Unified international telecommunication system

The Portugal-based company Gigashopping runs TV sales channels in Portugal and Brazil for subscribers to the Portuguese-language cable television channel TV Cabo. The company sells a wide range of products, varying from beauty products and cosmetics to fitness equipment. Incoming phone calls and orders are handled by a 47-member operator team. www.gigashopping.tv

Challenges

One of the most notable characteristics of teleshopping is that, after an advertisement is broadcast on TV, the number of orders placed over the phone usually immediately rises significantly. Due to this type of ‘impulse shopping’ buyer behavior, there are often too many incoming calls for operators to physically be able to handle. In such cases, it is important to call back customers that don’t manage to reach an agent. Using a manual callback system, however, has been proven to be an inefficient method to deal with this type of challenge.

Gigashopping, specializing in these kinds of traditional TV shopping sales activities, faced several challenges. First of all, with a small number of operators, not all incoming calls could be handled immediately, and viewers unable to get through to an operator had to be called back manually.

In addition, as a company operating in two countries, it was important to be able to oversee all operators and customers in both countries in the same way, and also crucial to be able to view all telecommunications costs from both locations together in one place. Finally, the success of Gigashopping’s sales was being hindered by their outdated order-collecting IT system.

Solution

Gigashopping has overcome the challenges they were experiencing by use of the tailored solution VCC Live has provided them with.

Gigashopping uses VCC’s telecommunications service in both Portugal and Brazil, allowing them to unify cost records and gain a clear view and understanding of the expenses. This also allows them to track the activities of their operators in one system.

Instead of using Excel spreadsheets, order registering and tracking has been transferred to a dynamically manageable web site, based on a similar platform to those used by online shops. This allows agents to place products ordered by viewers over the phone into a virtual shopping cart, making ordering processes much faster.

VCC Live’s predictive dialer has been introduced to handle missed calls and to optimize callbacks. This solution allows operators to significantly increase the number of both handled calls and successful sales.

Results

The introduction of VCC Live’s software has provided Gigashopping with an efficient system to manage sales, telecommunications, and customer support within one single solution. VCC Live’s single telecommunications service covering both countries in which Gigashopping does business, has resulted in immediate cost savings for the company. These costs are transparent and plannable, and thus support potential future expansion.

VCC Live’s comprehensive cloud-based solution handles purchases, customers, and outbound and inbound calls within one single platform. Agents can leverage a user-friendly interface, receive calls, and record orders quickly within an all-in-one software solution. Furthermore they can manage callbacks efficiently with the help of a personalized predictive dialer.

The new platform also allows them to view accurate information on order trends, track customer buying habits, and design better upsell and cross-sell campaigns.

Using the customized predictive dialing system has increased the rate of successful sales based on callbacks by 83%.

Another improvement in Gigashopping’s contact center operations has been the improved workload balance distribution among agents. By addressing and solving this task, VCC Live’s solution allowed them to concentrate and plan upsell and cross-sell activities and campaigns more effectively.