the company’s knowledge base.

The tool used various technologies to automate how expiration dates were calculated and delivered the information quickly to associates. For every product the company carried, the tool generated an expiration date based on when it was packaged and then automatically entered that date into a database the associates used during customer interactions.

We worked with the company to identify the best technology option for the job, created a prototype, and designed mockups to demonstrate how it would improve associate workflows and customer experience. TTEC oversaw all the product testing for the company and deployment of the tool, and we monitored its use for quality assurance.

The results

Our work led to much quicker customer resolutions. The average time it took associates to determine product expiration dates dropped 96%, from 120 seconds per customer to 4.5 seconds.

The number of calls that required transfers to the company’s product quality department fell 98% over four months, from 1,787 in May to 26 in September, and average handle time declined by 10 seconds.