Opportunity

Today, Payless Shoe Source is the largest specialty family footwear retailer in the Western Hemisphere. The company sold more than 182 million pairs of shoes in fiscal 2005, generating $2.7 billion in net sales. Payless operates stores in all 50 U.S. states, plus Puerto Rico, Guam, Spain, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Canada, Central America, the Caribbean, South America, and opened its first test store in Japan in November 2004. To maintain their customer relationships, Payless places a strong emphasis on customer service.

Solution

Mansell Group introduced an inbound email response management application in the fall of 2005. The NetAgent tool has helped the Payless call center address their customer service issues by automatically routing inbound customer email inquires to the correct subject box. On average, customer wait time in the consumer products industry is 83 hours. Since the adoption of NetAgent, the Payless call center has seen their average email response time drop from days to a matter of hours or minutes.

The application suggests answers to facilitate this fast and efficient response. Real-time spell check, categorization and bulk email responses assist agents to quickly and efficiently answer customers’ inquires in a high quality fashion. Also, NetAgent will send an automatic "we're working on your question" response to ensure the customer knows their question is important.

Results

Since the adoption of NetAgent, the Payless call center has continued to build strong customer relationships by answering customer inquiries in a relevant and timely manner.