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Company: Merchant Warehouse, Boston, MA
Entry Submitted By: Launchsquad
Company Description: Merchant Warehouse is a leading provider of payment technologies and merchant services. The company’s solutions enable merchants to more effectively connect and engage with their customers regardless of how, where or when they choose to shop. Merchant Warehouse’s flagship technology solution, the Genius™ Customer Engagement Platform™, supports both traditional and new payment types.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Customer Service Management Team of the Year

Nomination Title: Merchant Warehouse

Tell the story about what this nominated team achieved since the beginning of July 2012 (up to 525 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Merchant Warehouse completely overhauled the strategy and focus of the client services team in the past two years, with a renewed focus on decreased hold times, improved quality of service through active coaching, and a focus on first call resolution.

Since July 1, 2012, the 36 person Merchant Warehouse client services team answered a total of 314,201 inbound calls, a monthly call volume average of 17,000-22,000. On average, 73 percent of calls were answered within 30 seconds. With its new strategy, client services handled a 56 percent increase in call volume from 2011, with a dramatic reduction in the length of answer time and approximately the same number of employees.

By holding its team to specific metrics, Merchant Warehouse made significant strides in terms of the time spent on the phone. Establishing a concrete average handle time (AHT) goal of 425 seconds, including the entire phone call and any additional research or follow up, the team now answers each call as quickly and efficiently as possible. Merchant Warehouse also placed a renewed focus on the quality of the client services calls. Merchant Warehouse analyzed a variety of data that showed the opportunity to provide better service on the first call with a merchant. Now, Merchant Warehouse trains all client services representatives more comprehensively and provides a stronger foundation for each representative to help merchants with a variety of questions, including walking them through different processes on their terminal or payment gateway, without having to initiate a call transfer. The result is an amazing customer experience that empowers our representatives to control their calls better.

Beginning in 2013, the client services team zeroed in on improving customer retention, adding a small retention team to the larger client services group. The retention team specifically deals with cancellation calls. To date, this includes more than 12,000 cancellation calls, and a prevention rate of 14 percent, meaning, after speaking with our representatives, customers have decided to stay with Merchant Warehouse. Happy with success, but seeing room for improvement, Merchant Warehouse placed a particular emphasis on training the retention team in sales and client service, allowing retention representatives to provide on-the-spot pricing changes, account changes, and product changes to customers. This comprehensive training strategy is wildly effective and the retention team as a whole is a huge success within the broader client service team.

Finally, while world-class service to Merchant Warehouse customers is the focus for the client services team, there is also a company-wide effort to ensure employee moral. A new addition to the the client services group is the “Culture Committee,” an employee-led group that keeps our office fun through activities like cubicle decorating contests and cross-training within the company. Client service team leaders also have quarterly focus groups with the staff to learn about policies employees struggle with. These focus groups led to direct updates and changes to policies to better serve staff needs and maintain strong and efficient work flow.

Provide a brief (up to 125 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated team:

As the Executive Vice President, Operations, David McSweeney is responsible for delivering a world-class service experience to Merchant Warehouse customers, leading both the customer service and technical support teams. David is focused on soliciting customer concerns and feedback and driving continuous improvement to ensure an unparalleled experience.

David has a proven history of building solid teams, implementing scalable processes, and measuring performance. Prior to joining Merchant Warehouse, David led the overall customer service strategy for Cross Country Automotive where he served as Director of Customer Satisfaction. He implemented numerous operational process improvements and improved overall customer satisfaction, leading a team of six Sigma professionals. David has more than 16 years of experience in the payments industry.