Prepared for Purdue Entrepreneurship
Certificate Program
Team Analysis & Discussion
Spring 2007 © Hank Feeser
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Jennifer
Canty, 
a Sterling, VA
entrepreneur started refurbishing iPods and other gadgets and selling them on
eBay three years ago, primarily so she could work from home and care for her
infant son. Today, the company she founded, Dyscern, employs 12 people,
occupies a 10,000-square-foot warehouse and is projecting $6 million in annual
revenue.
Dyscern LLC, founded in 2003, is a Virginia-based eCommerce
company with employees in Sterling, Virginia and Jackson, Michigan. Dyscern
focuses on recovering customer returns, distressed and overstock merchandise
for resale on the Internet. Dyscern primarily focuses on handheld computers,
PDA phones, digital cameras and MP3 players.
eBay info: Business Information Link here: http://myworld.ebay.com/dyscern/
History/background
I founded Dyscern in 2003, after my first son was born. I
didn't want to return to the corporate world and I wanted to create something
that would be flexible around my schedule. The business grew, then grew some
more, and it just kept growing. It's still flexibile around my schedule,
allowing me to spend time with my son and daughter. We're now a company of a
dozen people, and we have our own warehouse and office space near my home in
the Washington D.C. metro area. It's a lot of fun, but don't let anyone tell
you running a business on eBay is easy :-)! It's a wonderful platform, and you
get to work with people all over the world, but it's work to do it right, and a
lot of work. My goal is to make sure that my team and I provide a wonderful
online experience, and it appears to be working. Our business and what we do
has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The
Washington Post and Fox News.
Payment policy
We accept all credit cards via PayPal. We can also accept a
cashier's check, money order, and BidPay.
Shipping information
I built the business around my favorite eBay and online
shopping experiences. So as a policy we ship within one business day via UPS.
If you pay by 2 p.m. ET, your package ships the same day Monday through Friday.
Our international customers normally receive their shipments within three days
via UPS. It's just that fast.
Return policy
We stand behind our products with a 30 day guarantee on the
unit's functionality, valid from the date of sale. We guarantee the item we
sell will be the item described. In the event of a functional problem, we
provide a complete refund or an exchange and pay for return shipping costs. You
can bid with confidence as we stand behind our products. Please note if an item
is returned for a reason unrelated to the unit's functionality, Dyscern
reserves the right to assess a 15% restocking fee.
Contact information
We're
a small company, so e-mail is always the best way to reach us. We answer
e-mails pretty much during waking hours Monday through Friday. Our e-mail
address is customer.service@dyscern.com. We answer all e-mails. You can also
reach us by phone at 703-421-0275 or 877-637-3300. However, it's usually best
to contact us by e-mail.
|
Improve Customer
Support by Decreasing Email via a Successful Knowledge Base |
|
|
As a leading seller on a popular online auction community, we
at Dyscern know that a high volume of email is consistently the number one
customer service issue in our industry. To provide quality customer service,
we had to find a way to adequately manage our high volume of email with a
minimal number of staff or find a solution to decrease the volume of incoming
email. In this article, I will explain how we successfully reduced the
overall volume of incoming email, resulting in a remarkable reduction in
pre-sales questions, thus allowing us to focus on maintaining customer
satisfaction through post-sales emails. An Effective Knowledge Base Our customer support staff was handling approximately 12,000
emails per month, and of those about 6 out of every 10 required a “canned”
answer. Prior to being introduced to Parature, we didn’t think a knowledge
base would be an effective solution for our particular situation, due to the
fact that three quarters of our questions came through the “Ask seller a
question” (ASQ) link on the auction page. However, the Parature solution not
only offered us the flexibility and functionality we needed to take a
customer from the ASQ link into a knowledge base where they can ask a
question, but more importantly it allowed us to be more proactive by having
the answers to the most frequently asked questions right there in the
knowledge base. Now, the knowledge base goes from being viewed as an
ineffective solution, in our eyes, to a very effective solution for our
industry needs. A Well Designed Knowledge Base We designed our knowledge base with the basic look and feel of
Dyscern, putting a large emphasis on the main page in the effort to achieve
our primary goal of decreasing email volume by having customers help
themselves. Prior to implementing the Parature solution, we had a half dozen
questions that accounted for 60 to 70 emails per day, every day. We had to
make certain that we answered those particular questions. In addition, we had
to make it very clear where they could find the answers to those 6 questions,
as well as making it clear where they could go to email us a question if they
did not find the question or answer they were seeking. In doing so, we found
that a self-serve model is a very efficient model, as long as you are doing
it effectively. The key is giving your customers a choice, not telling them
that they can’t send an email, but giving them the option to see if the
answer to their question is within the knowledge base. Any volume decrease is
a savings increase.
Can a Simple, Yet Well Designed Knowledge Base Be an Effective
Solution? The answer is quite simply, yes! Through this branded
knowledge base we have made measurable and remarkable reductions in email
volume. We experienced a 55% reduction in pre-sales questions, which is
enormous. Prior to implementing the knowledge base solution, we were
averaging 3 post-sales questions for every 1 pre-sale question, this ratio is
now 7 post-sales questions for every pre-sale question. This is a huge step
for us because it allows us to focus more on our existing customer base while
serving our potential customers effectively. Our support team is now able to
answer the basic “how to” questions from our actual consumers that would
normally contribute to high return rates if not answered in a timely fashion.
We also have the advantage of knowing exactly what the subject of an email is
before ever opening it. The subject line from any question originating from
the knowledge base is tagged with the topic and question, enabling the team
to gain better focus. The overall decrease in emails per running auction has
had a secondary effect of enabling us to increase the number of listings we
are doing with the same number of staff. All of this has been accomplished
without any measurable impact on our pricing or velocity on the online
auction community. |
