Hammonds

There was a 12.5% reduction in complaints directly going into the CEO, showing a real improvement in staff confidence and ability to deal with customer complaints.
The Trustpilot reviews went from 3.9 to 4.6 in 7 months.
In 7 months, service order costs reduced by 35% and compensation spend has been reduced by 40%.

Challenge

Hammonds were very aware that their customer service reviews on sites such as Trustpilot were not matching the high quality products they offer. Through COVID, materials were in short supply and delivery time was 20 weeks, meaning a half-year wait for some customers. The customer service team were not equipped to deal with irritated customers and this was causing their service order costs to increase (service order costs are when something goes wrong such as a broken product). Hammonds monitor those costs each month and not having good customer conversations meant they were ordering parts that they didn’t require, creating cost and waste that directly impacted their bottom line. This in turn meant that spend KPIs were not being met.

On reflection, Hammonds felt that they did not have an identity as an organisation and the lack of a formal onboarding process was why the customer service team were not equipped to excel.

"It was really important to us that our service matched our premium quality products. We can already say that we’re a long way towards achieving that goal thanks to this thorough focus on service clarity and staff development"

Sanjay Tailor
Head of Customer Experience at Hammonds

Solution

Initially there were several consultation sessions with the relevant staff from Accelerator and Hammonds. It was important that a variety of staff were included to ensure the service culture was in line with the company’s mission as a whole. Multiple questionnaires were distributed to Hammonds’ service team. Questions such as ‘what does customer service look like and feel like here?’ were asked to capture the current and desired perception of service culture at Hammonds.

Using that feedback together with several discussions and brainstorming sessions, Accelerator and Hammonds jointly created 4 service themes for training:

Managing customer expectations - Understanding customer needs, wants and desires with clarity.

Building confidence – Elevating customer service staff to be confident in solving issues and following through on a promise.

Owning the issue – Training staff to take full control of the situation. A zero-tolerance policy on passing the buck to a team member. Even if it’s not your customer, you will endeavour to solve the issue as best you can.

Tailored delivery - Not being faceless or cold but being human. Understanding each customer profile and tailoring to their needs by taking time to think about that unique customer.

Results

After seeing impactful results, Heidi and the Accelerator team condensed the learning into modules which were then used as a refresher training course, so Hammonds could 'Train the Trainer' and attain their goal of self- sufficiency going forwards.

There was a 12.5% reduction in complaints directly going into the CEO, showing a real improvement in staff confidence and ability to deal with customer complaints.
The Trustpilot reviews went from 3.9 to 4.6 in 7 months.
In 7 months, service order costs reduced by 35% and compensation spend has been reduced by 40%.

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