Some retailers don’t seem to grasp the important role their contact centers play in overall customer satisfaction. Most of the ‘interaction’ your business does with the customer happens at this level; sure, you can engage with them on social media and speak to them through content on your site, but your contact center is where customers head to when they have a real problem and want a real solution. Your contact center staff has direct contact with your customers, and their performance is measured in real time by the people whose opinions matter most. Here are a few tips to ensure that your contact center is well managed.

 Optimum Workforce: The number of people you have at your contact center should be optimum. With too few agents, your staff will burn out faster and service standards will be poor. Having too many contact center agents leads to increased costs and lower productivity per person. A good method to follow is to have a mix of full-time as well as temporary staff. With part-timers, you can afford to track performance by the hour. And, when you have some experienced hands overlooking operations, you will be able to train temps more effectively and manage customer expectations better.

Scheduling and Adherence: Adherence is a buzzword you will come across rather frequently in contact center debates. Simply put, adherence is the measurement of how well contact center staff sticks to their schedules. It compares the planned activity levels of agents to the actual amount of work that gets done throughout the day. So if someone is slacking, it will show up as a marked difference if it has been a particularly busy day. Making sure that your agents adhere to a set schedule allows them to serve you effectively. It will also ensure smooth transitioning between shifts.

Forecasting: You forecast sales, so why not forecast customer interactions as well? Start by determining the average weekly call and email volume. This way, you can develop ‘call patterns’ and figure out which time of the day or day of the week call volume tends to be highest – and staff to those numbers.

Have you faced any speed bumps in your contact center operations? Do you have adherence issues? Share your thoughts with us at Fifth Gear. Our core business revolves around order fulfillment, but we also offer state-of-the-art contact center solutions for our fulfillment clients.  

The positives:

• Savings: Why ship the same order twice? Drop shipping often doesn’t involve a minimum order requirement and your supplier or manufacturer does the shipping for you. For this reason, it makes sense for some retailers to drop-ship odd-shaped or very heavy products (saves on shipping charges!) or slow-moving inventory (saves warehouse space and keeps capital free for other uses).
• Get shipping sooner: If you’re a start-up, once you have your suppliers in place and your website ready, you can start selling without acquiring warehouse space or staffing a fulfillment services department. It also gives you a chance to focus on other aspects of your business, like marketing and customer service, as well to offer more products to your customers.
• Packaging: Since your order goes directly to your customer from your vendor, you do not have to repack merchandise and spend money on new packing materials, which saves you both time and money.

On the other hand, these are the reasons you may not want to drop ship:

• Finding a good drop shipper: Since you won’t have control over your inventory, you need to be extremely careful while choosing which vendors to trust as a drop shipper. Unlike an outsourced fulfillment partner, whose business success relies heavily on your own success, vendors typically have a large number of customers to serve and won’t manage your brand tightly to ensure customer satisfaction. You won’t have control over the package’s appearance or its accuracy – which makes many retailers nervous.
• Order processing: This can be quite a challenge since most retailers work with a number of suppliers, each of whom has a different time-frame and method for processing orders. Before you can invoice the customer, you need to create a purchase order, submit it to the vendor, verify the product’s availability, and then place the order – which involves conveying tracking information to the customer. And if one customers orders 2 items which come from 2 different vendors? That means multiple shipments, which increases the room for errors, delayed shipping, and unhappy customers.
• Shipping hiccups: You may not be physically shipping the order, but your customer will still complain to you about it when something goes wrong. When customers are promised an order in 3 days on your site, they expect it in 3 days. However, your vendor’s lead-time on shipping orders might take 5 days. If your drop shipper does not deliver on time, you get the flak – and the damage to your brand.

These are some of the things to consider when you choose to drop ship. What method do you use for delivery? Have you tried drop shipping? Has it proved economical or problematic? Let us know!

Besides the events and attractions I discussed in my previous blog, IRCE is offering more great sessions in Day 2 of the conference (June 7^th). Among the activities are the following session tracks:

• Design & Merchandising – the new market demands new strategies
• Fulfillment – order management, fulfillment, and customer service
• Social Commerce – Harnessing social networks for sales
• Technology – Getting the most out of your ecommerce technology

Of course, we’re pretty excited about the increasing attention that order fulfillment is getting from these ecommerce shows. It’s really starting to prove how important efficient retail operations are to a retailer’s overall strategy.

Not only does fulfillment gets its own track at IRCE for the second year in a row, this year show planners have given the fulfillment industry its own space! For IRCE 2012, the exhibit hall will feature 4 specially segmented areas – Operations, Fulfillment & Customer Service; Marketing & Loyalty; E-Commerce Platforms; and Merchandising & Design. Only exhibitors whose primarily business fit those descriptions will be setting up shop in those segmented areas, making it easier than ever for online retailers to find and speak to the vendors they need. As for Fifth Gear? We’re right outside the entrance to the Operations, Fulfillment, & Customer Service segment in booth 1334. Stop by, say hi to our team, and learn more about what we do (there might even be some candy involved!).

With over 175 speakers and 570 exhibitors, it’s going to be one heck of a great show! Register for all the fun right here. See you in Chicago!

There are varying definitions of lifetime value and various ways to calculate it, but loosely, the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer is the value of all the purchases he has made so far plus the value of the purchases he is likely to make in future. The happier the customer, the more likely they are to extend the relationship – not to mention spend more in the process. But more money isn’t the only reason to measure lifetime value. Here are a few other reasons why it can actually help perfect your existing operations!

Measure your customer’s needs: Sure, all retailers do a market analysis every now and then, but diving into lifetime value will make you look and analyze your customer’s needs and buying behavior as opposed to just general market behavior. When you are actively engaged in keeping a customer for life, your customer service focus goes beyond just meeting their expectations for now – instead, your operations, customer support, and marketing teams should constantly look for ways to bring the relationship to the “next level” (aka spending more, referring friends, etc.) as well as attempting to predict what their future needs with be.

Get your CAC right: Cost of customer acquisition (CAC) is a metric that retail marketers (and their CFOs, of course) analyze closely. There may be plenty of people out there with the time and resources to shop, but do they fit your customer demographic? Leads mean nothing if they can’t or won’t convert. When you spend time on customer LTV, you will be in a better position to attract the right leads. When you know which marketing tactic is retaining existing customers most effectively, you can employ the same method to gain new customers – therefore decreasing the browser-to-buyer conversion process. That is where the metric makes the most impact to your retail operations: as you figure out what encourages current customers to stick around, you can target your marketing efforts to better attract similar consumers. And as we all know, more effective and targeted marketing means less cost-per-consumer, which means less capital spent. Even your CFO can be happy about that!

The answer more often than not lies within a warehouse’s ability to scale labor with an efficient workforce. However, with the increasing importance of fulfillment services in the customer experience, the seasonal workers you hire today need a certain level of expertise and industry knowledge for you to fulfill your orders effectively. Here’s how to get ready for the holiday rush.

Inform, Select, & Train: When you are on the lookout for temporary holiday-season workers, make sure you spell out what their responsibilities are and what is expected of them. This reduces turnover during a time when you can afford it even less than usual. Also, make sure that the details are clear: where they will be working, for how many hours a day, and the kind of facilities your fulfillment center has. Select candidates who are comfortable with your demands and environment.

As your seasonal workers arrive, have a plan in place to adequately educate them about how your facility functions – all the way down to the way you pick your orders and pack your boxes. Some of them may have worked similar jobs in the past, but you need to show them how you carry out those same tasks in your retail operation to avoid confusion (believe it or not, warehouse workers can develop bad habits over the years, too!). Provide them with enough training and mentorship to ensure a smooth transition. If possible, stress that a few top-performing temps will be kept on after the season is over. If you can’t promise that, let them know that their knowledge would be helpful during the next holiday rush.

Get Technical: The process of picking, packing and shipping may sound very simple and run-of-the-mill. Don’t sell yourself short! It’s actually a pretty complicated endeavor with a lot of room for error if not done correctly. Most retailers and order fulfillment providers rely on the use of several types of technology, and your seasonal workers need to be comfortable handling it – or, at the very least, understand what it does and how it impact their roles in the warehouse. Whether it is generating invoices, printing order tickets, operating equipment in the warehouse or using voice-command software, your temporary workers should be able to use them smoothly and with minimal training. If workers are constantly having to stop to ask others for help, (or worse, using the systems incorrectly) your operations won’t run efficiently at a time when accuracy and time sensitivity is especially important.

How do you handle the holiday season rush? Did you rely on extra hands in your warehouse or did you choose the services of an outsourced order fulfillment partner? How are you preparing for this year’s holiday season? Let us know in the comments!

But what is one to do when the bridge is closed for construction? Well, Fifth Gear employees get up earlier than usual to catch the ferry – rain or shine. Just check out the dedication in this picture:

Brooke Webb, Michelle Williams, Rose Richards, and Katie Williams still smiling, even while getting wet!

Because folks couldn’t drive across the bridge, those who lived on the Louisiana side of the river helped out their colleagues by shuttling ferry riders from the docks to the warehouses. Others took taxis once they got across the river.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again  – we have the most dedicated, awesome, determined employees in the order fulfillment business!

It’s that time of year again – the world’s largest ecommerce event is almost upon us! IRCE  (Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition) 2012 is rapidly approaching, and it’s even bigger than last year – 16% bigger to be exact. This year’s event is back in the Midwest, at McCormick Place West in Chicago, from June 5-8, 2012.

One of the reasons we love IRCE is because they approach ecommerce from a variety of different angles. As was the case last year, they’ve broken down this year’s conference into concurrent tracks where attendees can choose the track that makes the most sense for their role in ecommerce. (Good thing they make it easy, because things can get a little crazy!) This year’s tracks are:

• CEO Strategies
• Retail Chains
• Advanced E-Marketing
• Small E-Retailers

Within each of these tracks, presenters will cover topics from the viewpoint of attendees on topics including retail operations, fulfillment services, social media, email marketing, customer experience, ecommerce technology, site design, and consumer trends.

IRCE 2012 is a platform where retailers of all types, vendors, suppliers (and even order fulfillment providers!) and consultants can get together to share ideas, develop partnerships, and learn more about this constantly changing industry. It really is the world’s largest show decided to ecommerce, so if you’re influenced in any way by online retail, you need to be here! Sounds awesome, right? To register, find out more information about the conference, or to see who else will be there, click here.

As usual, Fifth Gear will be exhibiting – so swing by Booth 1334 to say hi and chat with our staff about what we do and how we can help solve your retail operations problems. Will you be there? Let us know by tweeting us (@infifthgear) or sending us a message on Facebook! We can’t wait to see everyone.

Respond – and quickly – The worst thing you could possibly do when a customer complaint hits the social airwaves? Ignore it. Not only does it send the message that you’re not monitoring your social channels, but it also tells the customer that you don’t really care to solve his problem. The result more often than not is more angry tweets and more negative word-of-mouth advertising to the customer’s peers – and potentially the alienation of more customers. Response times vary across social media platforms (Twitter within 2-3 hours, Facebook within 8-10), but the general rule is that more 24 hours without a response is unacceptable. Example – Delta Airlines has an average Twitter response time of 11 minutes – 11! That’s outstanding!

Don’t delete – Ok, there IS one thing you can do that’s worse than not responding to an angry post – it’s deleting it and acting as though it never existed. Trust me, people will notice, and it will destroy your credibility and can do more damage to your brand identity than the negative post you removed. DON’T DO IT!

Take it offline – Or at least in private. Rather than wage a he said/she said war in the public eye, respond to your customer’s angry message with an email address or phone number so that you can discuss the matter privately. If you have the ability to send a private message on the social site, do so – and let the customer (and the rest of the world!) know you did it. If they don’t respond or reach out, chalk it up to “trolling” and move on.

Ask for forgiveness – Once the matter has been resolved and the customer is happy, ask them to remove the negative message or post an update stating that the situation has been corrected. Don’t ask for (or expect) a glowing testimonial, but if it happens, great! There’s nothing wrong with asking someone to remove a negative remark when the issue no longer exists. If they don’t do it, post a follow-up message thanking them for understanding and helping to get the issue worked out – this shows other followers that you do respond and want to keep your customers happy.

Although negative customer service issues come with the territory for most online retailers, there are a few ways you can head most message off at the pass:

Monitor your brand – If you’re a successful online retailer, you’re likely monitoring your presence online via Google Alerts, SEO tools, or some other method. Same goes with your social media. There are a variety of online tools that will help you track your mentions and allow you to send messages and schedule posts from multiple platforms at once. Check out Hootsuite or Conversocial.

Eliminate the temptation altogether – The best way to head-off nasty social media messages? Give your customers multiple options to contact you in a less-public forum. Display customer support phone numbers, email forms, and live chat functions prominently both on your site as well as on all of your social media profiles (in the “Bio” section of Twitter, the “About” section on Facebook, etc.). Encourage your followers frequently to voice concerns via those channels and you’ll program your customers to reach out to you one-on-one first, eliminating the ‘mean tweet’ option.

Well, in today’s marketplace, you’re aware that forcing customers to wait more than a few days for their online purchases is like encouraging them to start a lynchmob. As ecommerce retail becomes the preferred method of shopping and customer expectations continue to get more demanding, the ecommerce distribution model has shifted, leaving many retailers to consider operating more than one warehouse. But what are the benefits of multiple locations? Doesn’t that make doing business harder? Here are a few key areas to consider.

Time and speed:  Very simply put – the faster you can get your products to your customers, the better. Therefore, the goal is to be close enough to customers so that inventory can reach them in the shortest possible time. If you’ve got a wide-reaching customer base, the easiest way to do this is via multiple distribution warehouses. Also, if you want to penetrate deeper into new markets, you need to be able to reach those new customers with ease.

Economies of scale: Retailers can take advantage of the economies of scale involved with operating multiple warehouses across the country. One way to save – by spreading out your operations to different warehouses, retailers can utilize multiple shipping carriers. Having different carriers at different locations can speed up order delivery times (if one carrier has a hub in the area and the other does not, for example) and can reduce shipping costs (i.e. one carrier’s shipping weight prices are lower, you could stock one warehouse with your “heavy” items and use that carrier for that facility). The options are endless.

Ability to Sell More: The ability to sell more of your products often depends on your ability to stock more of those items – it saves you lead time, money on inbound freight, and potentially lost sales if you run out of stock. With more fulfillment warehouse space spread across multiple locations, retailers are able to store more products and better divide their orders by geographical area to prevent out-of-stock or slow-moving inventory problems. If sales are slow in one area, you can always shift that stock to a warehouse where demand is high.  

Of course, opening up multiple order fulfillment centers depends on the size and scale of your operation – as well as the total cost to expand. That’s why it sometimes makes sense for online retailers to partner with a fulfillment services provider who already has warehouses in multiple locations. By going that route, the retailer is able to extend a wider footprint without the added time, money, and expertise required to build or purchase and staff warehouse space.

Are you a retail operations expert? Live and breathe everything from freight management, to fulfillment services, to warehouse coordinator, to contact center experiences? Well if you do, then you’ve probably heard about the Operations Summit conference that’s coming up next week, right?

Just in case you’re an industry peer who hasn’t, the Operations Summit is the must-attend conference for retail operations professionals that’s taking place May 2-3 in Memphis, Tennessee (aka – one of the major freight hubs in the country! And what better a place for a conference about shipping and operations, right?). It’s being sponsored by Multichannel Merchant magazine Fifth Gear is extremely excited to be participating actively at several levels during this show’s first year – we’re both exhibiting and speaking at several sections specific to order fulfillment.  

On Thursday, May 3^rd, Fifth Gear President Matt Konkle will join Bare Necessities President Bill Richardson, Glenn Gooding of BirdDog Solutions, and Marc McCrery from the USPS at 10:15 am for the “Shipping Power Panel”. Matt and fellow panelists will be addressing everything related to the shipping process – including taking questions from audience! I’m really looking forward to this one since attendees will get information from shippers who have drastically different logistics experiences.

Later that day, Vice President of Business Development Steve Warren will be headlining a session titled “Managing Outsourced Fulfillment That Looks & Feels In-House” at 2:35 pm. This session will guide retailers through the ‘outsource vs. in-house’ fulfillment decision, as well as outline strategies they need to take to ensure an efficient and successful client-provider partnership. (PS – if you’re a fan of our recent white paper Branding Beyond the Sale, mark this one down as a must-attend. Rumor has it we’ll be giving that content to all session attendees!)

In my opinion, the most unique and beneficial aspect of the Operations Summit is the tours segment of the agenda. Several Memphis-area retailers have graciously opened their facilities doors for attendees to get an up-close look inside their pick and pack warehouses. In addition, FedEx is allowing attendees to view their Express and Ground hubs to see what the packages see when they go from fulfillment warehouse to customer doorstep. One of the tours involves planes. That’s all I can tell you – you’ll have to go yourself to find out the rest!

For a full list of the agenda for the Operations Summit, please visit www.operationssummit.com/agenda.php. And if you’ll be attending, don’t forget to stop by Booth 11 in the expo hall to say hi to our awesome staff! We look forward to seeing everyone there!