Michael Kors - Online Sales Team of the Year

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2022, Click to Enter The 2023 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service

Company: Michael Kors, New York, NY
Company Description: Michael Kors is a world-renowned, award-winning designer of luxury accessories and ready-to-wear. His namesake company, established in 1981, produces a range of products under his signature Michael Kors Collection and MICHAEL Michael Kors labels. These products include accessories, footwear, watches, jewelry, men’s and women’s ready-to-wear, eyewear and a full line of fragrance products.
Nomination Category: Sales Awards Team Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Online Sales Team of the Year

Nomination Title: MK's Online Sales Team Weathers The Pandemic

The MICHAEL KORS Contact Center was established in 2014 to provide real-time support to our growing customer base who shopped online via our website.

A primary goal is to support the online channel and generate sales to offset the annual Contact Center operating costs. Style Consultants (CSR's) are trained to provide product information, styling advice, accessorizing tips, and convert inquiries into sales. We use a white-glove, consultative selling approach, internally referred to as "clienteling," to create lifelong customers and loyal fans of the brand.

To ensure our Style Consultants deliver on the brand promise, we fashioned a bespoke Contact Center experience with showrooms, mannequins, and streaming music to create an energetic and immersive environment that feels like a seamless extension of the retail store experience.
Within one year of startup, the contact center became a profit center and generated more sales than many brick-and-mortar stores.

Past Successes:

  • 2017 Increased the sales conversion rate by 62% by creating and providing targeted Sales training
  • 2018 Accomplished over 200%+ Return on Cost in phone/chat sales
  • 2019 Exceeded sales goal by over 150% and Inducted 20 agents into the $100K Seller's Club

When COVID-19 struck in March 2020, we were forced to close all retail locations temporarily. With revenue severely restricted and contact volume coming in 162% to forecast by April, complex decisions had to be made.

Challenge:

The COVID pandemic affected our retail business, resulting in the closure of all North American stores. With no revenue generated because of these closures, our organization cut costs. The contact center was a casualty of these reductions, which significantly reduced our operating budget Due to these cuts, we had to shut down the phone lines, leaving email as the only communication channel. Customers had no real-time support or opportunity to reach a Style Consultant for help with online purchases, accessorizing, or styling advice.

Approach:

As governments around the country initiated stay-at-home orders due to COVID, MichaelKors.com experienced a surge in sales because physical retailers were inaccessible, and customers wanted to spend their disposable income. The executive leadership team soon recognized the Contact Center's role in generating online sales and provided funding to re-open. We developed a re-opening roadmap to ensure we could return to pre-COVID operating levels. Fortunately, we rehired most of our tenured Style Consultants who helped reduce our ramp-up time. After four months of closure, we re-opened in time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday week – the busiest period in the retail calendar.

Outcome:

Over the holiday season, sales exceeded our expectations thanks to advanced virtual sales training, rewards and recognition programs, and leadership's re-enforcement of sales tactics. Despite closures, significant setbacks, and a rapid re-opening, the Contact Center generated 11% more than our Gross Margin sales goal, the sales conversion rate increased by 11.4%, and average order value increased 7.7%

Recovering and transforming from a partial shut-down into a team that quickly pivoted to meet all KPI's is a testament to the challenges we overcame during a very challenging period.
Some challenges faced due to the closure included:

  • Significant reduction of the call center workforce
  • Closing all phone lines
  • No opportunity to generate sales
  • eMail as the only contact channel
  • Increase in social media complaints

Action Plan

When we received funding to re-open, our team quickly developed an action plan which included:

  • Rehiring tenured Style Consultants
  • Operational changes to support virtual work:
    • Delivering hardware to homes while observing COVID protocols
    • Recruiting, on-boarding, and training virtual agents
    • Providing real-time support for virtual agents
  • Launching a new sales team in Nova Scotia (Canada)
  • Implementing CTI screen-pop to reduce AHT
  • Facilitating virtual sales training using hi-tech digital catalog and video training tutorials (MK Insider)

Operations Approach

Close collaboration between MICHAEL KORS and our BPO provider allowed for a quick recovery from being nearly shut down into a sales powerhouse that exceeded all sales and service goals.

Results

Michael Kors' Contact Center recovered by re-launching with remote Style Consultants spread across two countries (the Dominican Republic and Canada). The teams performed commendably and exceeded all sales and service goals.

  • Sales exceeded the target by 11%
  • Sales Conversion Rate increased by 11.4%
  • Average Order Value increased by 7.7%
  • AHT improved by 47seconds
  • FCR improved from 88% to 90%
  • MK Insider virtual sales training to 100% new hires

We provided a deck that supports each achievement in the entry attached as MICHAEL KORS STEVIE ENTRY #25. It includes KPI tracking slides to quantify the performance, screenshots of the digital training catalog, and examples of online sales training videos. These statistics are supplied by MICHAEL KORS and our BPO partner.

This is a Fashion United article on the COVID-19 Impact and MICHAEL KORS store closures:

This is a Wall Street Journal story on COVID-19 impact on Contact Centers around the world: https://www.wsj.com/articles/calls-to-companies-rise-amid-coronavirus-but-operators-arent-standing-by-11585483200

This article by Deloitte addresses the pains the BPO industry experienced during COVID

This article by Harvard Business Review addresses the difficulties of maintaining program performance during COVID-19.

This is the MICHAEL KORS website: www.MichaelKors.com