A large multi-brand apparel retailer, with over 300 locations nationwide as well as significant internet and catalogue sales, had a yuletide dilemma. Between November and December, when its customers were in the shopping mood, standing with credit cards in one hand and the phone in the other, their calls were met with…nothing. The outdated system in place was unreliable, failing three years in a row during the last six weeks of the year, at the height of the holiday shopping season. Clearly, something had to be done. Our client needed a more reliable phone system with increased functionality to serve catalogue and website shoppers as well as handle special requests from its 300 retail locations.

In response to the desire for the utmost in system reliability, we migrated the client to a Cisco® enterprise solution spanning two data centres for high availability. A speech-enabled IVR receives and routes calls to a virtual queue across two contact centres and a pool of remote associates, and data-driven routing rules evaluate customer value and current wait times to determine call treatment and destination. With our client’s preference of providing its customers a high-touch shopping experience, the system frequently routes calls directly to waiting associates.

The apparel retailer is confident our solution will handle every call and is better equipped to accommodate unexpected events. Business operations perform without interruption, high-value customers receive specialised treatment, and IVR messaging adapts quickly as needed. In keeping with the client’s insistence on not a single call being lost, survivability scripting handles misdirected calls gracefully, routing them directly back to waiting associates.

The solution supports up to 800 contact centre associates, a distribution centre, and a disaster recovery site, with our Managed Services team currently monitoring and maintaining the production platform. As further proof of the retailer’s faith in our dependability, the client contracted with us to host Unity Connection for its headquarters. For the contact centres, distribution centre and headquarters alike, we continue to spread holiday cheer in the form of reliable service, all year ‘round.