Three real-world ways to advance a contact center

CX Network explores how Humm Group, ShowPo and Mastercard overcame the disruption of the pandemic to deliver quality customer experiences.

Enhancing self-service with Humm Group

Our first example comes to us from Humm Group, a fintech which experienced a major spike in call center volumes during the Covid-19 pandemic. In response to this, the business decided to implement enhanced self-service capabilities with the goal of reducing call center staff workloads, saving operational costs, and providing faster, more streamlined CX.

Ayelet Mendel-Girin, general head of customer experience for Humm Group explained how the business set about improving its self-service options.

Mendel-Girin said: “We looked at product information and how to improve the website Q&As – we built an educational page so customers could better understand how to self-serve. We trained our agents so we had capabilities around digital services, the call center, and marketing campaigns with quick tips – it really helped us move our focus from human interaction in the call center to more self-service across all our channels.”

Mendel-Grin went on to note that even with enhanced self-service capabilities, having the human touch in agent interactions is still key. In light of this, Humm Group trains its agents to be empathetic when dealing with stressed customers and to consider their emotional needs.

Introducing omnichannel at ShowPo

ShowPo, an eCommerce fashion brand, was experiencing an incredible level of growth, to the tune of 50 percent year on year. While certainly enviable, this rapid expansion proved to be a double-edged sword for ShowPo as the business realized that its growth was negatively affecting its customer service.

The reason for this was the impact that the rapidly expanding customer base had on call resolution times. With many more customers, and thus many more customer queries, the business’ average resolution time was beginning to slip.

According to Paul Waddy, head of operations at ShowPo: “eCommerce, particularly in fashion, is becoming more and more competitive. Customer happiness can differentiate us if we do it right. It is very easy to say, ‘our goal is to provide great customer service,’ without answering what that looks like. For us, it is fast resolution times.”

The solution was an integrated, omnichannel approach alongside the implementation of a central repository for employee knowledge. These changes resulted in an improved average resolution time for the average 14,000 chats, 11,000 calls, and 21,000 emails the business receives in a three-month period, with chats now responded to within 26 seconds - four seconds faster than the KPI.

Deploying behavioral segmentation at Mastercard

Many businesses were impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and in many ways. For Mastercard some of this impact was positive, with eCommerce transactions growing by 150 percent and the value of contactless transactions growing nearly 200 percent year on year in 2020.

The impact on customer experience was less positive however, with customers no longer able to enjoy Mastercard rewards focused around in-person experiences, such as concerts or sporting events. So Mastercard took the decision to pivot its strategy and offer online experiences that customers could enjoy from home.

Rustom Dastoor, executive vice president, head of marketing and communications, North America, for Mastercard, noted: “To do that, we needed technology to reach them and give them confidence to use our products online by delivering trust.

“The current number of smartphones in the world has crossed six billion…but, while consumers are easier to reach, they are harder to engage – today, the average attention span for a consumer is estimated at eight seconds,” Dastoor added.

Mastercard deployed behavioral segmentation techniques to target the right customers and engage them on events that they would be interested in. Dastoor explained that this allows the business to serve the unique needs and interest of every customer, capitalize on tim-sensitive opportunities and to “meet the customer where they are.”

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