Republic has chosen customer service technology from Eptica to manage its e-commerce growth.

The fashion retailer is now able to resolve 90 per cent of first contact emails through its website by using the multi-channel interaction software.

Sharon Biltcliffe, customer service manager at Republic, comments: "We experienced a huge customer service peak in December 2008 and it became apparent that our systems were not going to support business growth. One of the reasons we selected Eptica was the simplicity of the system from a user perspective - once we'd decided to go ahead it was up and running within five weeks. The contrast before and after implementing it was extraordinary - we couldn't have handled the Christmas peak this year without it."

The software also enables the contact centre to take an active part in controlling inbound enquiries. As agents encounter new questions they can use a 'one-click' action to flag them as needing an answer to be quickly added to the system's knowledge base and made available to customers via online self-service. Similarly, when the contact centre experiences an influx of questions about the same issue such as delivery times at Christmas, the information can be reprioritised and pushed to the top of self-service pages so that customers can find it faster and therefore not need to email.

"We also use the system's knowledge base to train new agents which has cut training time by at least half. We can take on temporary staff to help us with busy periods and in a couple of hours they can be ready to handle specific types of questions," Biltcliffe says.

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