Go BackHow did Dixons improve the handling of over 56,000 monthly customer calls with speech recognition technology?
1.) Tell us about Dixons.
Dixons Stores Group trades under the brands, PC World, Dixons and Curry's, and is the largest electrical retailer in Ireland. It is part of Dixons Stores Group International (DSGI) plc, a multi-brand business to business, and business to consumer organisation.
With 1, 450 branches and online stores, spanning 27 countries and employing 40,000 staff, Dixons serve more than 100 million customers in stores and online every year.
2. What drove you to select speech recognition for your business? What challenges were you addressing?
One of the biggest concerns we had in our business was the after sales service the customers were getting. These were the types of calls where customers want to register warranty on their recently purchased HP printer for example. We were receiving over 56,000 calls of this nature going directly to our high street stores each month which represented over 70% of our total inbound calls.
Our sales staff were not trained to deal with these type of calls. We have a separate organisation that deals with all the service issues. The staff had no visibility on the nature of the calls to the stores preventing them from identifying and resolving problem areas.
In addition to this, we were experiencing significant call congestion at store level which was resulting in negative customer service experience. Our customers were not achieving one-and-done service calls and were forced to make multiple calls in order to get their issues resolved.
We wanted to put a system in place that would steer all the after sale service calls away from the shop floor so that that sales staff could concentrate on selling while the after sales service calls would go direct to the department. It was crucial for us to put a system in place that would take the customer calling to the right service department first time, as quickly as possible without having to make multiple calls.
3.) What did you buy and where did you implement speech recognition in your business?
We partnered with eircom and SpeechStorm to purchase a single speech recognition application to streamline and improve these inbound calls. We began by implementing a single number across all business areas including stores, service, delivery and support.
The system could identify the exact nature of the callers requirement and distribute the call to the relevant resource, providing "right first time" routing to all callers. For example the system would ask the caller whether their new product is covered under our own warranty plan or the original manufacturers. Based on their spoken response the system would then route them to either our service department or directly to the manufacturer without any agent intervention needed.
4.) Have you seen any measurable results to date since launching the speech system?
In terms of customer service improvements, the speech recognition solution ensures that the caller is put through to the correct department and agent first time, every-time. This has resulted in a reduction in call congestion and an overall improvement in the customer service experience.
Feedback from customers has been extremely positive. They seem to find it an easy system, its not press 1, 2, 3, or 4, it's speak your selection which they seem to like.
As a speech driven system we have allowed the caller to have a more intuitive and natural experience. If, for example, a customer is calling about a fault they simply say fault and then the system leads them through a set of questions to establish the specific nature of the fault.
One of the key benefits of the system has been our ability, using the SpeechStorm management suite, to capture multiple responses via a single question, for example "and who is the manufacturer". This simple question allowed us direct the call to any of the 50+ manufacturer lines that we stock with a single word response. This was just not possible for us in the press 1 environment.
Since the speech system has gone live, the sales advisors are no longer having to deal with non-sales enquires. We have achieved a 60% reduction in these post sales calls coming into our stores, from 56,000 calls per month to 16,000 per month. This has enabled sales advisors to focus on selling and not on non-sales related queries and issues, boosting sales performance. It also means that service centres are no longer fielding calls not intended for their skill-set.
Naturally by having the speech system in place we have been able to reduce the requirement for live agent handling. The 60% reduction of calls into the stores is the equivalent of 13 sales staff FTE's annually!
5.) What have been some of the benefits of the new speech recognition system and working with us?
I think one of the huge benefits of the SpeechStorm system is as we get the feedback from the customers we can instantly change the system. I have changed the system myself for example where the customer would say that they don't understand what we mean by a specific terminology. We use that feedback to make the system user-friendly. I think as time goes on we will develop a really user-friendly system but the self-serve is the most important thing on this.
6.) How have your customers responded to the speech recognition system? Has the level of customer service increased?
We've had the system now for over a year now and we are getting really good response from our customers and our store staff. Our store staff are getting a lot more confidence in the system. We also have a working party and every month we sit down and discuss it and what changes we can make to it.
7.) What are your future plans for speech recognition at Dixons?
Our single number strategy helps us to stand out in the marketplace and positions us as a market leader and innovator. We have seen a rapid return on our investment and have already calculated that due to the reduction in calls to our stores we save 1 man year every 4 weeks the system is in operation by using SpeechStorm's Information Line as only sales calls now arrive in our stores.
At the moment it is a single number service but we see it evolving into a marketing, sales and recruitment system in the future. An option open to us in the future is to have a "this weeks specials" option in our welcome menu which allows caller to listen to our specials and be connected directly with a sales line.
Many Thanks to Paul May, Service Manager, Dixons Store Group International (DSGI) for his contribution to this article.
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For more information on SpeechStorm visit: www.speechstorm.com
For more information on Dixons Store Group International (DSGI) visit: www.dsgiplc.com
