Integrating a Call Centre with your Cellular Retail Business

By Allan Pulga

In cellular retail, dealing with customers is a continuous process, even after the sale has been made. As your business grows, so do your interactions with past customers, especially over the phone. When phone traffic begins to interfere with your in-store traffic, how do you manage keeping everybody happy?

You need a third party: a call centre. Customer calls to the store location are important. They bought from you and they require your assistance. But at the same time, your in-store staff can’t be expected to answer the phone when they’re busy helping customers.

Jump.ca, a Canadian cellular retailer based in Regina, Saskatchewan, integrated a call centre with its business four years ago and it has since become a vital part of the organization.

“We opened the call centre to better serve our customers,” explains Dominic Savio, Jump.ca’s director of operations. “We wanted our (in-store) staff to spend all their time serving customers without worrying about the phone ringing.”

Jump.ca uses a call-forwarding design to manage customer calls to its 13 store locations. For example, when a customer calls a store, it rings three times at the store (to give salespeople a chance to answer it) and is then forwarded to the call centre. However, if customers call the company’s 1-800 number, their call goes directly to the call centre.

“The biggest change was, with the amount of phone calls coming into the store, we (the store staff) weren’t panicking anymore to answer the phones,” recalls Cal Filson, Senior Regina-area manager for Jump.ca.

“It’s always more important to help the customers right in front of you,” he says. “They’ve taken the time to come into your store; they deserve your total attention.”

Both the in-store and call centre staff use the same RetailiQ database and are trained to handle customer calls the same way, so everything is consistent. “Customers have no idea they are talking to a call centre representative because, with the help of RetailiQ, we (the call centre staff) have all of their customer information at our fingertips,” says Savio.

The Jump.ca call centre has six to eight call centre reps answering the phones from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., fielding somewhere between 250 and 350 calls per day.

But they’re not only taking calls. Reps also make outbound calls to customers to inform them of upcoming promotions, to conduct customer satisfaction surveys, even to offer hardware upgrades. Making things even more convenient, the outbound calls integrate with Jump.ca’s online store, allowing customers to choose products online, confirm over the phone, and decide whether they’d rather have it delivered to their homes or waiting for them at their local store for pick-up. The entire system is synergistic.

“Customer satisfaction is a lot higher now because callers get to talk to somebody instead of leaving a message,” says Filson. Since the call centre’s inception, he adds, Jump.ca’s business has grown considerably.

“We’re a lot busier now, so the call centre is crucial.”