AllSaints saw a 14-point NPS® increase over 12 months

Digital, confident, and effortless; just a few adjectives to describe AllSaints. A premium British fashion house whose design aesthetic has taken the world by storm.

AllSaints embodies the creative values, attitude, and industrial backdrop of East London and shares this with its global community. AllSaints projects an aspirational, contemporary image and an independent spirit.

Customer Experience at AllSaints has evolved significantly as the brand has grown. They’ve developed from handling customer service manually to providing a digital service, managed by a skilled team of AllSaints Stylists.

“There has been a significant increase in contact year on year,” said Sarah-Jayne Grabiec, Global Customer Experience Manager at AllSaints. “We managed our contacts and cases in Outlook and spreadsheets. It was time consuming and open to human error.” As the brand and the customer experience team evolved, it became clear that they needed a more robust and centralized system to provide a brand experience compatible with the image of AllSaints.

“One of our internal departments has been using Zendesk Support for some time,” Grabiec said. “I was curious to see how they were using it, and then realized how powerful Support could potentially be as a brand experience tool.” Grabiec got in touch with the company’s account manager, and the customer experience team began implementing Support in June 2014. It took only a few days until they were up and running. “It was life-changing for our team,” Grabiec said. “Now, we’ve expanded significantly and handle a multitude of requests from global customers.”

AllSaints makes sure their stylists are well-equipped to handle customers from multiple countries in multiple languages, especially with ongoing expansion into Asia and the Middle East. “We speak 13 languages and most stylists are bi- or trilingual,” Grabiec said. Using Support, tickets are prioritized chronologically and allocated to linguists based on language.

Providing 24/7 customer care is no easy feat, but Grabiec’s team has developed a shift system that ensures quick response rates 24/7/365. Stylists are cross-trained to handle all types of tickets, ranging from social media, shipping queries to personal styling. By utilizing shifts that rotate through the morning, afternoon, and night, AllSaints has been hitting some impressive targets. “For phone calls we strive for a 100% answer rate, and there is no negotiation there,” Grabiec said. “Calls are answered within 11-15 seconds on average and come through to a human being, not an automated message, unless we’re in a promotional or holiday period.” On average, social media tickets have a 30-minute response time, and emails have a 60-minute response time.

AllSaints has seen several measurable improvements since Zendesk Support was adopted as its customer service software. In terms of metrics, one of the biggest changes has been their Net Promoter Score℠. While a 14-point score increase in 12 months may not be entirely due to Support, the new technology “empowered the team to deliver a luxury brand experience consistently and categorize reasons for contact to shape evolution and improvement,” Grabiec said.

Beyond just handling customer contacts, AllSaints stylists drive the equivalent revenue of a medium-sized store. Personal styling and customer purchases are completed over the phone. Since phone support plays a significant role in revenue generation, finding a system that can handle high call volumes efficiently became a priority. “Part of our roadmap with Zendesk this year is to look at full phone integration,” said Grabiec. “We want every call to go through Zendesk’s products automatically.”

Proactive engagement is the next objective for the team, which could entail implementing live chat in the future. “We like to proactively reach out to our customers and provide a personal service tailored to the individual,” Grabiec said. “My team likes to make our AllSaints customers’ day.”

Net Promoter and NPS are registered U.S. trademarks, and Net Promoter Score and Net Promoter System are service marks, of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.