About the retailer
With 2,000 locations across the United States, the pet retail chain is dedicated to providing industry-leading products and services to improve the lives of pet owners and their pets. Each location offers a range of veterinary, boarding and grooming services based on location size and market demand.
The challenge
Many of the retailer's customers schedule their appointments weeks in advance through the website or by calling their local store and being routed through a centralized contact center. While the retailer was booking 200,000 appointments per week, staff noticed an increasing number of missed appointments.
The retailer assigned contact center agents to perform manual notification calls to customers to try to prevent or at least limit missed appointments. This approach had many flaws: it was time consuming, preventing agents from helping customers with other questions; it didn't scale; and it only reached a small percentage of customers who booked an appointment. The retailer needed a solution that would automate the appointment reminder process so it could reach more customers and reduce missed appointments.
Solution overview
The customer engaged WWT's Contact Center team to design a solution that would integrate with their existing systems and automatically notify customers about their upcoming appointments. After conducting a requirements workshop, WWT developed a solution that included an integrated dialer, campaign manager and text-to-speech engine. The retailer leveraged WWT's services to integrate the solution components into its existing contact center platform and customer relationship management (CRM) tool, Salesforce.
This integration allowed the retailer to generate real-time appointment data; place customer calls; prompt customers to confirm, cancel or reschedule their appointment; and update the Salesforce record with any changes to the appointment.
Outcome
After implementing the automated notification solution, the retailer significantly reduced the number of missed appointments and increased revenue by $600k per week.
WWT and the pet retailer are currently planning the rollout of additional communication channels, including SMS, to further expand customer reach and increase revenue.
