Company Overview: Kmart Corporation, a near-$40 billion company, serves America with more than 2,100 Kmart and Kmart supercenter retail outlets. Kmart is the #2 discount retailer in the US that sells name-brand and private-label general merchandise (including its popular Martha Stewart Everyday label and Route 66 clothing). Kmart has stores in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam.

Before Interactive: Before the Interactive deployment, Kmart had:

• 20 Customer Service Representatives (CSR) reading and routing Email to 2,500 store managers every day;
• No workflow, automation, or tracking systems; and
• 20,000 Emails a month and growing rapidly.

Given this problem, Kmart was about to sign a deal with a vendor for system that would take six months to deploy.

The Interactive Deployment: Interactive executed a pilot in five (5) days. Following this pilot, Interactive completed full deployment in three (3) weeks. This rapid deployment was five months shorter than the nearest competitor. Interactive also offered Kmart trial use of Interactive Business Intelligence for 60 days. The viability of Interactive/BI was proven with an accuracy rate of 92 percent within 60 days.

After Interactive: Within two months of deployment, Interactive increased Kmart’s customer service and satisfaction, decreased its CSR staff to five people, allowing Kmart to reassign staff to key strategic positions. Interactive also reduced Kmart’s customer service-related expenses, saving Kmart over $60,000 a month.

Through Interactive, Kmart is able to maintain low CSR headcount despite an increase in Email queries. Kmart currently services their customers within eight hours.

Types of Inquiries Handled

• Product and pricing assistance requests.
• Customer complaints, compliments, and suggestions.
• Corporate- and store-level information requests.
• Vendor-related issues.