Wella Choose Datapulse Operator Consoles for Smooth, Manageable Telecoms

Contactcenterworld.com

The Wella Group is a leading supplier of hair care and fragrance products and employs almost 18,000 people across its 150 worldwide locations. In the company's UK headquarters, based in Basingstoke, a reception area seats three operators who are responsible for answering and redirecting incoming calls from members of the public and staff employed at Wella salons. The operators handle on average 1200 calls per day, and need to answer the calls within a 7-second period.

Wella carried out a full and in-depth review of the call handling solutions available on the market and identified the following requirements:
Chosen call handling solution needed to be able to handle small to large volumes of calls
System needed to be easily integrated with existing technology
Ability to locate personnel using keywords
Ability to record personalised greetings
One point of contact for support

After lengthy discussion, Wella decided that Datapulse's Operator Module Console was by far the best option. The Operator Module was chosen because Wella felt it was the most user-friendly solution that would enable the operators to meet their call targets without stress as well as easily track the moves and changes of extensions. Most importantly, as Wella relies upon customer feedback it was imperative that the chosen solution ensured that customers weren't kept waiting and that they were put through to the correct extension as quickly as possible. For this reason, the product particularly won favour for featuring a Person-Specific Announcement function that answers calls with a personalised pre-recorded greeting that is consistently welcoming and professional however busy the operator is.

A recent upgrade of Datapulse's Operator Module also gave Wella the additional functionality of Real-Time Operator Statistics to measure the performance of the operator centre. The statistics provide managers and system administrators with the ability to monitor the performance of an individual operator or a group of operators in real time. Therefore they can quickly and effectively respond to the changes in call patterns.

In addition to measuring it, Wella could quantify the performance of its operators by using the Historical Operator Statistics feature. This function allows managers to access reports and historical information about single operators or a team in order to highlight training needs and enhance motivation. Therefore ensuring the operators are working to the highest standard and able to provide efficient customer service.

Once a decision was taken on the technology, the next step was the rollout of the solution to the site. Implementation was completed in six weeks and Datapulse partnered with BT to provide the programming switches and telephone lines ensuring quick and easy connection with Datapulse's Operator Module solution.
Ritchie Butters, Account Manager at Datapulse, comments: "Wella selected Datapulse to provide a solution that met their clearly defined targets for call handling. These were to answer calls within the allotted 7-second time frame, as well as effectively routing the calls once they had been answered. Operator Module effectively answered all of these requirements, and has exceeded expectations in terms of ease of integration."
The new solution was implemented at Wella on time and within budget. Within the first week of rollout, the operators at Wella were successfully hitting their 7-second call-answering target and all calls were correctly routed. This signalled a significant improvement in time usage and operator efficiency.
Tracy Wardle, Support Services Co-ordinator at Wella concludes: "We realised that we needed to implement a call handling solution to not only improve the customer experience, but to also reduce the stress of our operators in dealing with such a high volume of calls. The Datapulse solution has given us that much-improved efficiency, and our operators are delighted with the new system. Even at this early stage of the implementation, we are already seeing clear benefits of having deployed the Datapulse solution."