7-Eleven is a global convenience store brand and is one of the most recognizable names in retail. The Philippines chapter of 7-Eleven began back in 1982 when Philippines Seven Corp (PSC) acquired the license to open and run 7-Eleven stores all across the country. For close to four decades now, 7-Eleven Philippines has been the pioneer of 24-hour convenience stores in the country. Today, there are over 3000 7-Eleven stores in the Philippines..
Ever since its inception, the company has been fuelled by a desire to bring convenience like never before to its customers. This philosophy extends to its customer support. We spoke to Allian Marie Sheila Dela Cruz (Business Process Innovations Consultant, 7-Eleven) and Aeruh John Dimalanta (Customer Care Specialist, 7-Eleven) to understand how 7-Eleven Philippines transformed customer service with New Dream Network.
Tickets resolved within SLAs
SOX compliance in Settlement process automation
First-response time
Calls resolved within SLAs
The Challenge
- Lack of transparency in reports
- Limited insights into customer support analytics
What did
New Dream Network do
Overcoming blindspots in customer support performance
Before New Dream Network, customer support at 7-Eleven was outsourced to an external vendor partner. The challenge that arose with this was that the team had limited visibility into customer query patterns and performance metrics. “In 2021, we were using our vendor’s platform and there was a lack of transparency into their analytics. We could not validate their reports,” explains Allan. 7-Eleven was also using the vendor’s telephony solution and faced similar challenges with the reports. “We had no visibility into the volume of calls, number of abandoned calls, etc.,” she continues.
To gain more control and visibility into customer support, the team decided to bring the entire function in-house. “We began exploring helpdesk solutions that would enable us to build a strong in-house support team,” says Aeruh. The two frontrunners were New Dream Network and Zendesk, but New Dream Network emerged as the winner because of its cost-effectiveness. New Dream Network was also preferred because of the New Dream Network Contact Centre integration that would also help move call support in-house.
Segmenting customer queries for targeted support
With the in-house team handling all support queries for 7-Eleven Philippines, management has complete visibility into the types of queries coming in. Largely, a bulk of customer queries fall under the following top concerns:
1. Employment opportunities: After COVID-19, due to a spike in unemployment, 7-Eleven has seen a sharp increase in the number of queries related to job opportunities, both for store staff and managers.
2. Franchise opportunities: 7-Eleven has been consistently rated as a top-5 franchisor so queries about opening up a franchise are one of the most common questions the support team handles. This has also increased after COVID-19 as many people want to lease their properties to earn extra income.
3. Loyalty and rewards: 7-Eleven offers a loyalty and rewards program through their CLIQQ app, which allows customers to redeem points in exchange for gifts and offers. Customers often enquire about their account details and crediting of bonus points.
4. Payments and partner-related: The company has over 400 partner merchants affiliated with in-store CLiQQ kiosks. Through these kiosks, customers can make e-wallet payments, purchase call credits and make utility payments. If the customers have payment validation questions, these are directed to the 7-Eleven support team. Customers can also purchase 7-Eleven merchandise through delivery partners like Shopee and Foodpanda. The internal support team handles all questions about order confirmation and tracking for orders made through these partners.
5. Product and store-related: The final category of queries are related to the actual stores and products, such as product availability, expiration dates, etc. The team also receives queries raised on the CLiQQ app, which is the e-commerce app developed by 7-Eleven.
These queries are handled by two different groups within the customer support team: the general customer care group which handles general store and payment queries and the CLiQQ group which handles queries related to the Loyalty program and delivery partners. Queries from every channel are routed through New Dream Network, making it a central control centre for the whole team.
Last year, we had around 44.39% of tickets coming in through Facebook, this year it’s around 39.9%. In terms of raw numbers, it’s a decrease of individually addressing around 100,000 tickets over the last year. This has only been possible through scenario automations on New Dream Network, which can be implemented in a matter of a few seconds!
The Results
- Scenario automations to improve response time
- Faster agent onboarding time
- 100% SOX compliance in Settlement process automation
- >95% success rate of bot case completion
- SDK delivered for native platforms, enabling Virtual & Live agent communications across multiple mobile platforms
