At the start of 2009, the business faced many challenges, having to contend with a global recession, declining sales, limited cash resources and a rapidly increasing overhead base. Its decisive action is well documented in the Chief Executive’s review for the year and marks the point at which numero became involved with the business.

Our task was to help Ideal Shopping Direct to address the key strategic challenge of customer service, a point highlighted by Mike Hancox, the CEO, in a statement to the City:

“Improving service to customers will be a key focus of the management tean in order to increase customer retention in 2009.”

Addressing the challenge

To define the solution, the numero team worked closely with the business utilising the proven numero act methodology to identify everything from key success factors to technology considerations. The success of the approach to the project is clear from the outcomes, highlights of which are outlined below:

Customer service improvements

• Customer response times have been dramatically shortened – for example, the turnaround time for emails has reduced from at least 3 days, to a same day response
• The standard of communication with customers has been made significantly more consistent, personalised and relevant thanks to the use of standard paragraphs and templates that are intelligently matched to the customer enquiry by numero uno
• Repeat enquiries from customers have been significantly reduced, saving cost for the business and improving satisfaction levels

Cost saving improvements

• The automation of tasks - through numero uno’s intelligent categorisation, agent allocation and back office integration functionality – has reduced the need for a back-office support team to manually address customer service workflows
• The solution provides the business with a clear picture of agent utilisation and automatically routes work to individuals when they are otherwise unoccupied – improving staff utilisation at a stroke

Business insight improvements

• The business now has a weath of information at its fingertips thanks to the numero solution. This has allowed Ideal Shopping Direct to identify and proactively respond to recurring problems – such as underperforming suppliers and business process issues – in order to improve business efficiency

The overall outcome

Ideal Shopping Direct is thrilled with its numero solution and recently took the unusual step of recognising our contribution in a recent announcement to the City. The success of the project has already translated to an extension of the solution, with support for additional communication channels (including written correspondence) being added, and the full CRM potential of numero is being reviewed.

The last word on the importance of numero to the business goes to Chief Executive, Mike Hancox who says:

“Our return to profitability in 2009 owes much to the numero solution. It has an amazing ability to support the multi-channel communication needs of our multi-channel retailing business. Customer service and satisfaction is at the heart of our performance and numero is at the heart of this”.