 William B. Meyer, Inc. (WBM) is a 90-year-old fourth generation owned and operated company, providing transportation, storage and logistics services. William B. Meyer's Home Delivery division, based in Stratford, CT, specializes in the delivery of building and home improvement products, as well as products from big-box retailers serving customers in NY, NJ, CT, RI, MA, ME, NH, VT and eastern PA.
Operating out of a 450,000-square-foot warehouse, WBM handles the scheduling of deliveries after a customer has purchased products from the retailer. WBM boasts as its clients many larger retailers and functions as the fulfillment and delivery arm of the retailer for big-box items. Coordinating deliveries of exercise equipment, windows, furniture, cabinets, etc. entails a lot of phone tag and a lot of customer service staff and hours, especially during the busy seasons of April - June and November - January.
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Frank Shiboski, Vice President and CIO, WB Meyer. |
Managing Increasing Call Volumes
During the summer of 2004, WBM employed a minimum of 5 CSRs to handle scheduling 100+ deliveries per day. At the time, it was estimated that an average of 5-6 call attempts were necessary before a CSR was able to make direct contact with the customer. And, as business continued to grow, so did the volume of deliveries to be scheduled. Frank Shiboski, William B. Meyer's Vice President and CIO, was realizing that to meet customer demands, he would either have to hire more customer service staff or investigate other delivery-scheduling alternatives. With 18 trucks on the road throughout the Northeast, deliveries had to be scheduled accurately, especially the delivery address and contact information.
With their iSeries-based applications, all orders and products were entered into the system with hand-held scanners for easy tracking at any point in the delivery cycle. WBM's Customer Service department was the only area that wasn't easily managed. "Our staff always did the best they could with the tools they had," states Jim LaBanca, WB Meyer's Director of Customer Service. However, it was always a juggling act – managing inbound and outbound calls and keeping track of which customers called back and which ones didn't. Additionally, CSRs had to manage calls from the dealers checking on the status of their products and when they would be delivered to their customers.
The option of adding more staff meant that the department's budget would have to be flexible, increasing when it was necessary to accommodate new CSR salaries. It was also difficult to accurately predict when the call volume peak hours would occur. And, finally, it was difficult to find knowledgeable CSRs to fill in on days when there were unexpected staff absences, and during vacations.
A Solution to Manage Calls
Familiar with the capabilities of IVR, Shiboski felt that IVR would provide a good solution to many of their problems. Shiboski has been using various IVR products for over 10 years and knew the benefits the technology could provide to a service-driven, cost-conscious customer service organization. He investigated a few PC-based systems, as well as iMessaging Systems' iNspire Call Center Suite.
After reviewing his PC-based options, Shiboski realized that it wouldn't easily fit into their iSeries workflow, and the script development needed to make the system function would require a large training investment for his IT staff. Alternatively, iMessaging's iNspire is an iSeries-based telephony solution and would integrate seamlessly into WBM's system. Just as important, WBM's IT staff would be familiar with the code behind iNspire, allowing them to quickly get up to speed and easily maintain the system and perform updates.
"My research led me to iMessaging. I was familiar with IVR, and iMessaging's iNspire was the turnkey solution we needed so we could get up and running quickly. iVoice IVR was what we were looking for, and iAgent, its agent management complement, was a bonus!" states Shiboski. "[iMessaging] had the technical expertise to work with the iSeries, and we needed a vendor we could partner with, a vendor with a solid product they believe in and would stand behind."
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Jim LaBanca, WB Meyer's Director of Customer Service. |
Planning and installation went quickly and smoothly. Initially, LaBanca worked with iMessaging's telephony development experts to plan the scripts and call flow, based on how the caller would expect to be directed and the data they would need. "iMessaging gave us a lot of guidance about what works and what doesn't when you combine IVR and our type of customer service. It really made planning easy," said LaBanca. Once the call flows were approved, iMessaging's programming team completed the development effort.
Communication Improvements Realized
The iNspire system is designed to make the caller's experience easy and efficient and serves the following functions:
- WBM and iVoice self-service applications allow the caller to schedule or reschedule a home delivery or a warehouse pick-up.
- The system places outbound calls to customers at predefined hours of the day to initiate the scheduling of deliveries, pickups and delivery confirmation calls. This is all automated without involving WBM's staff. The automated outbound calling offloads CSRs from making hundreds of calls per day, freeing staff to focus on other more involved customer inquires.
- In the event a customer has difficulty with the automated systems, the callers are quickly connected with a CSR, along with a screen pop of the information already collected. This enables the CSRs to add personalization to each call and expedites the resolution process
Behind the scenes, iNspire's detailed reporting allow LaBanca to see exactly when people are calling and to adjust staffing as volumes dictate. Also, LaBanca can monitor CSR productivity to ensure that agents are effectively dealing with the volume of calls. "iNspire allows us to respond much more smoothly to calls during our busy season," comments LaBanca. "The caller's information is at the CSR's fingertips."
WBM now has more call volume than ever, and they are managing it with half the CSR staff. "And, we're handling it better than before," says Shiboski. For a forty-day period in the fall of 2005, WBM made 3085 delivery appointments, 1429 of which were handled by iVoice.
The Last Call
All in all, after being live for 6 months, the programmers, CSRs and managers are delighted with iNspire and the productivity gains it has delivered. "We are impressed with how straightforward the implementation was and how stable the system has been," states Shiboski. "Our programmers make frequent updates, and their familiarity with the iSeries, coupled with iNspire's ease-of-use, has made it easy to work with."
The iNspire Call Center Suite also serves as a selling point when meeting with prospective customers. "[Our customers] are impressed with our technologically advanced inventory management system, and iNspire has provided us with the value-added component that really sets us apart. It truly does help us to sell our services," says Shiboski.
"I can sum up iNspire in two words: consistency and capacity," states LaBanca. "It allows us to ramp up and handle calls without worrying if someone is out sick." LaBanca and his staff are looking at how iVoice and iAgent can be used to address issues above and beyond the scheduling of deliveries. In fact, Shiboski sees iNspire's success with the home delivery division as a springboard to integrate telephony capabilities into all of WB Meyer's business units. "Our system is end-to-end technology driven, and iMessaging's iNspire Call Center Suite has helped to get us there."
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