Culture of Innovation Inspires Strategic Outsourcing Partnership to Meet Top Global Retailer’s Commitment to Excellent CX

Share the Smiles

Proactive Leadership and Collaboration Tailored to the Client Empower iQor to Achieve Steady State and Seasonal Staffing Goals

Why iQor? 

At iQor, we place a strong emphasis on maintaining a customer-centric culture that motivates our entire team—from frontline workers to management—to strive towards meeting and exceeding the key performance indicators (KPIs) that our clients value most. We believe that our success stems from a combination of innovative thinking and open communication, two of our iQorian Values. As a strategic outsourcing partner, our goal is to fully understand the unique business needs of each of our clients and proactively suggest ways to leverage personnel and technology to achieve their objectives. 

We recognize that our success depends on building strong partnerships between our clients and our teams of frontline agents and supervisors, who work together as a cohesive unit to provide exceptional customer experiences. We value the contributions of all our team members and ensure that our work environments are flexible enough to accommodate both in-office and work-at-home employees, providing scalability and comprehensive endpoint security that safeguards our clients’ data and operations. 

Background   

Our client, one of the world’s largest retailers and online shopping experience providers, engages a rich network of BPOs to provide customer support services. iQor’s first assignment with this client was to provide customer care through omnichannel voice and chat. 

Our client manages all their BPO relationships based on multiple performance criteria. Their standards for customer experience are consistently high to sustain their global brand reputation.  

iQor’s emphasis on maintaining a strong customer service culture provided the inspiration to embrace our client’s CX standards. From our perspective, this was an opportunity to understand their unique business needs and proactively assume a leadership role as an innovative strategic partner within their BPO network of those providing omnichannel customer support services. Notably, several of the client’s other BPOs are Gartner Magic Quadrant leaders for Customer Service. 

Business Challenges  

As a leading global retail and e-commerce company, an extensive customer service staff—operating from work-in-office and work-at-home environments—is required to support our client’s millions of customers. Even with a robust network of BPOs, meeting the client’s staffing requirements throughout the year—and ramping during the holiday shopping season—was a challenge. 

Starting in Q3 2022, the retailer made clear to its BPO constituents the high priority it placed on meeting 95% compliance with their staffing requirement, measured in 30-minute intervals each week. Meeting these staffing levels would enable their BPO network to consistently service their customers in a timely manner, providing the foundation for excellent customer satisfaction scores that were essential components of the retailer’s ethos. 

At the time that iQor became one of the client’s BPOs, only one of them had previously met the client’s staffing requirement. This set the stage for us to aim high in our relationship with this client to leverage personnel and technology to achieve their objectives. 

Solution 

The Summit 

In September of 2022, iQor operations leaders convened a summit to evaluate our overall performance to date, predict our results if we continued to operate with no change, and determine specific actions that would move the performance needle the most for our client. 

Our objectives were to become our client’s strategic outsourcing partner by helping them reach their goals, and as a result, become their #1 BPO based on performance. This summit would be the event of consequence for iQor to achieve these objectives. 

The client participated in the summit and was enthusiastic about one of their BPOs proactively taking action to improve the probability of meeting their 95% staffing requirement. In concert with feedback from the client, iQor drafted and implemented a plan to meet staffing compliance. Additionally, discussions with our Workforce Management leadership team laid the groundwork for a new staffing plan. iQor kept the client informed every step of the way. 

Using iQor’s customer- and employee-focused framework as a guidepost, iQorians reviewed the client’s CX goals and determined actions for each of the client’s key metrics to meet those goals by specific dates. 

Post-Summit 

Twice each week during peak season, the retailer conducted round-robin calls with their entire network of BPOs to monitor performance. Achieving target staffing goals was always a priority topic. 

iQor took a leadership position in the round-robin calls by: 

• Explaining how we regularly meet with agents to understand what’s working and what can be improved. 
• Presenting how we use intelligent performance management tools to engage employees, leading to effective coaching and employee satisfaction. 
• Proactively responding to client questions openly and transparently, without waiting to be called upon. 
• Sharing new ideas and coaching strategies that could potentially benefit all the other BPOs, demonstrating our commitment to the client’s overall success. 

Most important of all, we followed through on all the commitments we made in those calls.  

Recognizing that our shared success stems from strong partnerships, iQor and our client developed and nurtured 1:1 collaborative relationships at the director, associate director, and senior manager levels. These relationships are based on open communication, earned trust, and sustained performance of key metrics.  

For example, when the iQor team noticed that our client was receiving more chat requests for customer service than they could handle, we informed them that we had 100 customer service agents already providing voice support who had been trained in chat as well. We recommended transferring them to chat to handle this unmet demand. It turned out to be the perfect solution. 

The retailer knows they have a strategic outsourcing partner they can count on with proactive CX solutions consistently offered in the best interest of their business. 

Results 

iQor’s proactive approach, flexibility, creative problem-solving skills, and outstanding performance put our client’s inspiring customer experience goals within reach and set new standards for the retailer. Additionally, iQor demonstrated that our custom CX solutions capabilities go far beyond omnichannel customer voice support and chat to meet the unique needs of our client. 

In each week’s round-robin calls, iQor’s workforce management solution received positive feedback from the retailer.  

The client recognized our accomplishments, commitment to their success, and entrepreneurial passion. Consequently, the client awarded iQor additional lines of business, requiring the deployment of additional customer service staff. 

100% Staffing Compliance During Ramps 

iQor achieved nearly 100% staffing compliance for in-office and work-at-home environments during the peak holiday season, outpacing the other BPOs in their network.

Increased Headcount 

• 145% increase in nonpeak headcount from 2021 to 2023. 
• 37% increase in peak headcount from 2021 to 2023. 

KPI Leader 

iQor became the leader in the client’s BPO network in achieving significant KPIs, including: 

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) voice and chat. 
• Repeat contact rate (RCR) voice and chat. 

New Lines of Business 

Our client has entrusted iQor with two new lines of business: 

1. Back office support for handling refund payment requests, which had a multi-thousand account backlog that iQor completely resolved. 
2. Application assistance for delivery driver position candidates.