Canadian Tire Financial Services (CTFS), the financial services division of Canadian Tire, was established to serve the needs of its 4 million credit card holders, but it has also become the primary call center for Canadian Tire's customers. Recently, CTFS began one of the most ambitious customer service projects in the company's history - to offer unparalleled service through an integrated call center.
Operating 24-hours-a-day, every day, CTFS's call centers respond to more than 15 million calls a year, through 800 employees in its 10 call centers. Call center employees are chartered to provide personalized service while handling a diverse set of customer needs - fulfilling more than 200 different types of customer requests. The challenge is to create a system that makes it easy for any representative to resolve any customer need without transferring the customer from department to department.
"The ideal is for each representative to handle and resolve any problem without passing it on," said CTFS president Tom Gauld.
CTFS selected the Chordiant Contact Center Solution to support its 800 customer service representatives (CSR's) across 10 service centers. This operational backbone helps CTFS provide "world class" customer care.
Business ObjectivesPersonalized customer attention and reduced call transfers
Improved operational efficiencies through
centrally managed operational business
process automation, staffing and scheduling
Rapid introduction of new products or
changes to existing business services
Reduced training requirements for customer
service representatives
Integration of all customer touchpoints via a
single system capable of including the Web,
e-mail and telephone
According to Mary Turner, CTFS vice president of customer services, "Our primary goal was to create a customer service environment that enables a complete set of customer-focused services in which we understand and anticipate customer behavior and needs, offer timely introduction of new services valued by Canadian Tire customers, and enhance existing services to meet changing customer expectations."
"When we began the project, we took a look at our operations and saw too many independent call centers," Turner said. "It seemed that every time we introduced a new product or service, we set up a new call center. We decided to streamline operations to make it possible for customers to reach the right representative whenever and wherever they called."
The Selection Process
In addition to Chordiant, CTFS considered several off-the-shelf customer service applications, industry-specific financial services packages, and a complete custom development effort. The key factors in selecting Chordiant included:
In addition to Chordiant, CTFS considered several off-the-shelf customer service applications, industry-specific financial services packages, and a complete custom development effort. The key factors in selecting Chordiant included:
- A dynamic business process engine that automatically guides the CSR to provide a tailored response to each customer based on that individual's customer profileThe ability to quickly make changes to business policies and introduce new products or services within existing centersAn open architecture and ability to connect to existing databases that allow CTFS to leverage its technology infrastructure investments "At first, we thought we could take an incremental approach," said Turner. "Very quickly it became apparent that we needed to take an enterprise-level, strategic view, otherwise we would end up with a point solution that would not serve us in the long term. Most available technology would not support rapid product introduction, did not integrate multiple data sources or touchpoints and more importantly, forced us to rely on inflexible business processes built into the system." Chordiant's approach was to leverage CTFS's existing equipment and infrastructure, while creating a consistent "look and feel" across all call centers -- and at the same time create a system that could address the personalized needs of each customer. Another important feature was its support of virtually any customer touchpoint including Web, e-mail, fax, phone, or kiosks. One Year Later
Following a successful pilot mode implementation, CTFS began rolling out the Chordiant process-driven desktop solution to its Retail and MasterCard customer service areas—the front line customer service functions for its core business. CSRs now handle as many as 2.7 million calls per year with the system. Once these two front-line departments were consolidated (approximately 240 representatives) and training was completed, the company began exploring ways to exploit the flexible architecture of Chordiant by looking at opportunities to revise the current desktop in response to its representatives' feedback. "Having the ability to easily tailor the desktop environment based on our representatives' interaction allowed us to implement critical changes after installation was complete," said Turner. "If we discover that our representatives find a business process to be inefficient or unnecessarily complex, that particular rule can be quickly modified without a major overhaul of the system." When considering the cost/benefit ratio of introducing a new product, a large part of the equation is time-to-market. Just as the system allows CTFS to implement changes in accordance with representative feedback, changes to business processes are quickly and easily implemented, allowing the company to be quick-to-market with new products and services. With a solution that allows new products to be introduced with relative ease, the profit margin for each new product increases, and subsequently, the number of products or services a company can offer. Improvements Resulting from the New System
CTFS's current installation of the Chordiant solution has reaped significant benefits. Faced with increasing customer churn, the company launched a retention program to its representatives specific to its insurance products. By routing a cancellation request directly to an appropriate representative, retention rates or "stop cancels" have risen by eight to ten percent. In an economy where it is ten times more costly to win a new customer than keep an old one, this advantage is dramatic. In addition to enabling specific retention programs, the consolidated presentation of information helps manage call handle time, which is one of the largest components of cost across the enterprise. CTFS projects a 30-second reduction in handle time, resulting in a 10 percent increase in the number of calls handled per year, improved customer service, greater customer retention rates and increased revenues. Furthermore, the single desktop initiative designed to unite CTFS's disparate call centers has resulted in the following three key benefits to the company and its employees: 1. Reduced CSR training time on "process" through a simplified, intuitive workflow and consistent processes that allows CSR to learn quickly the core skills for proficiency. 2. Increased CSR capacity to service different customer needs with an information-rich desktop environment that places all relevant customer and product information at the fingertips of the CSR, removing the need to pass a caller on to another representative. 3. By eliminating the need to build additional databases, the company's technical infrastructure is simplified and all relevant customer information is brought to bear on each interaction, thereby providing a unified view of the customer. "Based on our accomplishments to date and ROI," says Turner, "CTFS has benefited considerably from choosing an operational business process partner that takes a long-term strategic view of implementing effective customer service. We looked at a lot of different products and found that Chordiant was in a class of its own. Its customer focus is critical to meeting our service goals, and its database integration capabilities will turn our customer service operation into a sales and marketing tool rather than just a call center. We are very well positioned to implement a full complement of customer service applications, marketing tools, and cross- and up-sell initiatives throughout the enterprise."
