Michael Kors, New York, NY, United States: Ebrahim Hyder, VP of Customer Service

Written answers to the questions

Total 198 words used.

The MICHAEL KORS Contact Center was established in 2014 to provide real-time support to a growing customer base who shopped online via the brand's website. The VP of Customer Service, Ebrahim Hyder, wanted to create a call center environment that mirrored the Retail store experience. By partnering with the BPO provider, he designed a bespoke Contact Center with product showrooms, mannequins, display tables, and streaming music to create an energetic and immersive environment that felt like an extension of the brick-and-mortar store experience. This highly branded and engaging environment made recruiting and retaining staff easy. Ebrahim was also given the directive to sell and turn the call center into a profit center. Using a white-glove, consultative selling approach to create lifelong customers and loyal fans of the brand, the call center became a profit center and started generating more sales than many of MK's brick-and-mortar retail stores.

Ebrahim’s Successes:

• 2018    Accomplished over 200%+ Return on Cost from phone and chat-assisted sales
• 2019    Exceeded sales goal by over 150%
• 2020    Profitable by 4% despite COVID closure for five months
• 2021    Exceeded $1M in Call Center profitability
• 2018-2022    Ushered MK Call Center to several Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie wins            

Total 249 words used.

Challenge: COVID affected MK's business, resulting in significant cost-cutting. Ebrahim was directed to completely shut down outsourced call center operations and provide nominal in-house support with a few MK employees. Knowing this would be detrimental to customer service and cut off a high-volume sales channel, he took it upon himself to challenge that request.

Approach: Ebrahim preserved and negotiated funding to retain a limited staff to keep the email channel open while phone and chat channels were closed. Soon the email backlog increased, with a response time of ~15 days. Ebrahim's team sent a "Mea Culpa" apology message to customers who've not received an email reply. This tactic bought some much-needed time to help reduce the email backlog. However, customers also took to social media to complain about the lack of phone and chat support. To the Executive team, Ebrahim continued to highlight the Contact Center's role in supporting customers and generating sales and successfully got funding to reopen after five months of closure. Quickly Ebrahim developed an opening strategy to ensure the Call Center could return to pre-COVID sales and service levels.

Outcome: Thanks to Ebrahim's commitment to customer service, the call center was able to reopen before the holiday season. He also secured funding for additional training, increased the recognition budget by 100%, and secured the call center's position as a critical sales and support channel within the organization. Unfortunately, this challenging period also affected Ebrahim's mental and physical health.

Total 244 words used.

Some challenges Ebrahim had to overcome due to Covid shutdown

• Reduced operating budget by 77%
• Closed phone lines
• No opportunity to sell
• eMail as the only contact channel
• Customer complaints on social media

Ebrahim's plan to reopen included

• Reducing email backlog with "Mea Culpa" messaging
• Lobbying Executives for funds to reopen
• Developing a reopening plan which included
  • Rehiring tenured agents to reduce ramp time
  • Requesting funds for additional sales training
  • Requesting funds to provide more employee incentives and recognition
• Offered "Retention Bonus" to reduce attrition
• Introduced a commission-based incentive that rewarded everyone who made a sale

Operations Approach

Thanks to Ebrahim's perseverance, commitment to customer service, determination in lobbying executives, and methodical approach to reopening, the MK Call Center emerged stronger and better than before the COVID shutdown.

One aspect not often discussed is the toll this ordeal exacted on Ebrahim's mental and physical health. He always projected a positive attitude so that his team was not aware of how the closure affected him. More recently, when discussing the call center shutdown, he often says, "This time was the darkest period of my professional career as I experienced anxiety and depressive symptoms."

Results

• Sales exceeded the target by 20%
• Sales Conversion Rate increased from 37% to 39%

• Average Order Value increased 4% [REDACTED FOR PUBLICATION]

• Attrition reduced by 5%
• FCR improved from 89% to 90%
• Ebrahim started daily positive affirmations, practices breathing techniques, and completes weekly HIIT training to remain calm and grounded

Total 134 words used.

We provided a deck that supports the achievements for Customer Service Leader Of The Year. It includes KPI tracking slides to quantify the performance, examples of $100K Sellers Club award, screenshots of the digital training catalog, and excerpts from Korn Ferry's Professional Selling Skills ® training.

1. This is a link to more information on the impact of COVID on mental health in the workplace: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/state-and-local-updates/pages/coronavirus-ongoing-pandemic-worker-mental-health.aspx
2. This is a link with more information about Korn Ferry's Professional Selling Skills ®  
3. This is a Wall Street Journal story on COVID-19 impact on Contact Centers around the world: https://www.wsj.com/articles/calls-to-companies-rise-amid-coronavirus-but-operators-arent-standing-by-11585483200
4. This article by Harvard Business Review addresses the difficulties of maintaining program performance during COVID-19.
5. This is the MICHAEL KORS website: www.MichaelKors.com
6. Additonal Data slides attached to the nomination