1. shopping
2. retail
3. department stores

How Capita used insight to deliver the most successful
‘Black Friday’ for John Lewis customers
Case Study
RECRUITING OVER
900 FTE
within a 12 week period
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Capita Case Study - John Lewis
ACCREDITED TRAINING
ACHIEVED &
ACCELERATED
speed to competency
© Capita 2015
Capita Case Study - John Lewis
Capita and John Lewis
How Capita used insight to deliver the most successful
“Black Friday” for John Lewis customers
The Challenge
John Lewis needed extra support to deliver customer
services during Black Friday 2014. From an operational
and revenue standpoint, this was one of the most critical
times of the year for John Lewis. In a usual trading week
220,000 orders are placed but on Black Friday over double
the volume is experienced. It was crucial that, even with
the increased contact volumes, the service provided to
John Lewis’ customers did not see any degradation.
The Black Friday week was the best week of sales in
John Lewis’s 150-year history, but with this came a huge
customer experience challenge which came down to the
planning and deliver of human resource capability, IT and
back office processing, this is where Capita’s expertise
came in.
Our Solution
Through its ten years of expertise and capability in
delivering peak trading services for a number of leading
high street retailers Capita was able to deliver the most
successful peak John Lewis had ever encountered,
providing quality customer experience even when
contacts were over double the forecasted amount. In
addition to this, we supported their business as usual
levels of service without any problem.
Using historical insight from an incumbent provider we
were able to build an agile operation. Our experience
in rapid recruitment allowed us to recruit 900 advisors
within just twelve weeks of the contract start date.
We trained our advisors using a bespoke training
programme designed to provide a seamless customer
experience at multiple touch points in a customer’s
journey. We simplified a previously complex system and
using analytics we improved productivity serving more
customers and reducing their effort in getting the end
products. Our advisors were trained to have multiple
skillsets to enable a flexible workforce allowing us to
reduce customer queue times and resolve enquiries from
John Lewis’s customers more effectively. This data driven
capability allowed us to provide the right resourcing to
provide the right customer experience, solidly joined up
from the first point of contact, to back office processing to
resolving enquiries and post-sales support.
Our success in helping John Lewis to deliver quality peak
customer experience was demonstrated by the fact that
we were able to reduce customer effort and response
times, provide invaluable advice and solutions and offer
additional contact channel choice and streamline the
customer experience.
John Lewis customers expect best-in- class service to
be provided no matter the circumstances and it was
crucial we delivered this to ensure John Lewis’ brand
was maintained. Our expertise in providing a seamless
customer experience contributed to more than £1 million
worth of additional sales.
WE CONTRIBUTED
TO MORE THAN £1M
worth of additional sales
© Capita 2015
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Capita Case Study - John Lewis
Our Success
„„ Used insight to streamline the peak process and reduce
complexity, allowing customers to get answers more easily
than any previous peak period
„„ Agility of recruitment. Doubling the number of advisors.
Recruiting over 900 FTE within a 12 week period
„„ Increased advisor capability which significantly reduced
queues and waiting times
„„ Serving more customers on the line than the incumbent.
> 90% of customers who called were served
„„ Reducing volume from Front Office to Back Office via the
introduction of an internal web-chat capability
© Capita 2015
„„ Reduced contact to order ratio
„„ Accredited training achieved and accelerated speed to
competency
„„ Improved end to end e-mail journey with the introduction
of a night shift team to react to volume of queries received
outside of operational hours. This allowed us to reduce the
time required for customers to get a response
„„ Contributing to more than £1 million worth of
additional sales
Capita Case Study - John Lewis
© Capita 2015
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Capita Case Study - John Lewis
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Core to our success is a proven record in
understanding our clients and their objectives; building
lasting strategic partnerships and transforming their
customers’ experience.
We are the UK’s largest provider of customer
management outsourcing and part of Capita plc, the
UK’s leading business process outsourcing (BPO) and
professional services company.
Contact us
If you would like to talk to us about how our award
winning teams can transform your customer
management operations then contact us today.0113 207 3340
@CapitCustMgt
www.capitacustomermanagement.co.uk
© 2015 Capita
© Capita 2015