Tuesday, 15 May 2012

Intelecom delivers contact centre solution in the cloud to Domino’s Pizza

Domino's Pizza UK and Ireland is seen as the leader in the fast-growing pizza delivery market. It holds the exclusive master franchise to own, operate and franchise Domino’s Pizza stores in the UK, Republic of Ireland and Germany.

Domino’s Pizza opened its first UK store in 1985. Today, there are 726 stores in the UK, Republic of Ireland and Germany, of these 575 stores are in England, 48 are in Scotland, 28 are in Wales, 19 are in Northern Ireland, one is on the Isle of Man, one is a mobile unit, 48 are in the Republic of Ireland and six are in Germany. The head office is in Milton Keynes and employees of Domino’s Pizza work in a wide variety of functions ranging from marketing, IT and training to fresh dough production. Despite their different roles, all staff are dedicated to taking great care of their customers and delivering consistently high quality food on time.

In tune with today’s digital generation
Central to operations at Domino’s Pizza is its IT helpdesk service that underlines the company’s commitment to innovation. The helpdesk includes a hosted contact centre based on the latest Connect technology from Intelecom.

Tim Cawley, Helpdesk Manager of Domino’s Pizza, takes up the story, “Over the last few years, there has been a definite shift from telephone to online ordering with around 50% of delivered orders now placed over the Internet. Many of our customers are young, in their teens or students who expect real-time interaction at all hours from a variety of devices including the latest Smartphones. It soon became clear that our helpdesk needed to shift up a gear to keep up with demand from this growing technically-aware generation.”

Four years ago, before turning to Intelecom, Domino’s Pizza relied on a traditional telephone system with a hunt group which worked well but lacked the sophistication necessary to produce meaningful statistics and better manage call queues and agent time.

Introducing flexibility to manage diversity
During 2011 the Domino’s Pizza helpdesk handled nearly 103,000 calls. These included queries from stores with technical point of sale questions and a wide variety of calls from customers, for instance should they have difficulty ordering their pizzas from the website when using the latest Smartphones. In addition contact centre agents take calls from franchise owners wishing to connect to their stores to download a wealth of valuable live data directly via the latest apps. Call handling times vary from minutes for a simple pizza order enquiry up to an hour when a store’s point of sale system requires technical support.

The contact centre is open from 10.15 in the morning to the following morning at 5am to support the company’s diverse customer base as Tim Cawley explained, “You’d be surprised how many people order pizza in the middle of the night, mainly students or night clubbers who fancy a late snack and we are there for them.”

Happy staff, happy customers!
The unusual opening hours of the contact centre have affected the company’s recruitment process. The focus is on offering flexible shift patterns and remote working to help staff achieve an important work/life balance that keeps them and the customers happy.

Tim Cawley added, “Remote working is important for staff retention but it wouldn’t be possible without Intelecom. Working from home or from a mobile contact centre set up in a hotel for corporate events, means that staff don’t miss out on team-building events or the countdown to New Year’s Eve and when adverse weather prevents them from travelling to work, they simply log in from anywhere, at any time. The flexibility of Intelecom has proved crucial to running our business.”

Domino’s Pizza’s helpdesk forms an important part of the company’s disaster recovery plan. In the event of evacuation from the Milton Keynes offices, agents can shut down all telephones from outside and simply login from mobile phones to continue to take calls providing a totally seamless and uninterrupted service to stores and customers while offsite.

Agents benefit from receiving calls in a timely manner giving them a wrap-up period and the opportunity to write up notes before taking the next customer call. By controlling queue types, team leaders are able to create a positive training experience for new starters by ensuring they receive the straightforward enquiries first to build up their confidence quickly.

Despite an estimated 40% rise in online orders, approximately 94% of enquiries are still handled by telephone making the inbuilt intelligence of Intelecom vital for routing calls to agents with the right level of experience to ensure calls are answered personally rather than going through to voicemail. According to Tim Cawley, “This first point of contact resolution is essential in a company where we promise to deliver pizzas within a given period of time.”

Statistics make perfect business sense
Before Intelecom, Tim Cawley and his team relied on anecdotal evidence to back up requests for additional resources. Recently, using Intelecom’s Sonar reporting functionality to produce accurate statistics that are based on hard data, Tim was able to present a sound business case for recruiting five extra staff to satisfy increased inbound call demand.

On an everyday level, Tim uses Sonar to track agent activity, everything from working hours, call waiting times to an hourly breakdown of how many calls are answered versus number of calls presented during the day and by queue. The reports are fed into a corporate dashboard and discussed at weekly meetings, giving senior management significant trend analysis data that is fundamental to resolving recurring issues and proactively improving service levels.

This corporate dashboard was created by simply integrating information held in the Intelecom helpdesk with a separate call logging system to highlight Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) across all parts of the business. These KPIs are then measured against specific individual and functional Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to monitor the performance of the entire business.

For example, every agent is measured against their own personal SLAs. Intelecom flags up, with a pop-up alert on the agent’s screen, when a customer has been held in a queue for more than two minutes, the cut-off time before routing calls through to voicemail. This means that agents can prioritise their time, focusing their attention on those callers who have waited longest.

Dynamic future
Domino’s Pizza plans to build on the success of the current helpdesk expanding it, with Intelecom’s cloud based support framework, to create a dynamic central service desk environment. By ultimately linking the helpdesk into the company’s CRM system, Domino’s Pizza aims to provide a single point of contact for the entire company with the opportunity to offer a truly integrated service to staff, franchisees and customers capable of handling all queries for example enquiries via different types of media about IT support, pizza ordering and special marketing campaigns including vouchers and discounts.

The newly introduced broadcast functionality from Intelecom is a taste of things to come. Should a common incident occur, the contact centre records an announcement that informs customers via an automated response, that the situation is in hand together with the expected resolution time. This approach increases customer satisfaction and dramatically reduces the pressure on the helpdesk during stressful times.

Tim Cawley concluded, “Intelecom is an important business tool, giving us instant and total visibility of agent and customer activity. At a glance, we know what is happening across our helpdesk operations at the click of a mouse or when we are out and about on our personal mobile devices. Intelecom empowers us to make informed decisions and take proactive steps that make a real, tangible difference to staff and customers.”

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