Lillian Vernon Shuts Phillipines Call Center - Spoken's Guided Self-Service Saves 20 Seconds per Call

Crediting increased operational efficiencies as the catalyst, Lillian Vernon closed its satellite call center in Manila, Philippines, on March 18.

“We began delivering 100% of our contact volume to our Virginia Beach facility effective Sunday,” says Toni Cicero, vice president of customer care. “This means that our Virginia Beach call center will operate from 7 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week.”...

Although the company won't release exact figures on the total number of calls it receives in Virginia Beach, it expects a 30% increase in call volume now that the Manila facility has closed. Even so, "our peak capacity proved that 100% of our calls could be handled in Virginia Beach without any detriment to budget," says a spokesperson...

Lillian Vernon has also been testing an advanced interactive voice response (IVR) program for several months, and Andrew Clayton, call center operations manager, says that so far it has cut the average handling time by as much as 20 seconds.