Tecovas

The Challenge

Tecovas is a direct-to-consumer western boots and accessories brand built on handmade quality products and incredible service. Since the company first launched in 2015, Tecovas heavily invested in customer experience to deliver fast, efficient, and hyper-personalized support at scale.

However, as demand grew, their existing support solutions were frustrating both customers and agents alike. Their help desk solution, Zendesk, did not offer a unified view of all customer interactions. Siloed conversations meant that if a customer sent multiple inquiries, different agents responded to the same customer, driving up support costs and running the risk of inconsistent service.

Given the demographic of Tecovas’ clients, who prefer to speak with a live agent, phone calls made up half of their support volume. However, their existing contact center solution’s poor call quality and frequent outages were taking a toll on customer satisfaction.

This motivated the team at Tecovas to look for new solutions that would allow them to better organize customer data, reduce agent collision, and provide seamless voice support.

The Results

• Reduced average handle time by four minutes by unifying customer data into a single agent workspace.
• Decreased call times by three minutes on average by implementing a higher quality, reliable voice solution.
• Decreased average queue wait time by three minutes with transparency into support request volume in real-time.
• Increased NPS score by 2 points with faster, more personalized support.

“Kustomer and Dialpad are way ahead of the game. They give us the full story of every customer and ensure that we’re always there to listen to our customers in ways we could have never done before.”

Carli Hooten, Customer Experience Manager, Tecovas

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Unifying Customer Data Makes Immediate Impact

Switching to Kustomer transformed Tecovas’ customer and agent experience from day one. By merging customer contact information, Shopify orders, exchanges, and cross-channel conversations, Kustomer gave agents the full customer context they need to deliver efficient, personalized support. If a customer reached out multiple times, a single agent could quickly address the root of the problem while keeping a better pulse on potential scams. Pre-populated shortcuts with dynamic variables allowed agents to effortlessly add a personal touch to every interaction, building brand trust and assuring customers that they’re in good hands.

“Kustomer is an entirely new way of thinking about support,” said Carli Hooten, Customer Experience Manager at Tecovas. “When I look at a customer inquiry, I ask myself ‘what is the story here’? With Kustomer, agents can follow along when a customer asks about an email exchange from three weeks ago. Agents instantly see the full story of every customer, so they can provide the best service.”

Unifying customer data and conversations also added a layer of transparency and accountability to her support operations that was not possible with Zendesk. By creating saved searches, both the team lead and agent could see how many emails the agent had sent during their shift. Understanding at a glance the number, channel, and difficulty level of the conversations the agent worked on took the guesswork out of agent performance and productivity.

“With Kustomer, you’re always on the same page as your customers — as well as your agents,” said Hooten.

Seamless Dialpad Integration Boosts Customer Satisfaction and Agent Efficiency

While switching from Zendesk to Kustomer, Tecovas also made the transition to Dialpad. Voice is the top channel of choice for Tecovas’ customers and an important way to build rapport between agents and customers, who often ask for styling and sizing recommendations, in addition to day-to-day transactional support.

“With our previous contact center solution, you could hear every other word that a customer was saying,” said Hooten. “The customer would have to call back, and the agent would be unable to offer assistance despite being there to help.”

“Dialpad, on the other hand, is reliable and customizable. Agents can focus on delivering great service without distractions. For brands like ours that value quality voice support, Dialpad is an obvious choice.”

Tecovas stores key contacts in Dialpad, such as their FedEx partner and retail stores, so agents no longer have to manually search phone numbers on Google. In fact, Tecovas used Dialpad to support all of its store openings. Agents can easily transfer calls and contact store managers, and the seamless communication between the two has improved the team’s ability to deliver instant resolution.

“With Kustomer, you’re always on the same page as your customers — as well as your agents.”

Carli Hooten, Customer Experience Manager, Tecovas

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Kustomer + Dialpad = Amplify Upsell Opportunities

With Kustomer and Dialpad, Tecovas ensured customer data was always organized and up-to-date. This created room for new upsell opportunities and ways to reward long-time brand advocates. For instance, when speaking with a customer via Dialpad, the agent could see in Kustomer the customer’s past Shopify orders. The agent could then recommend similar products and accessories, and inform the customer about new releases they may be interested in. Agents could also identify VIPs based on the customer’s average order size and lifetime value, further personalizing the support experience.

Intuitive, Easy-to-Use Platforms Facilitate Agent Training

In addition to improving the customer experience, the Kustomer + Dialpad integration allowed Tecovas to reimagine agent onboarding and training. Immediately upon switching, Hooten received positive feedback from the team on how intuitive and easy-to-use both platforms are. Now, training for Kustomer takes less than a day, freeing up agents’ time to focus on learning the team’s workflows.

Every Dialpad call was recorded and added to the customer’s profile within Kustomer, facilitating coaching and training. If an agent was new to taking calls, their team lead could listen in on live calls to share real-time answers via Slack if needed. Feedback flowed naturally, without the need to set up a formal one-on-one meeting.

“The number one thing that’s most important to me is that people have an amazing experience when they work with us,” said Hooten. “I try to be a human before I am a manager and set each agent up for success by providing the right tools and learning opportunities. With Kustomer and Dialpad, I can ensure that each agent feels confident and able to excel.”

Look Forward

Within the next six months, Tecovas will double its support staff and grow to 100 agents by the end of the following year. One of Tecovas’ plans is to leverage Kustomer’s intelligent routing to automatically route email conversations by topic and level of difficulty. Going beyond round-robin assignments will ensure that each agent has a steady flow of work based on their level and area of expertise.

Hooten is also excited to use Dialpad’s Real-Time Assist, which displays pop-up suggestions to agents during calls based on trigger keywords and phrases, which will ensure that agents relay accurate information consistently. She’s also looking to set up CSAT surveys at the end of calls to automate feedback collection and optimize support.

Finally, to continue building a support organization agents are happy to be a part of, Hooten will reinforce the existing compensation structure and create a career path for agents within the organization.

“We want to recognize people’s strengths and reward them for putting in the time and effort to continue learning,” Hooten said. “Kustomer and Dialpad make that easier, and I look forward to continuing our partnership as we grow.”