Republic Manages Christmas Peak With Eptica

Republic,the leading multi-brand fashion retailer, has chosen online customer servicetechnology from Eptica, European provider of multichannel customer interactionsoftware (www.eptica.com) to manageincreasing demand as a consequence of its record breaking ecommercegrowth.  Despite coinciding with a Christmas surge in enquiries, Republic'sinvestment in improving online service for its customers has enabled theretailer to provide faster responses and increase First Contact Resolutionthrough its email channel to 90%.

Republic.co.ukhas adopted a self-service approach on its Top 10 Hitwise ecommerce site toprovide visitors with immediate online answers to their questions.  To date, just 6.7% of customers using Eptica Self-service go on to submit an enquiryby email, thereby dramatically reducing the volume of incoming enquiriesrequiring a response.   

The websites' customer self-serviceis seamlessly integrated with Eptica Email Management and both share anadvanced ‘meaning based' search engine and centralised self-learningknowledgebase.  The technology accurately analyses the text of an inbound email customer enquiry toprovide the customer services agent with the ‘best answer'. Consequently, Republic'sagents have been able to reply to customers faster and more effectively.

Sharon Biltcliffe, Customer Service Manager at Republic, commented:"We experienced a huge customer service peak in December ‘08 and it became apparent that oursystems were not going to support business growth. One of the reasons we selectedEptica was the simplicity of the system from a user perspective, once we'ddecided to go ahead it was up and running within 5 weeks.   The contrast before and afterimplementing Eptica was extraordinary - we couldn't have handled the Christmas peak thisyear without it."

Eptica'ssoftware also enables the contact centre to take an active part in controlling inboundenquiries.  As agents encounter new questionsthey can use a ‘one-click' action to flag them as needing an answer to be quicklyadded to the system's knowledge base and made available to customers via onlineself-service.   Similarly, when thecontact centre experiences an influx of questions about the same issue such as deliverytimes at Christmas, the information can be reprioritised and pushed to the top of self-service pagesso that customers can find it faster and therefore not need to email.

Sharon continued: "Wealso use the system's knowledge base to train new agents which has cut trainingtime by at least half. We can take on temporary staff to help us with busyperiods and in a couple of hours they can be ready to handle specific types ofquestions."

Sincethe business launched in 2007, the number of email enquiries received byRepublic's customer services team had grown month-on-month. ConsequentlyRepublic sought to implement a specialist customer self-service and emailmanagement system to increase efficiency and maximise the knowledge availableto customers during each first contact.

Dee Roche, European Marketing Director at Eptica, added: "Republic isa high growth, dynamic business and its success could have outstripped itscapacity to manage customer interactions on a one-to-one basis. Moreover, thisapproach is simply no longer necessary as so many customer service enquiries canbe managed through a fully-integrated approach to customer self-service.  Republic has proven that investing in servicedelivery through a system that evolves with every interaction will increaseboth business efficiency and revenue performance."

Eptica'sMulti-channel Customer Interaction Management software enables website andcustomer service channels to work together to improve quality of service,resolve enquiries faster, reduce costs and maximize every sales opportunity. For further information please contact Eptica on marketing.en@eptica.com or visit www.eptica.com.

Link to Press Release: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Republic-Manages-Largest-Ever-Christmas-Customer-Service-Peak-With-Eptica-1121370.htm