10 July 2006 — Framingham (MA): Staples has announced that JD Power and Associates Certified Call Centre Programme have certified the company’s call centres for customer service excellence for the third consecutive year.
Staples was awarded the recognition for delivering "an outstanding customer service experience" following a rigorous audit of quality assurance capabilities, management roles and responsibilities and associate recruiting and training.
In addition, JD Power and Associates measured Staples’ service excellence by surveying customers who recently contacted the call centres and Staples exceeded the threshold for certification in all seven survey categories. For certification status, the survey requires a call centre to perform within the top 20 percent of customer service organisations based on cross-industry customer satisfaction research.
The Staples Contract call centres handle more than 12,000 customer contacts per day supporting customers with placing orders, product selection, special orders and credits and returns. The call centres are located in Englewood, New Jersey, Rochester, New York, Regina, Saskatchewan and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Staples insist it is committed to operating its own call centres with the highest standards of excellence instead of outsourcing the function.
The evaluation criteria used during the survey includes: courtesy of the customer service representative (CSR); knowledge of the CSR; the CSR’s concern for the customer questions and/or problem; usefulness of the information provided; convenience of customer service operating hours; ease of getting through to a CSR; and the timely resolution of the customer’s problem, question or request.
