To celebrate Customer Service Appreciation Week, we sat down with Oscar Lovera Perez, Head of Europe’s Sales & Service team, to hear more about the incredible work of our customer service team and what it means to deliver Wayfair-quality customer experience.
Wayfair has won several awards for top-notch Customer Service including Stevie Awards and Resolver Recognised. What would you attribute that recognition and strong reputation to?
First of all, the work we have done to make our brand recognisable has been phenomenal - slowly but surely the name Wayfair is becoming a household name in the UK and DE and that means we get the chance to compete for these awards amongst many other players. Secondly, customers recognise the exceptional effort we put into providing a high quality service in incredibly difficult and complex circumstances. We make it easy for them to reach out, we focus on solving their problems in a customer centric way and we have been there for them through peak, covid and lockdowns. There is plenty of work to be done, as I am keen for us to be at the top of these lists, but I am delighted of the progress we have made in the last two years.
Wayfair strives to get it right with every customer the first time. However, our Service team is there when that doesn't happen. In those instances, how does Wayfair make it right?
Our remit is to focus on issue avoidance and issue management. From an issue avoidance perspective, we represent the voice of the customer to identify when things go wrong and proactively contain and fix them with other teams. This could include supplier issues, logistic challenges or technical bugs in the system. In addition, as you say, we make it right for our customers when things do go wrong. We are available in the channel of choice of the customer, whether phone, email or chat to listen to their questions or concerns in the most comfortable channel for them. We then reply and engage fast, including picking up the phone faster than the competition (or even emergency services!). Once we engage, we focus on listening to our customers, diagnosing their needs, problem solving through the contact and coming to a resolution that serves them best and most effectively.
What can a customer expect when they contact Wayfair with an order issue?
They can expect a talented and motivated Wayfair colleague who shows empathy and incredible skills to turn around a bad experience into a positive one for them. They should know your order and be able to diagnose your problem effectively. Once this is done we will make a set of commitments (or come up with a solution) which we will see through.
How is a customer’s unique needs taken into account to solve their problem?
No two customers are the same, and therefore, we try to personalise our solutions where needed and where possible. If you need to reschedule a date, we will. If you need us to change an address, we will. If an item is damaged we will offer you choices of replacement, discounts or spare parts. We try to make sure that we give flexibility to our teams to tailor the solution to the individual and their needs.
What’s next for Wayfair Sales & Service? Any future plans you can share?
So many things to do! So much has improved but we always strive to be better and we have well-defined plans to both continuously improve and deliver a step change in many topics. For example we are developing new omnichannel capabilities including texts, ramping up a team based in Poland for our DE marketplace, finalising our overhaul of Post Order Communications or developing the new set of tools for our agents to provide amazing service. Having said that, we are very excited on our 2-3 year agenda to further care for our customers and personalise their experience. We will place great emphasis this next 12 months on proactive outreaches (caring for all our customers) followed in the next 24 months with a distinct agenda to personalise their experience with us, with full understanding of who you are and what your experience has been in the past. It will be a very exciting couple of years for us!