Customer Story
MCR Safety
Enhancing Customer Communications & Department-Wide Visibility with B2B Customer Service Automation
- Loweredaverage order processing time from 12–24 hours to less than one hour
- Reducedorder-entry errors per month reduced from 75 to 28, on average
- Achieveda 91% automation rate through Esker (touchless processing)
- Increasein daily order processing rate per person
By automating customer enquiries and order management, MCR Safety has been able to slash order processing and customer response times.
Here’s their story.
Challenges - Eliminating email chaos & task confusion from disjointed workflows
Prior to digitally transforming two of its key Customer Service processes, MCR Safety was managing enquiries from customers through multiple email inboxes. Emails coming into those inboxes would get sent out to distribution lists. Unfortunately, responses from Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) were circulated among these lists without clarity on task ownership, leading to duplicated efforts on a single customer enquiry and a lot of wasted time. The lack of visibility into customer enquiries hindered task allocation and prevented insight into customer needs — insights that were critical for MCR’s proprietary programmes.
Lacking visibility into employee performance and workflows made it difficult to track how much time CSRs were spending on customer enquiries, how long they spent on calls, which customers were calling the most, and other valuable metrics that could help identify problem areas.
In addition to its customer enquiry challenges, the company’s previous order management solution was unable to deliver the value and functionality needed to keep up with business. Even with the automation tool, MCR’s order management process was inundated with manual touch points that hindered processing speed and workflow efficiency. Many orders still needed to be printed, sent for review, scanned and manually entered into the SAP® system, along with other necessary documents. The company also had incredibly limited visibility into the order processing workflow, in which every step was tracked through spreadsheets.
OBJECTIVES
- Automate and streamline the management of customer orders and enquiries.
- Achieve full visibility across the entire Customer Service department.
- Leverage AI-powered tools to increase the effectiveness of customer communications.
Solution - Automating the manual processes causing lagging customer response times & limited visibility
Implementing Esker has extended benefits beyond the Customer Service department at MCR. Through read-only views, departments such as Sales, Credit and Shipping can access comprehensive communication records with customers regarding orders. With most communication routed through Esker, reliance on external emails has significantly decreased, enhancing communication efficiency and ensuring that all relevant parties have access to pertinent customer interactions and order details.
The assignment queue is hailed as the top feature by CSRs, empowering them to master customer details, including orders and special notes. This knowledge improves their ability to deliver quality responses to customer enquiries and cultivates a sense of pride in their service provision.
Esker Order Management and Customer Enquiry Management integrate seamlessly, providing comprehensive customer information in one place and facilitating informed interactions. Even for customers not using the self-service portal it provides, Esker retrieves order details and relevant information from both solutions to help streamline the process and give CSRs cross-departmental visibility without toggling between multiple programmes. This integration improves customer service efficiency while ensuring prompt, informed and personalised responses to enquiries while maximising sales opportunities.
Our customer portal is always evolving with us. It’s given CSRs a place to point hands-on customers to for 24/7 access to most of the information or documents they’re enquiring about. It saves so much time.”
Results - Achieving the oversight & insight needed for greater customer service
With the implementation of Esker, CSRs now have improved control and a clear picture of their workload through assignment queues, enabling seamless task management even when colleagues are absent. This clarity eliminates duplicated efforts and ensures efficient handling of enquiries and orders.
Thanks to the visibility gained through Esker, managers are now able to track all the performance metrics they couldn’t before, as well as the current day’s requests and requests over the last 30 days — something that wasn’t possible before.
The Customer Service team has been able to free up significant time in the wake of its digital transformation. For example, before Esker, uploading and archiving customer enquiries into the old system was one full-time employee’s only job. Now that enquiries and orders are being stored in Esker, that employee has been able to move up in the company and become a CSR and can support the team even more than before.
Response times to customer enquiries have significantly decreased from 24–48 hours to near immediacy, allowing CSRs more time for direct customer interaction that can lead to increased opportunities for cross-selling and upselling. Overtime work has been minimised due to enhanced task efficiency, which has ultimately led in a boost in employee morale.
MCR is also looking to bring on an additional business unit later in 2024, which will in turn lead to higher order volumes in total. Even so, Esker is continuing to help MCR grow their business by allowing staff to handle increases in order volume, all while keeping the process standardised for both staff members and their customers.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Lowered average order processing time from 12–24 hours to less than one hour.
- Reduced order-entry errors per month reduced from 75 to 28, on average.
- Achieved a 91% automation rate through Esker (touchless processing).
- Before automation, 14 people could process an average of 22 orders per day. Now, 10 people are processing an average of 27 orders per day.
CSRs now have more time to talk to the customers and build rapport. This allows them more time for following up on leads, train on other programmes, expand product knowledge and other things that actually add value."
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