Even one bad service experience can drive away even the most loyal customer. As a consumer, there is nothing more frustrating than buying something from a company that can’t provide quality after sale support. Ironically, most of the time, it’s also bad for the company who is providing a sub- standard service experience.

Our client, a Fortune 500 consumer electronics retailer, provided a very good experience to its customers when they bought product in their retail store locations. However, when it came to service after the product sale, they were self admittedly falling short. This shortfall was not only bad for their customers but it was bad for business. The client’s cost of service was sky rocketing driving lots of red ink on their service P&L.

So, we worked with our client to both improve the customer’s service experience as well as our client’s profitability. We first analyzed the customer’s experience when returning products to the retail store location. We found that it was often difficult for the customer to return products due to long wait times or missing information related to the return. We also analyzed the customer’s experience as it related to their warranties. Through this analysis we also found significant gaps in the customer’s process as it related to warranty claims through the client’s call center.

Based on the analysis of the client’s service organization we proposed a complete overhaul of the way that both the retail and call center service organizations operated. Additionally, we established a completely different customer experience than the one the client had been delivering in the past. All of the recommended changes were detailed in a plan that was delivered to executive management and the client’s implementation team. The plans included details around changes to people, process, technology and overall strategic approach to the consumer.

After implementing these changes, the client was able to significantly improve its customer’s experience, drive increment service revenue and turn around the service organization from a cost drain on the organization to a profit center.