Hamleys boosts agent morale and sees 50% reduction in costs with Freshdesk

The company

With a rich legacy of more than 250 years, Hamleys of London Limited is known for its toys, entertainment, and service. The company is owned by C. Banner, a large Chinese conglomerate. The flagship store of Hamleys is on Regent Street in London and has more than seven floors, with more than 60,000 toys for sale. It is considered one of the city's prominent tourist attractions, receiving around five million visitors each year. The chain has ten other outlets in the United Kingdom and also has more than 60 franchises worldwide.

Vaughan Potter, head of customer services at Hamleys, decided to move away from the company's existing customer support tool, BoldChat, to a more versatile solution that would be fit for purpose as customer service expectations increased and the customer service operation scaled up.

The challenge and the solution

Vaughan and his team oversaw the new tool selection process. To bring customer support operations under a single umbrella, Hamleys needed an adaptable and easy-to-use solution. The company realized it needed a cloud-based delivery model to solve existing challenges and to meet the company’s changing needs.

The level of after-sales care that customers of Hamleys expect, coupled with the ever-growing competition in the retail industry, meant having an easy-to-use solution was imperative. This ensures support teams could get up and running quickly, and service levels are also maintained and exceeded. Additionally, Vaughan also wanted the new support tool to meet the following criteria:

• SaaS-based solution: Freshdesk is a cloud-based customer support solution

• Ease of use and intuitive UI: This was seen to be “cleaner and less clunky” than competitor offerings

• Automation capabilities: Automating manual reporting tasks frees up time for the team to focus on other deliverables

• Reporting capabilities: Freshdesk gives the team access to vital real-time data like SLA adherence and overdue tickets via the dashboard, something the previous tool did not offer

• Built on the cloud: By hosting its platform on AWS, Freshworks is able to focus its resources on developing an easy-to-use and intuitive product while leveraging a proven, reliable cloud infrastructure. With Freshdesk on AWS, customer support agents can instantly access customer data from anywhere.

• Future scope: Hamleys are confident in their ability to add more channels and more advanced automation workflows within Freshdesk as their support operation grows

• Increased return on investment (ROI): Hamleys were able to make a cost-saving of 50% by switching to Freshdesk

One of the biggest benefits of moving to Freshdesk has been the reduction in costs.

“The reduced license fee and overall package cost has worked in our favour, but the biggest benefit has been the increase in agent productivity which has enabled our team to provide exceptional customer support”, admits Vaughan.

Impact

After the quick implementation of Freshdesk, Hamleys could effectively optimize customer support operations.

Since going live with Freshdesk, workflows have become much more streamlined and efficient. By reducing agents' manual efforts, SLA adherence has improved. With admins spending less time on manual reporting tasks, this has freed up time for management to think strategically about their customer service, which is starting to positively impact customer satisfaction levels.

Speaking specifically about agent performance, Vaughan states, “agents are now able to measure themselves and see how well they are doing, that gives them a boost.” Even the gamification of the helpdesk has helped boost overall employee morale. “With gamification, our agents are able to see each other’s scores. This has created a healthy competition among the team, and their feedback about this has been very positive”, says Vaughan.

“Now that we have statistics and can see agent performance scores, that encourages our teams to provide even better customer service. My agents are happier now.”

In terms of quantifiable benefits, Hamleys saw a 50% reduction in cost as a result of switching to Freshdesk.