Case Studies

CUSTOMER CHURN TAKES A "RIGHT" TURN

• THE SITUATION: A new client lacked high-level oversight into customer loss in high value accounts. Lacking the technology and processes to drive senior leadership engagement towards reducing customer churn, they recognized it was crucial to put a plan in place that would correct the 22% business loss year-over-year and avoid the potential $85M in risk. 
• THE SOLUTION: Starting with the development of a comprehensive program to minimize risk and manage client retention, a conduit of communication was launched to connect 35 leadership and front-line team members and facilitate weekly service deficiency reporting by Directors and VPs. By using a collaborative project management tool to track team accountability and project milestones, this ongoing effort created viable strategies and tactics to save at-risk customers. Strict project management and weekly leadership meetings, with executive sponsor oversight, held stakeholders accountable for timelines, goals and objectives, visible to the entire team.
• THE RESULTS: The project achieved great success in the first three years with 395 accounts triaged and 222 high value clients saved. The client realized a gratifying savings of over $50M – effectively, a 59% savings.

NET PROMOTER SCORE (NPS) PROGRAM… MORE THAN JUST A SCORE

• THE SITUATION: A large client recognized a growing customer attrition issue and wanted to uncover root cause by better understanding customer perception. They acknowledged the need to rectify an unsustainable 23% customer churn and get ahead of percolating issues to prevent further loss.
• THE SOLUTION: By creating and implementing a best-in-class proprietary NPS program within Salesforce.com, automated data collection was enabled and provided a vehicle to contact all NPS detractor scores under 6 within 24-hours. Detractor notifications allowed formal cases to launch and be tracked from inception through completion. Carefully analyzing over 240 charts & graphs, KPI outcome metrics were studied and became the genesis for change that led to long term customer retention.
• THE RESULTS: Using the important data collected, a specialized triage team could do customer outreach within 24 hours to mitigate issues and minimize the cancellations contributing to business loss. This process yielded an 88% retention rate saving over 2,100 customers within the first year and reducing customer churn by 7%, to a new 5-year low of 16%. This program evolved into a Customer Experience (CX) quality control mechanism that paved the way for best-in-class client satisfaction based on actual customer sentiment – instead of intra-company assumptions.

CREATING A WIN-WIN BETWEEN HIGH COSTS AND LOW-QUALITY SERVICE 

• THE SITUATION: A sizeable contact center client was struggling to balance cost vs. quality of service. The dilemma facing company leaders was correcting the high costs of over-staffing 2,300 agents while staying committed to high levels of service. Excel spreadsheets and manual data reviews led to reactive measures, not real-time solutions. Proactive planning was minimal and adding agents became the go-to solution.
• THE SOLUTION: By closely collaborating with senior leadership, numerous Workforce Management (WFM) platforms were vetted. The best package for the company’s unique situation was selected and terms negotiated by Solution Designs, implementing a WFM system to properly staff and improve schedule adherence/performance, while managing overtime and time-off. By assigning call queues based on historical data, the company achieved the best mix of agents to calls for each day/time of the year and provided a vehicle to assign miscellaneous offline work to agents allowing them to remain productive while in queue for their next call. Service levels were maximized to the 70/20 rule with the flexibility to ramp up or down easily in real time.
• THE RESULTS: Implementing a WFM was a great decision, and, the company realized over $10.5M in cost reduction within the first three-years and with a run rate of $7M/year savings moving forward. In addition, committed to achieving further savings, the Solution Designs project leader secured an additional $550,000 in savings through proactive vendor negotiations, over a three-year period 

PRODUCT TRAINING & CERTIFICATION... FROM MISUNDERSTOOD TO PROFICIENT

• THE SITUATION: An aggressive-growth client, comprised of over 30 acquisitions, was challenged by how to effectively train a 375-member team with competing priorities on a myriad of and products and services in a quickly changing marketplace. First priority was integration of service offerings and then subsequent training for all team members to present a consistent value proposition and company message.  
• THE SOLUTION: Leveraging the knowledge of the marketing team, a project was launched to determine the appropriate suite of services most relevant to the marketplace. Once that was in place, a virtual, six-module online product and certification program was produced and launched, which included 2.75 hours of interactive content and quizzes to track understanding and competency.
• THE RESULTS: Within 90- days of launching, multi-departmental teams achieved 100% certification compliance. This program bridged the knowledge gap in company services and the value proposition across many cross-functional departments including leadership, sales, marketing, client services, retention, implementations and operations.  

MARKETING INTEGRATION… COMPLICATED REBRANDING WITH SEAMLESS EXECUTION

• THE SITUATION: After acquisition of a large competitor, this client needed to effectively rebrand indoor/outdoor signage for 40+ locations and 400 mobile trucks, along with an extensive collection of electronic and printed collateral materials. It was crucial to rework assets to unify branding and value propositions as soon as possible to continue supporting organic marketing efforts.
• THE SOLUTION: By reworking facility and truck signage, marketing branding goals were optimized. Since this project had so many moving and complicated parts, it was launched with a strong organizational plan involving a multi-faceted approach. Intricate project management included finding, vetting and selecting vendors with a nationwide scope to produce and drop-ship signs in mass as well as local vendors to install office and other signage. In parallel, new decals for 400 trucks had to be developed and delivered, by region, with the accurate scheduling of installation specialists to remove and replace decals and signage after-hours. 
• THE RESULTS: Success was reliant upon seamless execution – and within seven-months, integration was complete resulting in the creation and installation of over 3,200 truck decals, 42 company signs, 252 posters signs, several dozen perimeter traffic signs and updated electronic sales and marketing assets. The client was very pleased to have accomplished this change so quickly given the scope of the project and enjoyed positive feedback given by customers.