Case Study: Home Improvement Retailer

The Challenge

Our client is a major home improvement retailer, locked in a decades-long battle with a major rival for North American market share. In 2013, the firm was on the rebound after a multi-year slump caused by the Great Recession. This firm had a track record of growth driven by opening new retail stores at an aggressive pace, but the brand needed to make a major strategic pivot to remain competitive. In the years between 2013 and 2019, sales would rise by more than 40% despite a net increase of just a few retail locations. 

To make this happen, managers set out to modernize operations across the board. The firm needed to add digital messaging channels to boost its capacity for both sales and customer support. Customer experience was mission critical in this competitive environment, so the firm trusted OutPLEX to implement the technology solutions as well as the training and operations framework that made the transformation a success.

The Solution

Our client was committed to maintaining an existing in-house business unit, so we built our operations around this centerpiece, training more than 1,000 agents at the firm to date.

Just like building a great product, continuous process improvement is the key to a winning tech-enabled customer service strategy. OutPLEX has deployed increasingly sophisticated automation tools starting in 2013, and created value at every step along the way.

The key to these improvements was training Bot Tuners and Bot Managers at the firm to iteratively boost performance. These frontline agents knew the customers better than anyone else, and OutPLEX enabled these agents to craft the solutions they needed to succeed. 

The Results

Building Volume

Digital messaging volume took off like a rocket during the project, up 130% to over 200,000 monthly connections by the end of 2020. Over this span, customer satisfaction increased by six points, and the conversion rate for sales inquiries went up nearly 50%, from 8.3% to 12%. 

Smart Bots, Happy Customers

The key to doing drastically more work at a higher level of quality is to improve containment. Department-specific bots with a constantly expanding knowledge base pushed the overall containment rate from just 39% in 2018 to a vastly improved 61% in 2020. 

OutPLEX is committed to enhancing the performance of all of our clients’ operations, whether it’s a new partnership or a mature project like this one. Contact our sales team to learn more about how we can take your brand’s customer service to the next level.

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