The Works delivers busiest ever Christmas with Eptica

Advanced email management solution transforms customer service at peak

Reading, 29 January 2015, Eptica today announced that fast growing UK retailer The Works increased efficiency and improved the customer experience during the crucial peak retail trading season by using its multichannel customer service platform. Eptica helped the eCommerce team deliver a bumper Christmas which was up 142% year on year. The Works deployed Eptica’s email management solution in just 5 weeks, enabling it to meet the needs of customers at Christmas.

The Works receives over 180,000 emails every year, with Christmas 2014 seeing historic volumes. Eptica enabled The Works to enhance the speed and consistency of responses by tracking incoming emails and web forms, assigning them to agents, suggesting potential template-based answers from its knowledge base and monitoring workloads, quality and response times. The cloud-based Eptica solution replaced a desktop email system.

With 300 stores across the UK and an expanding online business, The Works serves over 22.5 million people every year. The company stocks books, toys, gifts, stationery and arts & crafts at discount prices, and sells over one million products every week.

“As we expand, we’re increasingly focusing on digital channels,” said Simon Joseph, Multichannel Director, The Works. “We needed a technology solution that enables us not only to meet current needs, but that can grow with us. Partnering with Eptica has provided us with a flexible platform that can underpin our digital strategy, now and in the future."

The Works chose Eptica because of the strength of its technology, deep experience in the retail market and Quick Start implementation methodology. This dramatically cut deployment times through a collaborative approach that shared Eptica’s expertise and best practice through a close working partnership.

“Like all retailers, Christmas is a key time of year for The Works,” said Sue Chater, IT Project Manager, The Works. “Due to our continued growth we needed a system that would allow us to cope with increased demand and ensure we delivered the best possible customer experience. Eptica more than met our needs and was crucial to us thriving at Christmas when it comes to customer service."

The deployment of Eptica is part of a major investment by The Works in technology and people to underpin the digital customer experience. This also includes new back office, CRM and telephony systems.

“Email volumes are increasing at most organisations, making it a central channel for customer service,” said Julian Sammells, Sales Director UK & Ireland, Eptica. “Desktop systems simply cannot cope with the volume and complexity of emails that companies receive. Thanks to our technology The Works was well-prepared for its busiest trading period, with a solution that improved efficiency and enhanced the experience for its 22.5 million customers."