Indigo's Data-Driven Approach to Enhance Customer Delivery Experiences

Indigo is a Canadian retail company founded in 1996 by book lovers, for book lovers. It is a cultural department store that aims to consistently provide inspiring, richly stocked, and inviting retail environments. At nearly 200 store locations and on its popular website, Indigo serves as a meeting place inspired by and filled with books, music, art, ideas, and beautifully designed lifestyle products. Throughout its evolution, Indigo has put the customer first, focusing decisions from product selection to customer service on whether they will add joy to the customer experience.

Indigo, a Canadian retail company, faced a significant challenge in mid-2019 when it diversified its delivery network from a single nationwide carrier to an array of both national and regional options. This expansion from one to eight carriers meant that delivery data would now arrive from eight different sources, requiring substantial resources to track. Simultaneously, Indigo aimed to improve the customer experience surrounding order delivery, as research indicated that more than two-thirds of shoppers won't return to a retailer after a bad delivery experience. When they used only a single delivery carrier, Indigo received ‘after the fact’ reporting letting them know a package was delivered, but no indication when a package was stalled or delayed along the way. As Indigo expanded its network of parcel delivery carriers, it became increasingly challenging to get a timely, centralized view of delivery performance and issues across the country at any time, and difficult to establish procedures to proactively address them before a customer called to report an issue.

Indigo implemented Ada and integrated with project44 to provide ongoing notifications to customers as packages reach key points in their delivery journey. This allowed customers to track their packages in real-time regardless of carrier, reducing the number of costly 'where is my order' inquiries to live customer service representatives. Indigo created a customer interface that is fully branded and displayed within their eCommerce site environment, ensuring that customers are able to connect with Indigo representatives if they have questions. To create a 'single source of truth,' Indigo integrated data into its CRM system, so that customer service agents have access to shipment status and can answer questions confidently. Indigo's chatbot solution can conduct simple order lookups and provide status updates, giving customers information in seconds. This cohesive, unified approach proved crucial when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted temporary store closures, a dramatic increase in online orders, and a host of supply chain challenges.

• The implementation of Ada and integration with project44 allowed Indigo to maintain its commitment to providing an exceptional customer experience amid the unforeseeable challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. With a complete, centralized view of the company's delivery network and every package moving through it, the Indigo team was able to make operational changes organization-wide. Indigo introduced more rigor into its processes for onboarding new delivery carriers and established minimum standards and clear data-sharing requirements up-front. This resulted in a decline in orders requiring customer service intervention, translating into better customer experiences, and significant cost savings every month.

• 14% reduction in orders requiring customer service intervention

• $150,000 saved with automation

• 120,000 potential delivery delays proactively rerouted during the holiday season