OCG
Online Cycling Gear, also known as OCG, is a digital eCommerce business in the cycling gear niche which includes cycling jerseys, kits, and apparel. OCG was built by cyclists for cyclists, helping them achieve high-quality, affordable cycling jerseys.
Online Cycling Gear has shipped out 84,000+ orders since 2017, and continues to serve its customers daily across 71 countries, almost always with their trusty free shipping!
They accomplish this by having some of the largest cycling apparel ranges in the business while maintaining full control over its design, manufacturing, and supply chain. This allows them to always stay ahead of the curve by offering the best product selection at the best prices.
OCG’s mission is to help customers on their cycling journey to make their apparel and cycling need unique, affordable, and of course, comfortable, no matter where they are located.
Challenge
Beat the underperforming internal team while support volume grew
OCG had an internal team of 4 who had been working on the campaign for quite some time in the Philippines. Their work included answering emails and sometimes interacting with the fulfillment and production teams overseas using WeChat.
This wasn’t your standard, simple customer service role for eCommerce companies – this was a bit more involved. It included handling different areas in the pipeline for merchandise, as well as customer-facing.
OCG was noticing some underperforming customer service reps while evaluating their internal team and told us clearly what we needed to beat.
We set some KPIs, actively monitored them, and compared our agent’s work to their own internal team. This was the only true way to measure the quality of service we were delivering in comparison to the underperforming internal team who had worked on this campaign for years while we were barely getting started.
We’re perfectly comfortable being told KPIs that we need to meet or beat, including ones that involve beating your current customer support team, whether it’s an internal team or a remote company.
We’ve been sized up across many of our competitors and done better in all areas including customer satisfaction ratings, accuracy scores, and reliability.
We’re always up for the challenge and we’re perfectly comfortable with tasks that don’t fit the average customer service role either. When you have an underperforming internal team coupled with a harder-to-do eCommerce customer service role than the average duties, that’s where we step in to bring up that customer satisfaction while doing the extra work.
Solution
2 shared agents, 2 different time slots
Never one to back away from a challenge, we proposed a unique arrangement where we would slot in one of our shared hybrid support agents to the busiest shift from Monday to Friday, with the idea that this agent would work alongside the existing team member, soaking up knowledge and documenting processes.
Then on weekends, a different shared agent would cover a previously empty shift, leaning on the other agent’s training and FAQs to provide support.
This arrangement, though unconventional, allowed us to discreetly learn OCG’s processes and policies, while also letting us get out ‘foot in the door’ in a bid to prove our worth, all for a fraction of the cost of one of the existing reps.
We set some KPIs and actively monitored them. Then we compared our agents’ work to their own internal team. This was the only true way to measure the quality of service we were delivering in comparison to the underperforming internal team who had worked on this campaign for years while we were just barely getting started.
Results
Outperformed the existing team within 3 months
Within 3 months of starting, despite the challenge of managing 2 shared agents in separate time slots whilst ensuring consistency, HiredSupport managed to beat every member of OCG’s existing team in all KPIs specified, namely CSAT, tickets handled, Average Response Time, and First Contact Resolution Rate.
Our CSAT stood at 87%, with the best response time and resolution rate, and second-best (by a narrow margin) tickets handled count.
Now that we had exceeded OCG’s expectations and proved ourselves worthy of their business, OCG let go of all but one member of their in-house team and HiredSupport took over the vacant shifts with full-time dedicated agents!
