Alorica Reduces Return Rates for Large Retailer with Technical and Customer Support Services

Business process outsourcing solutions can offer a number of benefits, including cost savings, quality of service, productivity improvements, allocation of resources, operational expertise and flexibility. Alorica, a provider of business process outsourcing solutions and services, offers solutions for a variety of industries, including large retailers.

For the past six consecutive years, Alorica has been the sole provider for a large retailer’s customer outsourcing services. Originally, the large retailer employed a “no questions asked” return policy, which was convenient for customers but impacting the business. It turned to Alorica to reduce returns volume without impacting its customers’ experiences and loyalty.

“They were also trying to differentiate themselves from other big box retailers like themselves,” said Bob Cote, VP of call center operations, Alorica. “They came to Alorica and they worked with us to create the program that we have currently today for them, or that we support for them, which is the concierge program, and wanted to put together a program that offered their customers free technical support for any of their electronic products.”

Alorica primarily covered the retailer’s electronics department, working on return services for televisions and projectors, computers, laptops and peripherals, cameras and camcorders and iPods and MP3 players, and has extended its services to other departments and more seasonal products such as pressure washer and lawn care equipment and vacuums and carpet steamers.

“The return rate has reduced to their satisfaction,” said Cote. “Because we’ve done such a tremendous job in the reduction of returns they have since brought other product lines that are outside of those few product lines to us for help because they did have high returns.”

The new service had three pillars: contact center technical support, parts/repair services and Helix by Alorica. Helix 360 is Alorica’s proprietary software product that integrates all of Alorica’s offerings providing a single point of contact for all customer data and case history. The contact center support also included coordination with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to ensure a satisfactory result and experience.

“We’re basically the one-stop solution for them. We provide the call center, we provide the systems, we supply the labor, and we collaborate with them on an ongoing basis with the information that we’re retrieving everyday from the customers: the types of calls that are coming in, the types of products, the types of OEMs who produce those products, so we’re giving them a lot of feedback about what the customers are seeing,” said Cote. “We on their behalf are providing reports to the OEMs of information about their products that they may not normally get, but they get as part of a benefit or being with the program.”

The customer service offering offered service readiness, which integrated with partner applications for full visibility of the customer experience and designed and maintained full knowledgebase systems for product information and troubleshooting data for thousands of product SKUs; contact center support which includes pre-sales support to help customers purchase the right product, product set-up, configuration and installation support, assistance in coordinating repairs with the manufacturer during warranty period and supplier escalations team created; and service dispatch, which includes dispatch repair services with manufacturers for in-warranty repairs and follow-up on repair services, support in-warranty parts ordering requests and accessory requests and auditing team for services and parts invoicing.

“Their core competency is selling products and selling merchandise. That’s where we come in. We do a lot more for them as well; it’s the Alorica team that interfaces with all of those OEMs,” said Cote. “We get any information regarding training, technical bulletins, any service bulletins: anything that would help us support the customer, that’s what we work with them on.”

Alorica boasts a vast and varied client portfolio that spans a broad spectrum of industries, including automotive, energy and utilities, travel and tourism, healthcare and financial services. With an average client tenure of over thirteen years, it possesses capabilities and insights that come from working with some of the world’s most respected brands.

To learn more about Alorica, visit its website at www.alorica.com.

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