GNC keeps online customer service fit during pandemic
GNC Holdings Inc. is ensuring a positive end-to-end e-commerce experience, even as online demand surges due to COVID-19.
The vitamins and supplements retailer saw its store traffic dwindle while online demand for health and wellness products, especially those that boost immunity, rose once the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in spring 2020. As this shift in omnichannel customer behavior occurred, the company had to transition its contact center agents to a work-from-home model.
GNC was also challenged with effectively fulfilling increased online order volumes while continuing to provide exceptional omnichannel customer experiences. The retailer, which invested in CRM technology provider Verint in January 2020, decided to implement the Verint Experience Management platform.
This decision followed recent GNC deployments of other solutions intended to support and enhance the omnichannel customer experience, including the e-Spirit FirstSpirit digital marketing platform, and the cloud-based enVista enterprise order management system.
Verint Experience Management captures actionable and diagnostic digital experience data to drive enterprise-wide improvements GNC hopes to gain a deeper understanding of customer and employee sentiment and behaviors with improved access to customer data, collected via digital feedback sources and combined with data in its CRM platform.
Leveraging the Verint solution, GNC’s e-commerce group has been able to form what the retailer calls a “digital triage” team equipped with insights into online customer experience. In addition, improved find-and-fix processes have helped fulfillment teams handle surging online orders, keep up with high demand and overcome pandemic-related shipping and contact center challenges.
“Verint’s Experience Management solution has helped us continue to serve our valued customers during a time when they relied on us to provide the health and wellness products they needed,” said Chadwick Hamby, vice president of e-commerce operations and solutions, GNC. “The solution enabled our ecommerce team to implement an effective, accurate, real-time digital triage system that has been invaluable in identifying customer service issues related to online credit card payments, product issues, the effectiveness of promotions, and more. This visibility across the organization at every level—tactical, operational and strategic—has enabled GNC to save sales and make a positive impact on the customer experience, which is our top priority.”
GNC operates more than 3,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada.