Guest Blog: How Logitech Responded to a Global Surge in Customer Service Demand During COVID-19

客座博客:罗技时如何应对新冠病毒疫情期间全球客户服务需求激增的?

2021-01-20 14:00 unbabel

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Logitech, the world’s leading PC and mobile accessories manufacturer, deploys a workforce of 7,000+ to distribute products in over 100 countries. So when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in March of 2020, it posed multiple complex challenges—especially for our customer experience (CX) team. As people across the world scrambled to assemble new technology for home offices, Logitech experienced an unexpected surge in customer service demand. At the same time, our own global CX team had to transition to remote work, posing bandwidth and security challenges with VPNs, telephone, and CRM systems. We had internal challenges to work out, plus a sudden 300 percent surge in demand meant we had to staff up fast. We wanted to find a smarter approach to improving the productivity of our technical representatives to address the volume – without having to increase spending. Luckily, Logitech’s long-term partnership with Unbabel meant we had already created a scalable multilingual infrastructure. We were able to quickly increase staffing by 45 percent, while keeping spending flat, and strategically increase the existing team’s efficiency in order to absorb the extra demand. As a result, we cut ticket response times to 12 hours vs. 48 hours with a native speaker, and raised NPS scores for Unbabel-related conversations by 58 points. Here’s how. Meeting Customer Demands Quickly Because of the complexity of our product lines, Logitech had adopted a vertically oriented customer service strategy—hiring engineers and subject matter specialists in its 13 verticals and layering in human-machine translation, rather than relying on native-language generalists. Shifting to specialists helps us train on the technology, not the language, so agents can handle complex issues and technical troubleshooting without having to escalate tickets. This strategy proved to help drastically when the pandemic hit. The work-from-home surge in demand quickly outstripped our customer service supply, creating backlogs. The number one priority: respond quickly to the backlogs, and get operational metrics back on track. To do so, we scouted technical engineering talent in India who already had the background and expertise in Logitech’s key verticals. While it would have taken 12-13 weeks to hire native speakers, it took an average of one week to hire each new specialist. In less than three months, with Zendesk and Unbabel enabling a smooth remote transition, Logitech’s existing and new-hire English-speaking specialists stamped out the backlog by successfully responding to complex issues across 13 verticals and 16 languages. A Shift in Channels Another secret to our ability to swiftly handle the crisis: getting agents off the phone and prioritizing email, followed quickly by chat. This both alleviated the security and privacy concerns that come with a newly remote workforce, and enabled the team to seamlessly handle multilingual requests. How does it work, exactly? With Zendesk automating ticket workflows, Unbabel translates multilingual customer service requests. English-speaking agents simply read and respond to requests through Unbabel in English. Their text then gets translated by machine and edited by a human editor at Unbabel before reaching the customer in their native language. While shutting down a channel is never ideal when demand is surging, we had to act fast with our remote workforce. We knew we had the tools and technology to handle requests more efficiently through email and chat. Rising Expectations for 2021 Thanks to the rapid acceleration of online shopping ushered in by the pandemic and sky-high global customer expectations set by Amazon, there will be no rest for Logitech’s CX team. While we can’t share the exact playbook, our 2021 goals are very ambitious for customer care. Whatever the future brings, one thing’s for sure: the company will continue to embrace AI for multilingual translation, and integrate Unbabel across even more channels. And in the meantime, we’re taking a brief moment to appreciate how much our team accomplished in the face of an unprecedented crisis. We’re proud of how fast we were able to move as a global organization to respond to the pandemic, in part because we already had the technology infrastructure and tools in place. Want to learn more about how other organizations serve their global customer base with Unbabel? Read our Case Studies
罗技是世界领先的个人电脑和手机配件制造商,拥有7000多名员工,在全球超过100个国家和地区销售他们的产品。因此,当2020年3月新型冠状病毒大流行来袭时,多重复杂的挑战随之而来——尤其是对客户体验(CX)团队而言。 当世界各地的人们争先恐后地为居家办公组装添置新的科技产品时,罗技在客户服务方面的需求出现了意料之外的激增。于此同时,罗技自己的全球客户体验团队也不得不转变为远程工作的形式来办公,这给VPN(虚拟专用网络)、电话和CRM(客户关系管理)系统带来了宽度和安全方面的挑战。 我们有内部的挑战需要解决,再加上突然之间激增了300%的需求,这意味着我们亟须添置人手。我们希望找到一个更明智的方法来提高我们的代表性技术的生产力,以解决这一问题——而不必增加开支。 幸运的是,罗技与Unbabel有着长期合作关系,这意味着我们已经创建了一个可扩展的多语言基础设施。我们能够迅速增加45%的员工,同时保持稳定的开支,并有策略地提高现有团队的效率,以吸收额外的需求。最后,我们将票证响应时间缩短到了12小时,而相比之下母语为英语的人则需要48小时,并将与Unbabel相关的对话的NPS(净推荐值)得分提高了58分。 这都是怎么做到的呢? 快速满足客户需求 由于我们产品线的复杂性,罗技采用了以垂直为导向的客户服务战略——在13个垂直方向上雇用工程师和主题攻克专家,并在人机翻译方面进行分层,而不是依赖于母语人才。 转而向专家请教可以帮助我们接受技术层面的训练,而不是语言方面的,这样代理人就可以处理复杂的问题和排除技术故障,而不必上报故障单。事实证明,这一策略在病毒大流行来袭时起到了巨大的帮助作用。 居家办公的需求激增程度迅速超过了我们客户服务的提供能力,造成了产品的积压。我们现在的第一要务则是:快速回应产品积压,并使操作标准回到正轨。 为此,我们在印度筛选技术工程人才,他们已经在罗技的关键垂直领域拥有工作背景和专业知识。每雇用一位这样的新专家平均需要一周,然而雇用一位母语人士则需要12-13周的时间。 在不到三个月的时间里,由于Zendesk和Unbabel实现了平稳的远程服务过渡,罗技原以及和新聘请的英语专家成功地应对了13个垂直领域和16种语言方面的复杂问题,从而完成了积压的工作。 服务渠道的转换 我们能够迅速处理危机的另一个秘诀是:让代理人员不要打电话,优先处理电子邮件,然后迅速聊天跟进。这既减轻了工作人员在新型远程工作领域遇到的安全和隐私问题,又使团队能够无缝地处理多语言需求。 那么具体是怎样进行工作的呢?使用Zendesk自动处理票证工作流程,并用Unbabel翻译多语言的客户服务请求。使用英语的代理人员只是通过Unbabel用英语阅读和答复请求。然后,用机器翻译他们的文本,并由Unbabel的人工编辑人员编辑,然后以他们的母语送达到客户手中。 当需求激增时,关闭某一个渠道从来都不是理想的选择,我们必须迅速与我们的远程员工一起行动。我们要知道我们拥有更高效处理请求的工具和技术,通过电子邮件和聊天的方式。 对2021年不断上升的展望 得益于病毒大流行迎来的网购急速增长,以及亚马逊设定的全球客户期望值最高点,罗技的客户体验(CX)团队将永无休止地为此奋斗。虽然我们无法分享确切的操作指导,但我们在2021年的目标是有远大抱负的客户关怀服务。 无论未来如何,有一件事是能肯定的:该公司将继续采用人工智能进行多语言翻译,并将Unbabel的使用整合到更多的渠道中。并且与此同时,我们也要花一小段时间来欣赏我们的团队在这场前所未有的危机面前所取得的巨大成就。 作为一个全球性的公司,我们能够如此迅速地应对这一大流行病毒带来的影响,我们对此感到十分自豪,其中部分原因是我们已经具备了技术方面的基础设施和工具。 想了解更多关于其他公司利用Unbabel为其全球客户群体提供服务的咨询吗?敬请阅读我们的案例研究!

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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