The challenge

Fast service is paramount in the food delivery industry, which includes customer service. A hyper-growth food delivery company wanted to stand out in the competitive market with a great experience. It wanted to provide consumers, delivery staff, and merchants with real-time support through multiple channels such as email, voice, and chat to successfully resolve customer and delivery personnel inquiries on the fly. It was also important for the company to rapidly recruit and train teammates effectively.

Our solution

Before implementing a plan, we at TTEC studied what types of issues were most common. Our leadership team put itself in the shoes of delivery workers by making deliveries in the San Francisco area. This gave us an in-depth understanding of the challenges the company frequently faced in meeting customer and delivery staff expectations, such as looking for parking, malfunctioning apps, and delayed orders.

One of the observations was that customers were less likely to be dissatisfied with a late delivery if they were proactively informed of the order’s status. We also noted the peak hours and even minutes for support during each day. Armed with such insights, we tailored the training curriculum to address specific issues, allowing us to train teammates quickly and effectively.

Our strong referral network of advocate teammates also enabled us to swiftly recruit new hires to the team. Current teammates already understood what was expected of them and the skills needed and were key in helping us recruit like-minded teammates as we quickly ramped up from a handful of people to a few thousand.

The results

What started as a support team of about 40 people rapidly grew into 2,000 teammates within a matter of months. The client quickly recognized the quality of our support and referred to us as the “gold standard” of their customer support teams. For example, despite having to train an influx of new teammates in a short timeframe, our customer satisfaction (CSAT) score rose from 69.2% to 73.1%.

As a result, the relationship has grown to support additional lines of business for the client, such as providing a dedicated support team of 200 associates to offer VIP support for the client’s preferred merchants, as well as social media service.