Reducing Cost Per Contact by 50% with Verint Messaging

Why Meyer Group Needed to Overhaul its Customer Engagement Strategy

Meyer Group Ltd. is the UK’s largest supplier of top-quality and innovative kitchenware. Featuring brands such as Anolon, Circulon, and Prestige, the global organization supplies major department and chain stores, together with a multitude of independent shops and cookery schools. Meyer also serves as an ecommerce business, serving its vast customer base via an array of branded websites.

Interest in cooking exploded during Covid, with people using lockdown home living to rekindle their culinary skills. Meyer benefited during this period, experiencing an exponential increase in demand for its kitchenware. This growth also impacted the company’s messaging channels, with more customers than ever contacting the company, whether to check on an outstanding order or verify a guarantee.

“Our contact center relied on telephone, an email ticketing system, and chat support, but it struggled to cope with demand,” explains Tanya Geekie, Head of Customer Experience at Meyer Group. “Customer journey mapping concluded that the average handle time for an inquiry could be about 60 days, with customers waiting as long as ten days for a first response. That was unacceptable to us, since we place so much importance on the quality of the customer experience.”

There was minimal first contact resolution, too. If a customer emailed to claim on a guarantee, for example, they had to wait for a delayed reply. That initial reply would then set off a chain of back-and-forth communications, with Meyer asking for the product model, purchasing information, and other data associated with the claim. “Each time the customer replied – for instance, with a photo of the item – that email went to the back of the queue again,” Tanya continues. “At one point, we had 4,000 tickets, the oldest being 280 days.”

This was the Engagement Capacity Gap™ in action: the gap between customers’ expectations and the resources available to engage with customers. Meyer needed help to deliver effortless customer service at scale.

How Verint Messaging Enables Seamless Customer Service at Scale

Meyer is using Verint® Messaging™ to reimagine its customer conversations. Part of the Verint Customer Engagement Cloud Platform, Verint Messaging supports Meyer’s customer and workforce requirements for digital-first experiences. It gives kitchenware customers a choice of engagement channels. At the same time, it empowers Meyer’s workforce to support customers as they shift channels, depending on what consumers find most convenient.

“Verint Messaging ticks all the boxes,” says Tanya. “It’s powerful, intuitive, and aligns with our digital-first engagement strategy.”

This innovative Verint solution also unites the power of private messaging and in-channel automation. Customer engagement can switch seamlessly between bot and agent, for example, and social media becomes the gateway to agile, rewarding customer support.

How does it work? When a customer visits Meyer’s “contact us” web page, they are given the option of engaging with the company through WhatsApp and other social media channels, or they can email and receive a response within 48 hours. Integration with their existing ticketing solution provides the agent with an overview of the customer and their purchase/engagement history.

An intelligent bot prompts the customer to provide photos and other background information prior to engaging with a human agent, accelerating the inquiry resolution process and ensuring a rewarding experience.

“We treat social media the same way as a call,” Tanya notes. “When a message comes in, we can be as responsive as if the phone is ringing.”

Delivering Transformational Change to Customer Engagement

Verint Messaging is transforming Meyer’s customer engagement strategy. The organization has an opportunity to meet customers on the channel of their choice – whether WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Twitter, or email – and in the moments that matter.

Crucially, the Verint solution is also helping Meyer to address the Engagement Capacity Gap. Specific benefits include:

• Reduced cost per contact by approximately 50 percent.
• Lowered time to first response from up to 10 days to 24 minutes.
• Transformed pace of engagement, with 60 percent of customers using social channels to engage with Meyer, compared to zero previously.
• Improved customer satisfaction score from 45 to 95 percent.
• Delivered an NPS score of 8.84. “In the past, customer dissatisfaction was usually associated with the quality of service – how long it took to speak to someone or the number of people they needed to speak to,” adds Tanya. “Using Verint Messaging, customers rarely speak negatively about our service.”
• Reinvented the employee experience. Meyer agents now control the conversation, proactively staying ahead of inquiries, which results in a more rewarding employee experience.

“Verint Messaging has helped close our Engagement Capacity Gap,” Tanya concludes. “Customers have the flexibility to communicate with us however they choose and we’re ready for them. The experience is now fast, engaging, and rewarding.”