“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,” Geekie 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
