CASE STUDY
Zwilling: Transforming CX
with Strategic Outsourcing.
The story of how heritage knife and kitchen specialist brand Zwilling transformed CX with strategic outsourcing during its greatest growth period in its almost 300-year history.
THE CHALLENGE
The decision to go the CX outsourcing route was driven by the COVID-19 pandemic – with people in lockdown, the heritage brand’s online retail business of kitchenware experienced its greatest growth period in its almost 300-year history.
And with this massive sales growth, came huge demands on customer service and support enquiries, which their small in-house team simply could not cope with. Less than 1% of all inbound calls were being answered, call abandonment rates were high due to very long hold times, and the damage to the customer experience and brand was marked. The client needed an urgent solution to manage the massive influx of calls and enquiries and forge a path back to customer service and experience recovery. The Zwilling customer service team faced massively heightened and unrelenting pressure as customer service expectations were radically and permanently altered by the pandemic experience.
But outsourcing of customer care operations to specialist third-party providers is not without its challenges. It involves a diverse service eco-system not only in terms of the tech, platforms and processes, but the important cultural alignment and human capital that underpins it – the move to CX outsourcing is a complex process with many moving parts. There are critical objectives to be set in the ‘how and why’, and then finding the best CX BPO partner to deliver on objectives, performance metrics and brand enhancement.
The key challenge was that the entire CX outsourcing process would need to be handled remotely due to the pandemic travel restrictions.
Three key challenges that Zwilling needed solved were the high call abandonment rate by customers, largely due to very long hold times, delayed responses to e-mail enquiries, and the subsequent damage this was doing to brand reputation.
Zwilling was looking for a specialist outsourced CX team that could actively respond to customer enquiries and deliver first-call resolution, along with fast-tracking the deployment of digital support channels, including email and webchat to enhance the brand’s digital service capabilities.
The key challenge was that the entire CX outsourcing process would need to be handled remotely due to the pandemic travel restrictions. Crucially important aspects such as aligning culture between the brands, sourcing, assessing, developing and coaching high-performance individuals, assessing the CX skills, platforms, processes and technology, and scaling of agent operations would all take place remotely.
Some of the key considerations that Zwilling looked at in their CX outsourcing journey included:
SCALE AND COLLABORATION:
Zwilling was set on working with a CX-centric niche BPO partner who would be willing to walk the outsourcing journey with them, understand the needs of their customers and build the CX outsourcing strategy collaboratively. It needed an adaptive, responsive and resilient outsourced customer service model that could scale as needed and also be used as a blueprint for global operations.
CULTURE:
Zwilling was aware of the potential for a disconnect between the outsourced customer service operation and the company’s brand and culture. Finding a specialist outsourced CX provider to deliver the level of service and support that aligned with an almost 300-yeard old heritage brand like Zwilling was not a simple task. This cultural alignment needed to transcend the more obvious aspects such as fluency, language and familiarity with local culture – to a point where the CX BPO partner becomes a vested and embedded extension of the Zwilling team and brand.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAPPING:
Working with an outsourced CX partner that could help in mapping the customer service journey, infusing the brand experience with the customer experience was a key requirement. Customer behaviour had radically changed, and Zwilling needed a CX outsourcing partner that could rapidly adapt to a changing digital dynamic.
TECHNOLOGY:
Digital channels, data and analytics and cloud services together with traditional voice-based BPO services were needed. Zwilling wanted a BPO partner that would help with fast-tracking the deployment of digital support channels, including email and webchat to enhance the brand’s digital service capabilities, brought together in one seamless solution.
VALUE:
The value that the right outsourced CX provider brought to the table had to go beyond the basic metric of ‘price’. Key in CX outsourcing are important aspects such as data and analytics capability, data security, insights, technology, productivity management tools, training, compliance and quality assurance, and hands-on leadership – all key in deriving the valuable insights Zwilling wanted and needed to drive continuous improvement, and which is not easily quantified on a simplistic cost basis.
IMPACT SOURCING:
A key consideration in selecting a BPO partner for Zwilling was impact sourcing, and how it’s spend on CX outsourcing could make a difference in the lives of disadvantaged and disabled people. .
THE SOLUTION
With South Africa nominated most favored offshore destination for CX delivery services in the Ryan Strategic Advisory BPO Omnibus Survey, Zwilling’s search for an outsourced CX partner to support its CX strategy would lead it to iContact BPO, based in South Africa.
iContact BPO was tasked with setting up a dedicated outsourced CX function for Zwilling, with high-performance, engaged agents backed with the deployment of digital support channels including voice, live chat, e-mail and instant messaging as the primary channels for handling customer queries pertaining to orders, tracking, product information and warranty fulfilment. An entirely new customer journey had to be built that accounted for the radically changed dynamics that the pandemic brought to the table in terms of customer behaviour and needs, as well as service delivery channels.
A comprehensive and customised training programme was developed with the client, and rolled out to fast-track not only the speed to competence for the team, but strong culture alignment between Zwilling and iContact BPO and the customers they would be serving. The team was tasked not only with resolving and handling enquiries across an extensive range of some 4000 products, but also recovering and enhancing the brand’s reputation as customer-centric and responsive.
The turn-around time – from contracting to design to implementation – was rapid. Following an initial intensive training period in a hybrid-learning environment due to the pandemic, supported by a nesting period to ensure brand and culture alignment, the team made a phenomenal impact from the very first call and e-mail received.
Zwilling and iContact BPO have managed to achieve a highly collaborative working relationship that fosters a culture of continuous improvement between both parties, backed by analyzing the CX metrics and customer feedback that plays a key role in guiding changes and enhancements in processes, policies, technology, training and quality assurance.
Key metrics from the early phase:
- Within the first month, a 100% improvement was experienced in abandonment rates and response to e-mail queries.
- Even with a doubling up in inbound call volumes, abandonment rates remained exceptionally low. In fact, the quality of interactions and productivity continued to improve even though the number of customer interactions were growing incrementally.
- At the campaign start, the average hold time was reduced from 500+ seconds to under 60 seconds.
- Within the first month, calibrated quality assurance results were above 80% and after 100 trading days, it was above 90%.
- Handling time on messages improved by 22% and by 17% on instant messaging.
- There has been a remarkable 62% increase on the SLA – with 80% of calls now answered in under 20 seconds.
- There has been a further 8% improvement on all quality assurance audits.
- The above was achieved with a 19% lift in interactions/cases in the measured period.
After an extensive search and shortlisting of BPO providers, we settled on three prospects based in South Africa. From the get-go, I knew that iContact BPO was the right fit. In our engagements, nothing was seen as a ‘problem’ but rather a challenge to be solved. ‘No current data? No problem, we have an opportunity to collect this data now and learn as we go. Let’s put a stake in the ground and plan from there.’
It was this willingness and ability to help us design our CX outsourcing strategy on a collaborative basis, and to get the data and metrics we needed to move forward, that sealed the decision to work with iContact BPO, and we have never looked back.
iContact BPO thoroughly researched our business, they understood our products, our culture and the fact that as a 292-year-old, multinational brand, some things were not easily changed. Where other providers wanted to lock us into global service agreements, iContact BPO was prepared to start with our US operations, prove themselves and grow from there – and that is exactly what happened. Six months into the campaign for our US operations, our Canadian subsidiary contracted with iContact.
Over the years of working together and besides the major customer service and support improvements, a big win has been the CX best practices, systems and processes that we have collaboratively brought to the table – from the development of new training materials for over 4000 products, SOPs, the latest software and technology, to productivity and even career progression for our own people, largely because of the pressure that was removed from them by the outsourced team.
Matthew Arthur-Gray,
Senior Manager: Sales Operations & Support
Pleasantville, NY (US)
Every CX enhancement is shared and implemented in a consultative process where it benefits both our businesses – it’s an incredibly rare find to work with an outsourced CX partner like this, and to have them so well entrenched in our business, culture and strategy.
Since going live in October 2020, our iContact BPO team servicing the US has grown three-fold, and the team servicing our Canadian subsidiary BPO team has doubled. We have achieved the best CX delivery in years, greater operational efficiencies, brand and reputation enhancement, access to value-added services and better technology, dramatically better customer service and customer experience, enhanced data and analytics capabilities and better managed our business continuity risks.
While customer experience outsourcing was an inevitable big step for us, it was challenging in many respects, especially when you consider the timing at the height of the pandemic which created massive shape-shifting and uncertain business environments. I can categorically say that working with a specialized CX outsourcing partner like iContact BPO has been fundamental to the success of our CX outsourcing journey.
