Contact Lens King - Customer Service Training Team of the Year
Company: Contact Lens King Inc., Champlain, NY
Company Description: Founded in 2004, Contact Lens King has made it its mission to provide contact lens wearers with the best online option to buy brand name contact lenses at the lowest possible prices on a consistent basis. In concert with its commitment to value focused pricing, the company conducts its business in keeping with practices that support providing an exceptional customer service experience.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Training Team of the Year - External - All Other Industries
Nomination Title: Contact Lens King | Customer Service or Call Center Training of the Year
Contact Lens King is an online contact lens retailer that has experienced low levels of employee performance and highlevels of employee attrition rate. Both of these issues directly impacted the company's budget, available resources, and the level of service it provided to its customers. In an effort to address these issues the company committed itself to properly vetting and training current and new hires. The organization has restructured virtually every aspect of its training and onboarding process creating a more comprehensive approach to the problem. Prioritizing its quality of service became paramount for Contact Lens King to improve customer satisfaction and meet future growth, demand, and remain scalable in a budget-conscious manner. The company decided to implement an 8 step approach to the hiring, training, and onboarding process. These steps included attracting appropriate candidates, effectively screening process, collaborating with other departments to address issues, addressing the induction process, shadowing the new hire, introducing to independent work, and holding monthly reviews and feedback sessions.Once a new strategy was in place Contact Lens King also made it its priority to address current employees by requiring retraining and certifications in customer service.
Since 2019, Contact Lens King was able to completely overhaul its screening, onboarding, and training process (one that was previously virtually nonexistent). At the very beginning of this task, the organization had to address current employees along with new hires. This was addressed by doing the following.
1. Attracting appropriate talent through effective job postings.
2. Interviewing the candidates effectively by asking pertinent questions associated with experience, creative thinking, problem-solving, behavior, and ability to effectively communicate.
3. The company then collaborated with its IT department to create an informational, training, and testing website.
4. After theoretical Training is completed the next phase was induction to the various department, business operations, and products.
5. Once this step was completed the next step was for the new hire to begin shadowing a training specialist targeting a specific list of tasks the new hire will be responsible for. These tasks are only considered completed once both the trainer and new hire sign off on each individual portion.
6. The last phase of the onboarding process is allowing the new hire to work independently, with the training specialist as a support resource if required.
7. All of these training resources were also offered to current employees and a customer service certification course was required to improve their overall performance.
8. At the end of each month, the department supervisor has an individual monthly review with each employee to review overall performance, goals, and any feedback an employee may want to voice.
Once the above strategy was implemented the company experienced a decrease in employee attrition maintaining 90% of the same labor force over the previous 3 years. Contact Lens King also noticed an improvement in performance due to an increase in proficiency each agent has gained through this comprehensive hiring process. Some key performance indicators that the department used to monitor overall performance included live chat and call abandonment rates, average talk time, Service Level Agreement, and overall customer satisfaction. For instance, the company's live chat acceptance rate increased to 82.8% in 2021 compared to an average acceptance rate of 74.28% in 2020.The company’s call center also decreased its overall call abandonment rate to less than 1%, well below the 5% industry average, and surpassed the industry's Service Level Agreement by 17.5% to 94%(according to talkdesk and Vonage Analytics).
However, although these performance numbers are a testament to the newly implemented training program it was the third party recognition that was an affirmation of the department's hardwork.For instance, NewsWeek recognized Contact Lens King as providing exceptional customer service, ranking the department #1 in its latest issue. This achievement was also validated by TrustPilot, where as of January 4, 2022 it ranked Contact Lens King #1 in its Contact Lens Supplier industry. The company has also received an A+ rating from the BBB; an accomplishment its competitors yet have to achieve. This new training program has been transformative for the company overall.
Attachment: America’s Best Customer Service 2022 - Newsweek
This Newsweek acknowledgment helps demonstrate Contact Lens King’s continued commitment to improve its performance towards providing exceptional service to our customers. This publication has listed ContactLensKing.com as number 1 in its industry as displayed at the following link; https://www.newsweek.com/americas-best-customer-service-2022.
Attachment: TrustPilot Company Rating
This attachment illustrated the company’s achievement in providing exceptional service ranking as one of the highest rated businesses in its industry.
https://www.trustpilot.com/categories/contact_lenses_supplier
Attachment: Vonage Performance
This attachment illustrates both ContactLensKing.com’s SLA service level of 94% with a 1% abandonment rate.
Attachment: CLK_Training
This attachment is to illustrate our internal training website that is available to all employees. This resource trains employees technical and transferable skills.
Attachment: CLK_SearchEngine
This snapshot illustrates the resource that is available for employees to use in an effort to quickly find answers to customer’s questions.
Attachment: TalkDesk
Shows standard call center stats such as the SLA (80%) and abandonment rate (5%-8%).
KPI Performances
Abandonment Rate
-Contact Lens King Inc.: <1% Abandonment Rate
SLA (80/20 Service Level Agreement)
-Contact Lens King Inc.: 94% SLA
Customer Order Attrition Rate
-Contact Lens King Inc.: 6.8%
Customer Satisfaction
-Contact Lens King Inc.: 4.8/5 (Trust Pilot), A+ Rating (BBB)
Live Chat Acceptance Rate
-Contact Lens King Inc.: 83%
Volunteering
-2019-2021 Participated in the Great Strides for CF
-2019 Organized Food Drive for local food shelf
-2021 Volunteered for Toys for Tots
-2021 Participated in the Salvation Army’s Christmas Angel Tree