Case Study - adidas Group
adidas is one of the world’s leading sports and leisure goods manufacturers. The launch of its national website in 2003 opened direct enquiry channels from consumers - an audience that had not previously been communicated with directly.
Through its specialist experience, EWA was selected to establish and implement a customer service centre to receive and process a then unknown number and range of enquiries. In the event over 50,000 enquiries were successfully fielded in the first year covering:
- Product availability and location
- Complaints
- Product advice
- Product returns
- Legal claims
- Sponsorship requests
Seven years on EWA continues to support adidas and has developed a comprehensive contact centre programme that is the singular point for all consumer enquiries and outbound campaigns, expanded latterly for sister brands Reebok and Rockport.
- This has enabled adidas to maintain its focus and resources on direct sales, leaving EWA’s experts to manage consumers.
- 95% of all enquirers are handled at first point of contact without referral – reducing costs of enquiry, whilst raising standards of customer satisfaction and creating a positive brand perception.
- The introduction of an enquiries management and marketing database, developed by EWA, has enabled adidas to address the consumer market directly for the first time – opening a new direct channel of communication and sales.
- Integration of the consumer enquiries database with adidas’ internal systems for product supply, returns and legal escalations has provided instant, automated processing and access – reducing adidas’ costs of manual input; paper processing; and human intervention; whilst expediting processes to improve the customer experience.
- Portability of resources, services and systems has allowed adidas to consolidate and absorb Reebok, Rockport and Northern Ireland enquiries at low investment.
- Customer insight analysis provides direct insight into consumer behaviour; feedback and demands which is being increasingly used in product and event campaigns (e.g. London Marathon).
