Dunelm Mill - technology case study

Dunelm Mill is one of the most successful home furnishings retailers in the UK and is enjoying rapid growth.  Today's portfolio of more than 90 stores offers customers a wide range of soft furnishings and other home wares products, always at great value prices. The company's motto is "Simply Value for Money".

A best-of-both-worlds' solution

Dunelm Mill planned to launch a new “At Home” fitting and consultancy service, initially operating from the company's West Midlands and Plymouth stores.  Offering a complete home consultation and fitting service for its products, At Home would enable customers, when purchasing items such as blinds and electrical products, to book an appointment in store, or by telephone, for a fitter to deliver and/or fit the product.

mplsystems, the technology division of Message Pad, was challenged by Dunelm Mill to provide a fully operational contact centre, booking application and mobile data solution to support the launch of the new service, with very tight timescales, the system had to go live in a matter of weeks.    In order to achieve this, mplsystems deployed its unique combination of outsourcing services and state of the art contact centre system, MPL intelligentContact.

Customers give their product fitting order either online or to a dedicated call centre team. An automated algorithm is then used to choose the best fitter based on location, skills and workload held within an online calendaring system.   

Within seconds, the appointment information is automatically routed with the order details and customer notes to the correct fitter’s PDA device using the latest Windows Mobile technology. A reminder text can be automatically sent advising the customer of the fitter’s arrival time. When the job is complete, any relevant information is sent back from the fitter’s PDA to the central database and the fitter is able to move on to their next job.

Dunelm Mill also benefit from a web based information portal showing real time business information as well as historical reports.

Nigel Bolton, Senior Programme Manager in Dunelm Mill responsible for the project, commented “We are very excited by the solution provided by mplSystems. We have also proved there is a demand for this type of service by beating expectations even during the economic downturn which is very encouraging.  We are now planning a national rollout of the solution during 2009”.

Paul White, CEO of mplSystems, added “Extending the boundaries of traditional contact centres to connect with field based sales and service staff using mobile PDA devices is one of the many unique features of our platform. It is great to be working with Dunelm Mill, clearly an innovative retailer delivering an exceptional customer experience”.

Benefits

• One integrated system for the contact centre and mobile field force ensuring a seamless customer experience
• Real time mobile data platform to optimise the efficiency of field based staff
• Flexible, scaleable, rapidly deployed contact centre team.