The Background

Meridian is on a mission to help customers revamp their routine and relationship with their hair everywhere -by delivering high quality grooming products. One of their best selling products is their body trimmer, which is highly rated by their customers as an easy to use, safe & fast way to remove body hair.

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The Problem

While Meridian creates best-in-class experiences, at times even the best quality products can malfunction. For this reason, Meridian stands by their product and offers a warranty to replace or fix trimmers, with a money-back guarantee. Unfortunately, the process for a customer to submit a claim was cumbersome and resulted in unnecessary back and forth communication. Over 50% of these cases involved 7-10 touch points between customers and agents, with these high touch; high cost tickets ranging from $5 up to $8 per ticket to manage.

Meridian set out to find a way to make it easier for customers to get in touch, while propelling agent efficiency for faster claim processing, all to generate a better customer experience. “We realized the chatbot flow became very wordy and put a lot of onus on our customers”, says Chris Sabadlab, Meridian’s Director of Customer Support. “Hark stood out to us because it allowed us to capture more details than we had previously, while potentially providing a better experience to our customers which is very important to our brand.”

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The Results

During a 45 day proof of concept, Meridian tested Hark by placing links to initiate the Hark flow within their chat bot as well as on their FAQ page under the “Standard Warranty & Extended Protection” section.

“Prior to Hark, many of our customers would start the warranty claim process via e-mail and not attach a picture or video” says Anna Santos-Glenka who runs CX for Meridian. “Asking for proof later in the process proved difficult. Customers grew frustrated of having to replicate the issue after they had already reached out! Also, many people have a hard time uploading videos or pictures due to file sizes…”

With Hark, customers could send their video within the browser before being prompted for more information. This eliminated the step of uploading and ensured that each claim was complete with all information, in many instances avoiding unnecessary back-and-forth multi-touch tickets for customers.

This change alone resulted in an increased CSAT rating from 4 to 5. The response rate also increased from 18% to 20% which showed confidence and enthusiasm from Meridian customers to share their positive experience.

Delighting their customers with a communication channel that makes them feel seen and heard was one side of the equation. On the other side, let’s take a look at how Hark increased agent efficiency. Thanks to Hark's video platform, Meridian enjoyed a 26.3% increase in one-touch resolutions, which was a key metric they were tracking throughout the engagement. For Meridian, this meant that 80% of all warranty claims became 1-touch resolutions and as an added bonus, ticket reopen rates decreased by 21%!

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“Our agents have been raving about receiving the tickets processed through Hark!” says Anna. “They love how much information they receive upfront including sentiment so they know if the customer is already frustrated before digging in.”

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Meridian’s lowest cost per ticket is a 1-touch resolution, which averages around $3. By expediting the resolution of tickets, Meridian not only freed up more time for their Agents, but they also – drumroll – reduced their cost per ticket by 43%!

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“Hark has been very helpful, generally faster, and I personally love not having to download the videos each time." - Joselyn (CS team member)

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Overall, Hark continues to help the Meridian team create efficiency for their agents and delight their customers with an intuitive video communication channel. “We’re ecstatic with the early results and cannot wait to use the Hark product in more areas of the post purchase journey,” Chris said.

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Click here to learn more about Meridian