Case Study: Vera Bradley

CUSTOMER PROFILE

ABOUT VERA BRADLEY

When friends Barbara Bradley Baekgaard and Patricia R. Miller were traveling together in 1982, they recognized a lack of feminine-looking luggage for wom- en and decided to create their own. With that inspiration, Vera Bradley was born, and the company has grown into an innovative and recognized brand that generates over $416 million in annual revenue.

Vera Bradley’s 60 customer service representatives (CSRs) handle more than 250,000 interactions each year, with the goal of creating an effortless cus- tomer experience.

THE CHALLENGE

But the company’s nine-year-old, on-premises system made it difficult to de- liver outstanding service. Call abandonment rates and customer complaints were high, and agents felt demoralized.

“Reporting was very difficult. We didn’t know how our contact center or any of the CSRs were performing,” explains Susan Campbell, Director of Customer Experience. “Our old, clunky system couldn’t give our agents insight into their handle time or calls per hour—nothing.”

Calls were often dropped, which resulted in abandonment rates as high as 30%. “Customers told us they had been on hold for 30 minutes, and the system just hung up on them,” says Susan. “It created an extremely unpleasant work experience for our agents.”

Because customer security is paramount to Vera Bradley, the company want- ed a solution that offered a high level of PCI compliance—one that could take payments through a secure IVR, not through agents. Today payments are taken through a secure IVR—not through the agents.

With the strong belief that boosting employee engagement would positively impact customer satisfaction, Vera Bradley set about finding a new contact center solution.

THE SOLUTION

After evaluating three vendors, including Genesys, Five9 and NICE CXone, the company selected NICE CXone.

“NICE CXone stood out because of its cohesive- ness,” says Susan. “There was so much great functionality we gained, like comprehensive re- porting, gamification, workforce management, PCI compliance and more.”

One of the immediate benefits with CXone was the reduction in call abandonment rates. “Our abandonment fell 75%,” says Susan. “With CXone’s reporting, we also know now that for every three calls we take, one results in a sale. We’re no longer missing out on revenue, and more importantly, our customers are no longer waiting in queue and then getting cut off.”

“CXone has been a huge transformation for us—it’s like moving from black and white into color,” ex- plains Susan.

OPPORTUNITIES IDENTIFIED

Work-from-Home Program Dramatically Boosts Employee Engagement

Using CXone, Vera Bradley launched a new work- from-home program that dramatically boosted employee engagement. Since CXone is a cloud platform, agents can work from any location: They just need an Internet connection, log-in in- formation and a browser.

“We were initially apprehensive about letting agents work from home,” says Susan. “We were worried about maintaining our amazing culture and were also concerned about productivity.”

The company launched a pilot program and was thrilled by the results. “Our work-from-home agents were actually more productive!” enthuses Susan. “The agents love working from home, and therefore, it’s a huge motivator for them to per- form well.”

With inView Performance Management for CXone, Susan can monitor the agents’ productiv- ity when they’re working remotely, just as though they were in the office. “That’s only possible be- cause of CXone’s accurate, trusted reporting.”

“Giving the agents access to their metrics has been a gamechanger,” says Susan. “Transparent reporting increased productivity by over 10% just by raising their awareness. Many of the CSRs were astonished when they found out how often they were putting themselves on ‘away from desk’ status.”

Producing reports is also significantly faster. “Building dashboards in inView Performance Management for CXone is super easy. It used to take us two to three hours weekly to create re- ports. Now it only takes 15 minutes, which is a 97% reduction!”

During the COVID-19 crisis, CXone was also in- valuable for enabling employees to work from home and for driving business continuity. “The COVID-19 pandemic is an example of how CXone performs so well during a disaster,” says Susan. “CXone has saved us many times, from the coro- navirus to power lines being cut. Our contact center stays up and running, and the customer experience is seamless.”

Optimizing Contact Center Hours

Previously, Vera Bradley relied on spreadsheets for forecasting, which was time consuming and inaccurate. “We often take calls and fulfill mer- chandise for our partners, such as Disney,” says Susan. “With CXone Workforce Management, we can now accurately forecast how many agents will be needed for those promotions.”

A combination of CXone Workforce Management and inView Performance Management for CXone has also enabled the contact center to optimize its hours without any negative impact on the cus- tomer experience, Susan explains. “In fact,” she says, “in just one year, our Net Promoter Score in- creased 2.7% and CSAT (customer satisfaction) grew three points.”

Gamification Boosts Agent Engagement and Reduces Attrition

To further boost productivity and motivate agents, Vera Bradley launched a gamification program using CXone. It was an immediate suc- cess and contributed to a 10% reduction in agent attrition, while engagement rose 15%.

Susan offers low-budget-yet-motivating prizes. “Agents can earn extra lunch time, a 30-minute workout in our corporate fitness center or a half day of vacation. Everyone is motivated by differ- ent factors, and CXone’s gamification lets us reward agents with multiple options.”

PCI Compliance Drives Customers’ Trust

One of the key factors that led Vera Bradley to se- lect NICE CXone was CXone’s PCI compliance. “It’s a brilliant system. The customer inputs credit card in- formation—without the agent being on the line—and CXone securely tokenizes it,” says Susan. “It’s en- abled us to launch our work-from-home program because our customers’ sensitive information is pro- tected, regardless of where our agents are located.”

“Our customers love CXone’s PCI compliance,” says Susan. “They tell us daily, ‘Thank you so much for having a system like this. I feel better knowing I don’t have to share my personal infor- mation with anyone.’”

In conclusion, Susan would highly recommend CXone to other contact centers. “We benchmark against other companies regularly,” says Susan, “and they’re always excited to see the innovative things we can do with CXone.”

“There are so many benefits we’ve gained from using CXone,” she says. “We’re no longer missing calls, our team is more engaged and our custom- ers are happy. We also know CXone will evolve with us, so we can continue to improve the cus- tomer experience—even into the future.”