MEAL KIT DELIVERY SERVICE
Client Overview
Our client is a UK-based meal kit delivery service, founded in 2012, offering a subscription model that provides pre-portioned ingredients and recipes to customers for easy homemade meal preparation. They prioritise offering a diverse range of high-quality ingredients and recipes tailored to various dietary preferences and lifestyles. Emphasizing convenience, sustainability, and minimizing food waste, the client has witnessed significant growth and established itself as a prominent player in the UK meal kit delivery market.
The partnership commenced on 7 September, 2019. Boomerang’s expertise enabled the swift establishment of a 15-seat South African-based Customer Care Team. Operating across multiple channels, including live calls, webchat, and email, the integration of WhatsApp and social media has proven successful.
Strategy
The client’s strategy was to view Boomerang not merely as an outsourced partner but as an integral extension of their team, focusing on three key areas: relationship and leadership, cultural alignment, and the quality of personnel. They emphasized Boomerang’s representation of their brand, alongside factors such as cost-effectiveness, service levels, neutral accents, geographic proximity to the UK, performance capability, access to a large talent pool with low wage inflation, mature financial infrastructure, and shared values such as a similar sense of humor and mindset. This approach aimed to ensure that Boomerang met all necessary criteria, fostering a productive and enjoyable working relationship.
Challenges
The decision to outsource contact center services was made to address various business challenges: Firstly, there was a growing need for high-quality customer service due to increased demand and projected expansion. Secondly, attracting and retaining skilled contact center agents posed a challenge in sustaining growth and ensuring consistent service delivery. Thirdly, there was a requirement for uninterrupted multi-channel voice, email, and web chat services throughout the year. Additionally, the client needed the flexibility to swiftly adjust agent capacities based on promotional cycles and business activity fluctuations. Lastly, they sought to control rising operational costs by outsourcing non-core processes to a capable partner, while upholding the expected service quality standards.
Outcomes
The client had some experience of the South Africa value proposition and considered this a suitable offshore location for their customer services requirements.
Reasons for choice of South Africa as preferred offshore location included:
- High connectivity and world-class infrastructure.
- Abundant employee resources with first language English capability and a cultural affinity with UK customers.
- Suitable regulatory environment
- Similar time zone to the UK.
- Government incentives and competitive pricing.
Following an extensive procurement process the client entrusted their contact centre customer services with outsource requirements to Cape Town based Boomerang.
Boomerang won the client over with its happy and enthusiastic team culture, making the client feel right at home. The Boomerang contact centre is operated from a well-equipped and architecturally designed office environment located in a shopping mall in the Cape Town Southern Suburbs.
The client was encouraged that the skills were available to meet their needs for an exceptional customer experience, as well as by the flexibility of Boomerang enabling it to rapidly ramp up and scale down to meet staffing requirements.
The Result
This partnership, founded on trust, has yielded significant advantages: Maintaining high customer satisfaction ratings comparable to the UK team; Flexibility to swiftly scale up staffing; Uninterrupted service during COVID-19 lockdowns across all channels; A reliable offshore BPO partner aligned with our client’s ambitious growth plans.
Since the partnership with Boomerang our client has received the following awards:
- 2021 Gold Winners
- European Contact Centre & Customer Service Awards.
- 2020 Gold Winner
- European Contact Centre & Customer Service Awards.