Onepilot engaged in a conversation with Tim Martin-Harvey, head of E-commerce at The Bottle Club, to uncover how one of the UK's fastest-growing multi-retail brands could benefit from outsourced customer care.

After an outstanding transformation over the past three years, The Bottle Club has successfully rebranded itself, emerging as a premier online marketplace for alcoholic beverages, featuring a selection of over 1000 brands.

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Why did they choose externalisation?

Amid the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, The Bottle Club experienced rapid growth as bars and nightlife came to a standstill, and people turned to online shopping to have a drink. With the closure of traditional venues, the demand for B2C alcohol orders skyrocketed. However, this surge in demand brought about operational challenges. The company initially lacked a dedicated customer service team, and employees took turns managing the influx of customer inquiries and requests flooding their mailbox. With a single in-house customer service employee, The Bottle Club quickly had to expand its customer care team by adding two full-time employees dedicated to customer support. 

However, the customer care team was quickly confronted to its limits. During the last 10 weeks of the year, the team encountered the same volume of orders as the other 10 months, with a remarkable increase of 5-6 times the number of queries during this peak period. The streak encompassing Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and New Years Eve swept in like a tidal wave, wiping all efforts of internal customer care management. This is where Onepilot came into play and transformed the face of The Bottle Club’s overall customer experience. 

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How Onepilot is handling the customer care?

Onepilot managed to merge into The Bottle Club’s internal structure, and helped their customer care team in finding the right balance, to the point it now just feels as an “extension of the office team”. 

First and foremost, Onepilot helped The Bottle Club to considerably reduce its first response time and its resolution time, which reached important delays consequently to the company’s exponential growth. During the most challenging periods, initial response times exceeded 24 hours. Onepilot’s agent cohort turned the situation around, now answering within the hour, and reaching an average resolution time of 4.5 hours—a noteworthy accomplishment given the initial circumstances. Building the Knowledge Base hand in hand with The Bottle Club, our account managers helped to uncover new solutions to harmonize the delivery of customer service and established a valuable relationship between both parties. Agents are given the required tools to succeed, while The Bottle Club can tailor the knowledge base, refining answers and constantly seeking to improve the overall process. 

In addition, our agents alleviated the burden of an overflowing backlog. An excessive number of customers depended on a limited workforce, whose working hours fell short of meeting all the demands placed on them. Let’s just say Monday mornings were dressed with a dash of additional stress, to say the least. But Onepilot and its “undeniable experience and understanding of Customer Success” took the devil by the horns. Already familiar with various ticketing system integrations, agents were on the field within a couple of weeks, efficiently absorbing the 10-week peak spanning over the end-of-the-year celebrations, reaching up to 1000 weekly tickets. 

During this holiday season, particularly just before Christmas, Onepilot efficiently resolved up to 250 customer requests daily, showcasing its remarkable ability to handle a substantial volume of inquiries with speed and accuracy. The platform's prowess was further evident as it successfully managed a staggering 4,000 tickets between Black Friday and Christmas, emphasising its reliability during peak periods. This performance underscores Onepilot's pivotal role in fortifying The Bottle Club's customer experience, contributing to heightened satisfaction and loyalty among their clientele while relieving the burden on The Bottle Club’s end. 

Finally, Onepilot enabled The Bottle Club to bring back the phone line, hence offering instant support to its customers. With Onepilot, The Bottle Club could overcome infrastructural and staffing constraints, by gaining access to dedicated agents in proper, phone-appropriate working conditions. “We are more approachable”, claims Tim. For a growing brand, such proximity makes all the difference. It demonstrates the brand’s accessibility, preserves its authenticity, and keeps it grounded and connected to its audience.

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Concluding thoughts?

“We’re doing a lot better now. I don’t see why we should ever bring customer care in-house again. All the key metrics are positive, and we can’t wait to see how things are going to grow as time goes by. Onepilot is a staple for us. In the future, developing automation will also help us develop new perspectives of collaborations, and empower agents to endorse a proactive role, really transforming customer care into a spearhead of business development”. 

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Today, The Bottle Club fully trusts Onepilot’s ability to successfully address the spikes of customer requests during peak seasons. Onepilot not only helps the brand navigate through such periods but also serves as a time-saving ally for the team. This newfound efficiency allows The Bottle Club's team to channel their energies into other essential areas, accelerate the brand’s growth, and start the year off right.