Vermont Teddy Bear

 

For 30 years the Vermont Teddy Bear Company has been making the “the best Bears in the Universe” and delighting children of all ages across the globe. The Vermont Teddy Bear Company is one of America’s leading gift companies and also includes sister companies, the PajamaGram Company and Calyx Flowers. All three companies pride themselves on their world renowned customer service. The company is proud to be a BizRate.com Circle of Excellence Platinum Award-Winner and to have been recognized by online shoppers annually as one of the best eCommerce stores.

One of the hallmarks of the Vermont Teddy Bear Company is to continuously push itself to be an unsurpassed gift company not just by creating and delivering the best products but also by making sure its customers are receiving outstanding customer service. With PajamaGram’s record growth in the past year, and a growing team of contact center agents who were responsible for both sales and customer service calls across the three brands, and with peak seasons throughout the year, Vermont Teddy Bear wanted to ensure that it fuels its growth while maintaining its excellent customer service and sales record. A long standing customer of Envision’s flagship contact center coaching and team performance improvement solution, Click2Coach, the company took a step back to reevaluate its training and quality assurance programs and align them better with the increased focus on customer service and sales. 

ALIGNING CONTACT CENTER PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT WITH STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES 

An Envision customer since 2005, Vermont Teddy Bear engaged Envision’s Doug Geganto in 2010 to introduce the quality assurance team and contact center supervisors to the most recent best practices for using Click2Coach. Doug reviewed the existing training and evaluation tools and identified strategic opportunities to reinforce Vermont Teddy Bear’s sales philosophy. These included: 

• Creating new cross sale/upsale opportunities: Vermont Teddy Bear enhanced existing call evaluation forms by adding new sections which guided contact center agents through all possible upsale opportunities, including cross-brand promotions, customization and shipping. Together with a new emphasis on improved agent performance and customer service, the new upsale opportunities allowed agents to track their own performance via a bonus point section, creating additional incentives for exceeding performance standards. 

• Measuring revenue per call and per agent: By adding new revenue measurement capabilities to its call evaluation forms, Vermont Teddy Bear can create call profitability benchmarks and track agent performance over time. In addition, the capability allows the Quality Assurance team to measure the effectiveness of different coaching strategies and tactics, by overlaying training records with call performance records. 

• Improving call evaluation efficiency. Vermont Teddy Bear has a “8 Steps to a Perfect Sales” process that requires the agent to cover multiple aspects of Vermont Teddy Bear’s offerings, customization and shipping options. This process ensures optimal customer experience by streamlining the call evaluation form to follow the sales process. 

“Envision has been helping us run our growing business effectively and efficiently since 2005. It is their industry expertise and strategic approach that make them a valuable partner, who ensures that our contact center is aligned to the strategic goals of our company,” said Carrie Jenkins, Customer Relations Training and Development Supervisor at Vermont Teddy Bear. 

To further emphasize its focus on sales and customer service, Vermont Teddy Bear also began heavily utilizing Envision Click2Coash’s eLearning tools. In peak seasons, when inventory, Web site and promotion changes add an extra layer of complexity, instant Web clips are an effective way to teach and communicate with the company’s fleet of call agents, reinforce best practices and give recognition to star performers. 

Results
As a result of the consulting and performance measurement evaluation session, Vermont Teddy Bear was able to:
• Align the contact center and individual agent performance to quantitative Quality Assurance, sales and revenue goals
• Increase premium shipping sales by 27% for Vermont Teddy Bear and 28% for Pajama Gram (cumulative effect of new evaluation, sales training and performance incentives)
• Create visibility into individual agent performance
• Analyze the impact of promotions, marketing and advertising
• Improved customer service, meet Quality Assurance goals and delivered a consistent customer experience. 

“With the personalized consulting and service we receive from Envision we are confident that our agents are empowered to deliver the world-class customer experience that is supporting Vermont Teddy Bear’s growth,” said Carrie Jenkins.