Improving NewLink's customer experience and brand perception through an empathic customer service. 

Design Research | Service Design | Customer Experience | Employee Experience | Design Strategy

Client: NewLink was a B2B company that imported and commercialised electronics, audio and computer accessories in the retail market nationally.

Duration: 2009-2010, evolving along the following years.

Calling a customer centre for help is often a daunting and frustrating task. Knowing that I took a human-centric approach to help NewLink deliver a better experience for their customers, strengthen the relationship with them, and help establish the new brand in the Brazilian market. 

  • Challenge

    The company was new in the market and fast selling to the retail. They needed to quickly implement the service in-house to support customers with queries and faulty products.

  • Process

    Due to the project’s constraints, the initial process was based on desk research and the team’s experience. And then, improved over time based on observation, real-time iteration and feedback from customers during the calls.

  • Outcome

    The service helped establish a positive relationship with customers, enabling feedback collection to improve the service and other touchpoints. It also helped consolidate the new brand in the market through the good experience. Later, we also implemented a reward programme to keep agents motivated and cared for.

Strategy

As the company was new, it was essential to carefully manage the relationship with customers and strengthen the brand's presence in the market. The direct interaction with the customer offered the perfect opportunity to achieve that.

Being a customer myself, I empathised with the distressed callers on the other side of the line, and used that prompt to re-imagine the process, improve their experience and the company’s outcome. 

Approach
Stage 1

Due to the project’s constraints, we had to quickly define standard fields for the system and handle it to the external Developer.

The initial process was based on desk research and cross-department collaboration (Directors/Owners, Marketing, Logistic, Commercial). I gathered insights, documented the process, created initial guidelines and added visual references to better assist the customers and facilitate the process for agents.

At first, I also collaborated with answering the calls while the company hired the official team, which gave me a hands-on opportunity to try, iterate and improve the service directly with our customers. 

Stage 2

Key findings discovered during the iteration, and initiatives implemented:

  • I noticed that no matter how distressed the customer was, that stress could be reduced and, most of the time, reversed by being helpful and empathically listening to their complaints

  • I adapted parts of the process to vary by case/stress level: fast-track posting, dispatched from the main warehouse or more central location, inclusion of an extra item/gift

Customer support service blueprint

We implemented a feedback questionnaire at the end of the call to keep collecting customers’ insights, evaluate the service and improve it. We also analysed monthly the reports exported from the system and interviewed agents to collect their feedback and insights.

Later, we implemented a reward program to keep agents motivated and protect their mental health (not widely adopted back in the days).

Impact

  • The agile approach enabled us to fast design, implement, iterate and improve the service

  • Answering the calls allowed me to immerse myself in the process and get live insights from the customer, which also helped to:

    • Better prepare and train the agents

    • Improve the process and quality of the service

    • Improve other touchpoints: user manuals, packaging design, merchandise, website and products (we could negotiate with the factory in China to change/add features, and the customer feedback was a strong argument to use with the company’s owners). 

  • The empathic approach was often mentioned by customers as better than the competitors

  • Employee experience: the reward programme helped to protect the team from burnout, and the quality of the service.