Asda Call Centre Audio Case Study

 

Client:        ASDA

 

Attirbutes:  Call Centre Experience and Brand Consultancy

 

Services:    Call Centre Audio

 

 

Background:

 

Asda one of the largest UK retailer with 321 stores in the UK and 148,000 colleagues.

 

Asda’s mission is: 'to be Britain's best-value retailer exceeding customer needs always'.  As well as having a mission statement, ASDA has a statement of purpose.  

 

Asda’s purpose is 'To make goods and services more affordable for everyone'.  Asda’s strapline ‘ASDA price’ denotes a sense for value for money, good products at low prices without affecting the value of the brand. 

 

To help retain customer loyalty and create a clear image in the minds of its customers Asda wanted to ensure that all customer touch points met their mission and values. Premier were asked to review the Asda customer calling customer experience to advise how customer interaction could be enhanced to ensure that their mission and values were continually met.

 

 

The Project Objective:

 

Asda was recognised in the 2011 Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service, a recognition the company understandably wants to maintain. Continual improvements in call centre customer service mean that it is often useful to benchmark against competitors and ‘best in class’ to identify areas for improvement.

 

Premier were instructed by Asda to advice on how the caller interaction with Asda could be enhanced.  

 

Asda’s main objectives were to:

 

 

The Service:

 

 

Existing IVR Audit, Re-Sculpting and Benchmarking Report

 

In order to improve on what’s currently used on the automated part of an Asda call, it was important for Premier to assess what’s working and what could be improved.

 

A report by Premier on the current IVR detailed the current Asda experience. This report looked at any brand damaging elements and made clear recommendations on how to improve the current IVR on the 3 headline numbers (Customer Service, Home Shopping and Asda Direct).

 

Premier also provided detailed benchmarking analysis with illustrative call recordings.  The work undertaken to achieve the objectives set by Asda were as follows:

 

Mystery shopping calls for the pre-connection experience for the 3 Asda headline numbers. This was based on the most common caller objectives to understand where Asda currently offer consistencies and inconsistencies. Once this had been completed, Premier were able to identify areas to focus on.

 

Review of existing estate of numbers to understand where Asda currently offer consistencies and inconsistencies

 

Mystery shopper calls to competitors for benchmarking analysis to identify points of parity, strength and weakness for Asda versus benchmark group.

 

Production of change-tracked re-scripting recommendations of all Asda IVR scripts to make them consistent with the Call Centre Audio Brand Guide, including enhancements identified by the audit and benchmarking study.

 

 

Audio Marketing Review

 

Initial investigations into Asda’s current audio marketing suggested that after the migration of calls to store being answered in their call centre, almost all of the 16 millions calls/year were from existing customer, who, most importantly, are actively listening. Premier designed an Audio Marketing Schedule to scope the size of the opportunity, and made recommendations on how Asda could make best use of this valuable ‘air-time’. 

 

 

Call Centre Audio Brand Guide

 

An Audio Brand Guide enables organisations to benefit from audio branding to make sure the call centre experience is consistent with other brand touch points.  Through Premier’s analysis, they found Asda did not follow any IVR audio guidelines for best practise. This therefore could result in inconsistent vocal tone and language style.

 

This style guide gave Asda clear and concise explanations of how the tone of voice and message content aligns with brand identity, mission and values, customer type, call centre objectives and business and marketing objectives. 

 

This guide formed the basis of the development of current and future audio messaging and recording style and formed part of the brand guidelines. 

 

 

Comments:

 

“Premier undertook a benchmarking exercise and audio branding consultancy project to help ASDA provide an industry-leading call centre caller experience.  The project was a thoroughly worthwhile exercise.  By benchmarking ourselves against a selection of the Top 50 call centres as well as competitors, Premier highlighted the things we were getting right and also areas where we could improve our customer service. 

 

The work was undertaken professionally and promptly, and the quality of Premier’s recommendations and associated documentation was exceptionally high.  Premier’s expertise in this domain was clear, fresh and thought-provoking.  They were clearly able to draw on their experiences of working with many other customers to produce practical and valuable recommendations. “ Rick Mather, Asda