The Personal Touch
Alejandra Marroquin Velazquez
Lasell College, MGMT703
March 30, 2015

Intro
This case study presents that customer service is very important for FedEx, a global leader in shipping industry. FedEx is one of the largest organization with 275,00 employees and independent contractors handling an average of 6 million packages using 669 aircraft and 71,000 trucks. FedEx servers more than 220 countries and territories, while serving these territories and delivering millions of packages, inevitably packages are delayed, damaged or gone missing. To get answers to all these issues customers call FedEx call center. FedEx employs 4,000 customer services reps in 65 call centers resolve customers issues. Shipping is a very competitive industry and it is important to answer these inquiries in a prompt and efficient manner. While these call centers are essential part of the business but they are expensive and affects company’s bottom line. This case study presents a fact that call volume is extremely high and reps never have an idle moment. While resolving and answering customer complaints quickly is beneficial for the company but reps don’t want customers to feel that they are being rushed.
Case study noted that company decided to get help from Information technology to serve their customers efficiently and quickly. FedEx, first figured out what was the most frequent request then installed software that reps would use to provide faster service. Since many callers were already registered on the website and most frequent question was a request to request a FedEx worker to pickup a package. Rep could enter name, which lead to a zip code, and that turn leads to a tracking number. That number uniquely identifies the package. Using the software, a rep could handle the request in 20 seconds. Obviously there are some complex requests that will take longer. FedEx ideally would like at least 6 of the ten callers to go to FedEx’s website to solve their problem by themselves. Case study presents numbers that are mind blowing that how the use of technology can save millions for a company. When one customer decides to use the company’s Web site instead of telephoning, the company saves up to $1.87. This effort has been a big money saver for the company. After implementing self help feature on the website FedEx received 83,000 fewer call per day which saved company $56.56 millions per year. Running a website also has associated cost but it is not as much as a live customers rep. The cost of serving these requests was 21.6 million. However, if these were to be answered and resolved by a customer rep it would have been $1.36 billion per year.
Many people are still uncomfortable doing business at a website. Not many websites are using artificial intelligence and when a customer gets frustrated and run into obstacles they stop trying that creates a big possibility of loosing that customer therefore the call center can not be eliminated in a near future. Nuance Communications website explains that FedEx recognized that the demand of its customer has changed and the company’s contact center no longer provided the experience that today’s customers expect. FedEx’s set a goal to humanize the IVR (Interactive voice response), making the experience more natural and conversational. In January 2011, FedEx introduced a new, natural language understanding (NLU) call routing and IVR solution in the U.S. and Canada, replacing their previous directed dialog system. A brand new design powered by Nuance Communications, the solution lets callers say in their own words the reason why they are calling. It guides callers as they complete common tasks such as scheduling a pick, tracking a package, finding the nearest location, getting rated and ordering supplies all without speaking to an agent. At any point in the call, the customer can speak with a live agent by simply pressing ”0” or saying “customer Service Representative,” which transfers