Tele Sage

Description

Sears Carpet and Upholstery, a nationwide home services company specializing in carpet, fabric, and tile maintenance and cleaning, employs TeleSage's SmartQ to ensure that independent franchise owners provide top quality customer service throughout the country. TeleSage is the leading developer of load-and-go automated telephone survey software. With SmartQ technology, customer service managers can gather real-time feedback on customer satisfaction to evaluate the quality of franchise operations, provide faster responses to consumer complaints, and increase the percentage of repeat customers. Sears' challenge: to find a cost-effective means for managing franchise operations and ensuring customer satisfaction. Results using SmartQ: better supervision of franchise owners and higher quality service at substantial cost savings. Sears Carpet and Upholstery includes 120 owner-operated franchise locations and six corporately owned branch locations. With its two-step UltraCare™ cleaning system and a commitment to quality customer care, Sears Carpet and Upholstery provides services for over two million homes per year. Its guarantee of "complete satisfaction or your money back" has garnered Sears a 60-70% repeat customer rate, thereby boosting profits with a dependable revenue stream and lower advertising costs. Josie Thal, the division's National Customer Service Manager, constantly strives to achieve the highest standards in customer satisfaction at all the company's branches. By introducing SmartQ interactive voice response (IVR) telephone software for satisfaction surveys, Sears has gained a better understanding of its franchisees. In addition, SmartQ provides an easier-to-use interface and faster turnaround times at a lower cost than the mail-in surveys the company had been using. SmartQ allows Sears to manage customer service and franchise relations more effectively. As Thal explained, "SmartQ customer satisfaction surveys have allowed Sears Carpet and Upholstery to monitor and maintain excellent franchise service throughout the country." Sears service representatives leave customers with a toll-free number that administers a telephone survey giving customers an opportunity to evaluate their experiences and voice any complaints. The resulting satisfaction data assists both national management and franchise owners in analyzing and improving the quality of customer service. For example, the poor ratings reported by the customers at one franchise prompted the central office to intervene by supplying specific examples of deficient service and recommending corrective action. Customer response data also helps franchise owners to track the performance of individual employees and their interactaction with clients. This performance comes at an affordable price. By comparison, the mail-in surveys that Sears had been using cost $80,000 per year. SmartQ, in contrast, is an affordable, one-time software expenditure that allows companies to plan and implement surveys, with prices starting at $3,950. SmartQ surveys are also simple for companies to administer. Josie Thal explains: "It's easy to use and adaptable to my evolving needs. I can easily alter survey questions or develop new surveys for my changing customer service monitoring requirements." With mail-in surveys, revisions are time-consuming and the costs of reprinting are expensive. With SmartQ telephone surveys, Sears can update questions to reflect new services quickly and at no added cost. SmartQ captures consumer satisfaction information in an accessible format with rapid turnaround capability. Sears' former mail-in surveys contained two pages of written questions and often languished at customers' homes or in transit for six months before arriving at Sears. SmartQ IVR surveys, on the other hand, simply require a customer to call a toll-free number and respond to recorded questions using a standard telephone. Sears receives immediate results, allowing the company to address consumer concerns quickly and effectively. One customer, for example, left a message using SmartQ at 2:30 a.m, expressing her dissatisfaction with a carpet cleaning. The central Sears customer service office received the message, contacted the local franchise, and resolved the issue that same business day. As Thal says: "I like the fact that with SmartQ I can get real-time results and respond to customer needs promptly and efficiently. A timely response is the most cost-effective way to satisfy our customers. A happy customer is a repeat customer." Thal projects that SmartQ will enable Sears to achieve a 25% increase in customer satisfaction, reaching an 80-85% satisfaction rate. This attention to quality service will mean more repeat customers, a more dependable client base, and lower costs for advertising. The end result is increased profits. As a leader in automated telephone technology, TeleSage's SmartQ software presents real-world solutions for everyday business problems. As the Sears example clearly illustrates, SmartQ is an excellent choice for managing customer satisfaction within a franchise structure. Back to the top Travel Adventures, a company specializing in travel arrangements for educational groups, uses TeleSage's SmartQ survey software to enable its clients to access account balances in real-time and make payments on those accounts. TeleSage is the leading developer of load-and-use automated telephone survey software. With SmartQ technology, users can easily and affordably gather information from customers, and supply current data back to clients--24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Travel Adventures' Challenge: to provide clients with current information on account balances and gather payment information in a secure, automated process. Results using SmartQ: a fully automated telephone information system that reduced labor costs, streamlined the billing process, and increased profitability. Based in Lapeer, MI, Travel Adventures (www.traveladventures.com) specializes in packaging educational travel for school groups ranging from elementary school through college. The business was founded by former English teacher, Dave Snyder, who reported that he "enjoyed traveling with his students and thought it was an experience more students and teachers should share." With the motto "Expanding Young Minds. Exploring New Worlds," the company has been providing full itineraries, handling hotel and restaurant reservations, and supplying event admission tickets for the past 14 years. As a company that handles 30,000 participants per year, Travel Adventures was overwhelmed by clients calling the company's toll-free number to inquire about their account balances. The company asked Larry Grupido, Travel Adventures' Director of Information Systems, to find a way to automate the process and free employees for other important tasks. He chose SmartQ because of its price, flexibility, and robustness. SmartQ is the market leader in affordability. Larry Grupido explained, "We chose SmartQ because of the price. It was much less expensive than other IVR systems." Compared to most interactive voice response systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars, the SmartQ software package is very cost-competitive. Another beneficial feature for Travel Adventures was SmartQ's flexibility. Because users can compose their own surveys and alter them as needed, SmartQ clients have much more control over the cost and function of their surveys. As Grupido remarked, "I liked the do-it-yourself design that allowed me to create and modify surveys as I wished." SmartQ's robust nature and user-friendly features led to efficient implementation and high consumer satisfaction. Grupido recounted: "I had the IVR system up and running in a very short time. I had a prototype fully functional in 6 hours. Honestly, SmartQ works so well I haven't had to touch it in months." Travel Adventures believes its customers are highly satisfied with the IVR system. Grupido explained: "If a customer successfully uses the IVR system, we never hear from them. That is the best feedback we can get." SmartQ's practical and technical features resulted in a substantial improvement in the company's bottom line. Snyder and Grupido reported: "SmartQ has increased employee productivity and streamlined the billing process. Through those actions alone it has increased profitability because we can now handle more volume with less staff." SmartQ enables companies to harness the many benefits of automation for an affordable one-time price. As a leader in IVR, SmartQ presents real-world solutions for everyday business problems. Its affordability, ease-of-use, and reliability provide companies with an innovative solution for maximizing the collection and distribution of information while reducing labor costs and increase profitability. Travel Adventures' successful experience with SmartQ can be repeated with any company seeking to automate account information and payment over the telephone. Back to the top PRR is an integrated communications firm with offices in Seattle and Washington, D.C. The company works with municipalities and public agencies, as well as a small number of private companies. Their projects focus on environmental and social responsibility issues. PRR's motto, "Inform, Engage, Empower," defines the fundamental goal of every project the company undertakes. PRR (www.prrbiz.com) decided to use TeleSage SmartQ software to expand the array of research techniques they offer their clients. SmartQ is a fully automated telephone survey system and the leader in load-and-go survey software. With SmartQ, users can create, record, and administer their own surveys easily and affordably. PRR's challenge: to conduct effective telephone surveys within budget and with high levels of client satisfaction. Results using SmartQ: a fully automated, telephone survey system that provides PRR and its clients with low-cost, reliable, and innovative research capabilities and more customer contracts. Over 70% of PRR contracts include a research component. That is where Bruce Brown and Katherine Schomer, research associates at PRR, became involved. From designing surveys to creating reports and giving presentations, Brown and Schomer manage every step of the research process. Their goal is to help PRR's clients implement projects based on solid, comprehensive research, at a reasonable price. PRR's research methods often determine whether or not the company wins a contract. PRR has a variety of research techniques to gather information, including focus groups, online surveys, intercept interviews, and, now, automated telephone surveys. About choosing SmartQ, Brown said: "We recognized the value of adding interactive voice response (IVR) technology to our research toolbox. SmartQ offered our clients two major advantages: cheaper and faster survey administration over other methods." SmartQ provides PRR clients with a more cost-efficient research option. "Our customers are always looking for low-cost, time-saving services," continued Brown. He added: "We have won some contracts specifically because we offer SmartQ." SmartQ's reliability also benefits PRR staff and clients. A project for the Washington State Child Care Resource and Referral Network (Network) required PRR to create a customer satisfaction measurement system for 250 child care providers. PRR decided SmartQ was the best method to collect provider feedback. The real concern for PRR was how people would respond to an automated survey. Schomer recounted: "We were afraid that people would be more inclined to hang up during the middle of an automated call versus a live interviewer, but that was not the case. All but two of the respondents who started the survey completed it." Child care providers called a toll-free number to complete survey, which took 7-9 minutes on average. SmartQ enabled PRR to collect, score, and store that data automatically. SmartQ also made it simple for PRR to report the results of the Network project. TeleSage's IVR system automatically stored the data in a standard Access database. Schomer explained: "We used SPSS reporting software to relay the results of the survey to the Network. It was very easy to transfer the data to a SPSS format." Because of their success in the initial project, the Network wanted PRR to replicate the survey annually. With SmartQ, PRR can re-administer the same survey to providers year after year, while storing the data from each survey in a single Access database for fast, easy retrieval. Using innovative technology, like SmartQ, is important to PRR's customers. TeleSage SmartQ runs up to 99 IVR surveys at one time, delivers surveys in any language, and has the ability to branch to different questions, surveys, or telephone numbers, based on a caller's response. The software also provides users with real-time results, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For Brown, "Being able to offer SmartQ to our clients tells them that we use the latest technology out there. We can provide them with the right technological resource to get the job done the smart way and at a low cost to them." Back to the top

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