Genesys and Overstock.com - A Brand Built on Service
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
SUCC ES S S TORY
Genesys and Overstock.com
A Brand Built on Service
Founded in 1997, Overstock.com is a premier online retailer that offers a wide variety of
quality, brand-name merchandise at discount prices. The company provides customers the
convenience of online bargain-shopping, while giving manufacturers, distributors and other
retailers an alternative sales channel for liquidating inventory. Overstock.com offers 24x7 sales
and customer service and support via phone, email, and the Internet—and prides itself on
providing customers with white-glove treatment.
Around the time of its eight-year anniversary, Overstock.com had reached a business
crossroads. The company enjoyed a well-earned reputation for providing outstanding customer
At a Glance
service—a key differentiator in the highly competitive online retail space. But as it continued to
Overstock.com grow and experience seasonal spikes in call volume, the infrastructure that supported its high
www.overstock.com standard of customer service was starting to become stressed.
Industry: Signs of Stress
Online retail At the time, the Overstock.com contact center infrastructure consisted of a combination of
on-premises hardware, hosted software applications from third parties, and both manual and
“homegrown” systems. The ACD/PBX distributed incoming calls, but lacked the advanced
skills-based routing needed to match caller with skilled agent to deliver the desired levels of
customer service.
The retailer also relied on an outsourcer to supplement the in-house agents during the high
volume holiday period. The Overstock.com contact center and the outsourcer’s contact center
operated on separate platforms running different systems.
The combination of the existing infrastructure, use of an outsourcer and the limitations of
network-based routing led to a number of problems. The on-premises contact center systems
weren’t flexible and couldn’t easily expand when needed. Call routing was slow and inefficient
at matching agent skills with customer needs, and agents couldn’t easily find the information
needed to fully resolve customer issues on the first call. Finally, disparate reporting systems,SUCC ES S S TORY
Genesys and Overstock.com / page 2
Challenges coupled with management tools and agent > Meet internal customer service
• Call routing was slow and pools lacking a common infrastructure, enhancement metrics while reducing
inefficient at matching couldn’t provide Overstock.com with a agent head count by increasing agent
agent skills with customer comprehensive view of the total customer efficiencies.
needs. experience, which hindered its overall goal > Redeploy IT resources and staff personnel
• Agents couldn’t easily find of increasing customer satisfaction. managing contact center infrastructure
the information needed to other more strategic Overstock.com
to fully resolve customer A Costly Situation business initiatives.
issues on the first call.
Complicating matters further, the > Satisfy Service Level Agreements
hardware-based nature of the overall (SLA) to ensure the high availability
on-premises contact center architecture necessary to drive customer service and
required costly backup equipment to deal other corporate goals.
with potential system failures. As such,
Overstock.com conducted an evaluation
comprehensive system-wide redundancy
process to select the best solution to achieve
across all applications was lacking, further
its objectives. The retailer concluded early
stressing system reliability. In order to
on that advanced routing was essential,
support the contact center infrastructure,
both to handle its current customer service
Overstock.com had allocated three full-time
objectives and the anticipated additional lines
IT resources solely devoted to contact center
of business. A decision was made to select
systems management and support, as well
contact center routing technology from
as an ongoing contract with an external
Genesys, the market leader in advanced
consulting firm. Further investment in the
routing capabilities.
existing infrastructure would continue to
require a disproportionate amount of system Beyond the routing technology itself, the
support from the IT department. And the company also examined vendors that could
purchase of incremental contact center deliver the required contact center solutions
hardware and software would only partially in a cloud-based, Software as a Service
solve the problems. (SaaS) model. As an early adopter of cloud
technology, Overstock.com did not want to
continue to devote the time, IT staff, and
Exploring New Options overall cost of managing and maintaining its
At this juncture, Overstock.com adopted contact center infrastructure on premises.
a strategic goal of increasing customer A cloud-based model would also alleviate
satisfaction levels as it grew. The company the scalability and flexibility challenges that
also realized it would need to cut contact Overstock.com experienced during its peak
center infrastructure costs. Recognizing that holiday season.
a new approach to its contact center systems
and technology would be required, the
company determined that a new solution The Genesys Cloud-Based
would need to: Contact Center
> Provide a flexible contact center After diligent investigation, analysis, and
model able to match seasonal call volume speaking with other large enterprise clients
fluctuations without the costly need to as references, Overstock.com selected
have full-time agents during the other Genesys to provide, integrate and manage its
nine months of the year. complex contact center environment.
Genesys offered extensive contact center
capabilities, a cloud-based delivery model,
industry-leading Service Level Agreements,
and solid existing enterprise customer
references.SUCC ES S S TORY
Genesys and Overstock.com / page 3
The Genesys Professional Services and on premises. Unlike the previous contact
Customer Engagement resources engaged center infrastructure, Genesys provides
with the team at Overstock.com to fully Overstock.com a Service Level Agreement
Solutions
discover, analyze, evaluate, and (SLA) with performance guarantees • Genesys Cloud-based
recommend possible system configuration to ensure overall system availability Contact Center
designs to address strategic and tactical and reliability.
goals. The process was completed in fewer
than 45 days, and the recommendation
was accepted by Overstock.com executives,
Designed for Continuous
contact center, and IT support teams. Improvement
The new Genesys solution included a full, Overstock.com wanted its new contact
virtualized contact center with advanced center solution to offer capabilities and Benefits
routing, IVR, multi-site transparency, methodologies for continuously improving
• Enhanced agent and supervisor
single-view reporting and administration, customer satisfaction. Because Genesys
productivity
integrated call monitoring and quality captures and stores all historical interaction
data between callers and Overstock.com • SLA with performance guarantees
assurance, and integrations to legacy ensure system availability and
applications. The final system implementation agents, the entire scope of agent and
contact center performance has become reliability
took place within just 90 days of the project
both available and quantifiable for • Average hold time decreased
kickoff, both rapid and well within the over 93%
window necessary to support the intense management through dashboards and
holiday period. internal consolidated reporting. With • Abandon rates decreased by 85%
Genesys, Overstock.com now generates • TCO savings of $13,908,000 over
activity reports and agent scorecards, five years compared with an
IT and Operational Savings analyzes and measures agent and customer on-premises solution
Compared to the on-premises solution that feedback, and highlights potential new
required several full-time Overstock.com IT opportunities for improvement across all
resources plus outside consultants, the of their sites and various agent groups.
company has been able to redirect those
valuable IT resources to more strategic Future Proof
initiatives and projects, and eliminate the
need for the consultants. Furthermore, As a further benefit, there is no technology
Genesys enhances the productivity of both obsolescence for Overstock.com, as the
agents and supervisors so they can be Genesys cloud-based service delivery
more effective in their jobs and Overstock. model and platform is continually being
com can realize ongoing operational savings. upgraded with the most current
technologies—essentially providing a
future-proof solution. Overstock.com can
A Unified System with easily add new “best-of-breed”components
Performance Guaranteed and features to the solution as they become
By fall 2010, Overstock.com added a available to further enhance customer
second contact center facility in Salt Lake engagement and improve ease of use.
City with over 90 full-time agents. Both Genesys provides ongoing scheduled and
sites are now managed as a single virtual ad hoc client services to help Overstock.com
contact center through the Genesys leverage industry best practices and achieve
solution with 24x7 Genesys support. All the maximum value from existing contact
systems are fully redundant through center applications. With Genesys providing
Genesys, and all existing applications are industry thought leadership, valuable insight,
integrated by Genesys, including a small advice, and extensive analytics, Overstock.
number of legacy applications that com is able to achieve their goals of
Overstock.com continues to maintain delivering an outstanding customerSUCC ES S S TORY
Genesys and Overstock.com / page 4
experience and maintaining competitive TCO Results
market differentiation at dramatically
For the on-premises solution, the five-year
lower costs.
combined cost was $19,828,000, including all
relevant costs.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) For the cloud-based solution from Genesys,
Analysis and Comparison the five-year combined cost was $5,920,000.
As part of the overall evaluation for TCO analysis shows that the cost of the cloud-
replacement of its existing contact center based solution at the projected peak seat
infrastructure, Overstock.com compared the count of 462 seats is significantly less
costs of a new cloud-based based contact expensive: less than the on-premises solution
center solution with the equivalent cost of a by $13,908,000. In addition, the cloud-based
traditional hardware-based purchase solution solution cost advantages began in year one
requiring capital expenditure spending and IT and remained less expensive throughout the
resource dedication. TCO five-year time frame.
Five-Year TCO Cumulative Cost Comparison
On-premises option
cumulative cost: Estimated Annual Costs
$19,828,000
Genesys cloud option $8,000,000
cumulative cost:
Annual Cost
$6,000,000
$5,922,000
$4,000,000
$2,000,000
$0
1 2 3 4 5
Year
Premises-Based Hosted-Based
TCO Annual Cost Comparison
Observed total cost of ownership savings year over year
On-premises option Estimated Cumulative Costs
cumulative cost:
$3,966,000 $25,000,000
Genesys cloud option
Cumulative Cost
$20,000,000
cumulative cost:
$15,000,000
$1,184,000
$10,000,000
$5,000,000
$0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58
Months
Premises-Based Hosted-BasedSUCC ES S S TORY
Genesys and Overstock.com / page 5
With the Genesys cloud-based contact center solution, virtually Contact Center
every targeted metric has improved within the Overstock.com Improvements
contact center environment.. Contributing to
Greater Operational
Efficiency
TCO Assumptions Operational Results and
• Advanced skills-based routing
The comparison utilized a comprehensive Ongoing ROI capabilities
TCO analysis of alternatives. It examines Results since the 2007 Genesys
and compares all the costs to install and implementation have exceeded all • Ability to establish call priority
maintain the different solutions, but does levels by group
expectations.
not include anticipated agent performance • Enhanced agent overflow
The ability to measure and calculate capability
improvement and associated cost savings.
agent activity enables Overstock.com to
The TCO analysis for Overstock compared understand the operational efficiencies • More granular reporting to
the Genesys cloud-based SaaS contact enable fast response to
achieved with the Genesys cloud-based
center offering with an equivalent changing conditions
contact center in comparison with results
on-premises solution. during the previous environment. It also allows • Enhanced real-time
comparison between specific periods (e.g. dashboards and a
The TCO framework assumed: 360-degree view of all
month or quarter) on an ongoing basis.
> Equivalent costs over the five-year reporting records
Consequently, Overstock.com has visibility into
timeframe that Overstock.com was areas where the contact center is performing • Agent workflow
projecting. well or might need additional improvement. optimization tools
> The full set of required applications and Furthermore, Overstock.com has been able
the associated IT staff to manage either to see beyond the forecasted cost savings
solution. shown in the pre-deployment TCO analysis
> A peak load of 462 agents: 287 to view and calculate the actual ongoing
year-round and 175 seasonal in Q4 Return on Investment (ROI) from new
only, with an agent utilization rate of operational efficiencies and cost savings
85% and all calls being connected to l resulting from deployment of the
Genesys solution.
ive agents.
> Inclusion of every contact center
component from each alternative solution:
Average Speed of Answer
software licenses, hardware, professional Decreased Over 93%
services, maintenance, operations, Callers now reach agents in less than two
connectivity, upfront costs, periodic event seconds compared to over 22 seconds
costs (for patches, upgrades, hardware previously, and to the newer three-second
refresh), other associated recurring costs, target. Streamlining of the reporting package
and the SaaS monthly expenses for the and the new 360-degree views that include
full contact center services from Genesys. both the ACD and CRM records, and the
website purchase records allow supervisors to
> Inclusion of additional costs to support quickly identify potential blockages and hurdles
the contact center: facilities, power, air to incoming transactions and to utilize dynamic
conditioning, security measures, and the routing and queue change capabilities to
required IT resources. immediately address the issues. Priority levels
that were established by group, coupled with
the enhanced call overflow capabilities, also
positively impact the overall significant
improvement in customer service.SUCC ES S S TORY
Genesys and Overstock.com / page 6
Average Hold Time Decreased productivity was attributed to several items,
including the implementation of real-time
Over 21% dashboards and reports that indicated a
Average hold time (AHT) has decreased from previously “hidden” large population of
537 seconds (8.9 minutes) to an average of agents who were erroneously logged out as
422 seconds (7.0 minutes) including higher “not ready”. The previous Nortel contact
Q4 call durations since Overstock implemented center environment had required Overstock.
the Genesys solution. By design, Overstock. com to overstaff their workforce in particular
com typically increases AHT beyond the agent groups to overcome the inherent
seven-minute target during Q4 to provide product reporting deficiencies.
outstanding “white-glove” service during the
busy holiday period when customers typically
have more complex conversations related to Abandon Rates Reduced
gift orders. The AHT goals were met with the Abandon rates have been reduced by 85% to
help of advanced routing capabilities which less than .4%, helping further drive improved
ensure that callers are directed to the most customer satisfaction. This is due to the
capable agents. implementation of multiple agent pools with
assigned skills. Dynamic queue management
immediately re-directs calls to lower skilled
Service Level Agreement available agents when queue thresholds are
Objective Exceeded exceeded, thus enabling significantly greater
Over 99% of all incoming calls to Overstock. call capture rates.
com last year were answered within two
seconds compared to the internal goal of 80% Scaling Up is Easier
answered within 30 seconds. As a direct
Overstock.com seamlessly scales up with
correlation between call answer and customer
Genesys by 175-plus agents during its busy
satisfaction, Overstock.com staffs its two
season in Q4 with no capital expenditures,
contact centers with sufficient agents to
and none of the quality control issues
promptly answer each customer call, as well
associated with the outsourcer utilized prior to
as designing their call flow patterns to ensure
the Genesys deployment. This enables the
adequate agent distribution and minimal
company to realize annual savings of over
queue lengths. Caller queues are managed
$1,678,000. Overstock.com was able to bring
aggressively to provide for almost immediate
the outsourced agents in house at a lower
overflow to secondary agent pools for
overall cost due to two factors. First, the cost
maximum customer service. The ability to
of the new in-house agents was offset by the
reposition agents from other less productive
significant cost savings achieved from the
areas into critical service environments, while
improved efficiency in the primary internal
closely managing costs, has been a major
contact center. Second, the flexible Genesys
change in the Overstock.com contact center
cloud model saved the company from having
framework. Exceeding this internal 80% SLA
to hire the seasonal agents during the less
has helped enable Overstock.com to achieve
busy times of the year.
its overall high Net Promoter Score ranking.
Agent Productivity Improved Net Promoter Score Improved.
Post-incident Net Promoter Score has
Overstock.com has increased agent
improved to over 60% and the company
occupancy rates by 27% since 2007,
achieved its fifth consecutive year ranked in
requiring 30 fewer Full-Time Equivalent
the top five in customer service by the National
(FTE) agents and realizing annual savings of
Retail Federation. Enhanced agent training,
over $930,000. The improvement in agentSUCC ES S S TORY
Genesys and Overstock.com / page 7
In addition to meeting the primary contact center metric goals,
the Genesys solution also enabled Overstock.com to achieve
significant benefits in other tangential objectives.
monitoring, and compliance—capabilities Total Savings Opportunities
now provided by a fully capable
quality management and call recording from the Genesys Solution
solution—help the contact center The total savings emerges from the
contribute to the company’s score combination of the infrastructure savings
improvement. A much more streamlined derived from the total cost of ownership
incoming call flow and reduced queue analysis, the conversion to a Genesys solution,
holding times also help Overstock.com and the ongoing separate operational
maintain the higher score. savings. Combined total savings are over
$26 million.
Ongoing Cost Savings from
Contact Center Improvements
Operational Changes Contributing to Greater
Due to operational improvements resulting
Operational Efficiency
from the Genesys cloud-based platform,
Overstock.com is saving over $2,608,000 on Total TCO savings over $13,908,000
an ongoing annual basis in agent labor costs, five-year period:
beyond the comparative savings of the Total ROI operactional $14,040,000
infrastructure platform in the TCO analysis. savings over five-year
To put these ongoing operational savings in period:
perspective, we look at both the monthly
Total five-year savings $26,948,000
incremental ROI and the annual ROI.
with Genesys cloud-based
On an annualized basis, the full year costs solution:
divided by the monthly savings show ROI Annual savings with $5,390,000
payback in terms of months. Calculated as Genesys cloud-based
an annualized ROI (which would assume full solution:
annual payment in advance), the Genesys
solution payback period for Overstock.com is
measured at just 3.84 months.SUCC ES S S TORY
Genesys and Overstock.com / page 8
Solution Details
The following chart compares the on-premises Overstock.com infrastructure with the
Genesys cloud-based solution.
Capability Before Genesys With Genesys Discussion
Carrier Verizon Verizon and Gained redundancy, and managed by Genesys
XO
PBX Nortel, tied to Cisco-PBX Cisco now used just for internal calls
ACD only
ADC Nortel Genesys Gained cloud-based scalability
Symposium
Auto RightNow IVR Genesys Gained skills-based routing
Attendent/IVR
Telephone TDM SIP Reduced cost and gained scalability
Platform
WFM IEX/Nice IEX/Nice Integrated by Genesys
Call Recording Manual Verint Integrated by Genesys, enables agent coaching
& Monitoring
Call Reporting Nortel OTM Genesys Genesys feed to Business Intelligence
CRM Hosted RightNow Hosted Integrated by Genesys
RightNow
Redundancy Raid 5 selective Genesys—all Gained cost-effective system-wide redunancy
only but COAM
Agent Internal & Internal—in Improved agent skills, gained comman platform
Outsourced multiple sites
Summary Mostly COAM Mostly Creating virtual contact center with common
cloud-based reporting, fully intergrated application set, scalable,
calls routing to best agent
Genesys Applications > Genesys cloud-based IVR System using
Genesys Voice Platform (call prompting,
The complete set of Overstock.com contact
menu tree design) fully integrated to the
center applications includes:
Genesys contact center solution to provide
> Genesys cloud-based ACD/contact center call delivery information to the agents
using Genesys technology and Genesys
> Overstock.com owned and maintained
Software as a Service delivery supporting
in-house IEX workforce management,
two different locations
integrated to the Genesys contact center
> Cloud-based Workforce Optimization solution to retrieve call handling data
solutions utilizing Verint Technology
> Genesys cloud-based reporting: real-time
call recording, live monitoring, full-time
and historical reporting through Genesys
recording, and complete integration to all
and Microsoft reporting services
Genesys solutionsSUCC ES S S TORY
Genesys & Overstock.com / page 9
A robust, cost-effective and agile contact center plays a pivotal
role in creating the competitive differentiation and brand loyalty
so important to enterprise success in rapidly evolving markets.
Genesys-Provided Integrations Cloud-Based Contact Centers
> Hybrid integration to on-premises and Offer Substantial Benefits for
customer-owned IEX WFM solution
the Large Enterprise
> Net based API for integration to hosted Today’s cloud-based contact center
RightNow Technologies CRM application solutions offer substantial benefits for the
> FTP feed for Genesys data sent to an large enterprise. As demonstrated by the
Overstock.com on-premises Business Overstock.com experience, whether
Intelligence system for generation of companies need to address agent
executive management reports and scalability or business seasonality, enhance
dashboards that include contact center company agility, consolidate or virtualize
data, as well as internal customer service multiple contact centers, enable IT or
and sales data and benchmarks business transformation, or facilitate
faster time to market, there are proven
> SIP Infrastructure (Genesys SaaS
cloud-based solutions available to solve
and Overstock.com on-premises
these tough challenges. And while a
infrastructure) to support greater
decision to “move to the cloud”can have
application and integration capability,
significant cost savings and compelling
as well as lower network costs
lower total cost of ownership results, the
> A fully redundant solution portfolio across opportunity to empower business change
all systems and applications provided while improving the customer experience
under the Genesys service offers are powerful motivators in today’s highly
competitive global marketplace. A robust,
cost-effective and agile contact center
plays a pivotal role in creating the
competitive differentiation and brand
loyalty so important to enterprise success
in rapidly evolving markets.
Corporate Headquarters About Genesys
Genesys Genesys is a leading provider of multi-channel customer experience and contact center solutions. With over 3,500 customers
2001 Junipero Serra Blvd. in 80 countries, Genesys orchestrates more than 100 million customer interactions every day across the contact center and
Daly City, CA 94014 back office. Genesys helps customers power optimal customer experiences that deliver consistent, seamless and personalized
USA experiences across all touchpoints, channels and interactions.
Worldwide Inquiries: For more information visit: www.genesys.com, or call +1 888 GENESYS.
Tel: +1 650 466 1100
Fax: +1 650 466 1260 Genesys and the Genesys logo are registered trademarks of Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories, Inc. All other company
www.genesys.com names and logos may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. © 2014 Genesys Telecommunications
Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved.You can also read
