Retail Mobile Technology Sales Process Optimization

Balancing Efficiency and Customer Experience

THE CHALLENGE

The client is a Canadian multi-carrier mobile phone service reseller with 180+ store locations nationwide.  Over the past 8 years, the client had experienced significant growth by leveraging a business model that is strategically focused on personalized service and repeat customer relationships. Stemming from a lack of transparency into in-store operations and exasperated by rapid growth, the client had experienced a number of operational challenges that were impeding its ability to optimize their customers’ in-store experience, specifically related to:

• Brand and operational consistency across all store locations
• Alignment between the customer engagement strategy and customer requirements/expectations

The client required a data-driven diagnostic on store operations to determine improvement opportunities from an employee and customer perspective.

THE APPROACH

Leveraging a data-driven Lean Six Sigma DMAIC approach, CRG led the following:

• Interviewed the client’s leadership team and facilitated workshops to define Critical to Quality (CTQs) measures for both store operations and customer experience
• Executed a nationwide direct to customer survey to confirm requirements and expectations of the in-store experience (i.e., product offering, service quality, satisfaction)
• Conducted a time and motion study across a large sample of stores across Canada in order to capture:

- Process variation, timing and efficiency by employee, store and region

- Real-time customer journey data to provide complete transparency into the customer experience

• Modeled survey and observation data (operations and customer) to identify and quantify improvement opportunities
• Documented recommendations in alignment with requirements and developed an implementation roadmap
  

THE RESULTS

• Identified an immediate opportunity to generate $3M-$3.6M in a combination of incremental revenue increase and cost savings through implementing quick wins
• Leveraged customer survey and customer journey data to establish key, unique customer profiles (including buying tendencies & engagement preferences) in order to refine customer engagement strategy
• Developed a sequenced and prioritized roadmap of improvement opportunities across people, process and technology to drive the cost savings and customer experience improvements in an achievable plan