How Vera Bradley Optimized Operations and Delivered Smart Customer Service During the Holidays

Variability and change across the retail industry, including smaller margins and rampant inflation, are leading retailers to continually look for ways to elevate customer experience. Consumers, like brands, are experiencing higher costs of living and tightening their budgets in response. As a result, it’s becoming increasingly important for brands to differentiate themselves from the competition and be the brand that consumers come back to time and again.

With the holidays being a key profit season, retailers must ensure they have the right products in stock and the right deals to attract shoppers. But just as important, brands must ensure holistic, smart customer experiences to drive the customer loyalty needed to get the most out of the year’s biggest shopping season.

In recent years, organizations like luggage and handbag retailer Vera Bradley have reevaluated their brand-customer relationship to align with shifting consumer expectations.

A Need to Modernize

In 2017, Vera Bradley was in search of a new contact center partner that would elevate both the customer and agent experience. The company was dealing with an aging, on-premises system that made it hard to connect with and understand customers and deliver outstanding service. Customer complaints and call abandonment rates were much higher than acceptable. Employees expressed frustration over lack of insight into their performance and business leaders were challenged reporting metrics. Meanwhile, customers were facing dropped calls and a frustrating experience, which was later taken out on already-struggling agents.

Vera Bradley chose to switch to NICE CXone, transforming its CX with a complete, native, artificial intelligence-powered platform with a suite of intelligent solutions. In 2022, calls accounted for 33 percent of Vera Bradley's customer service interactions, while email, chat and social media accounted for 24 percent, 23 percent and 5 percent, respectively. Thanks to NICE, Vera Bradley can meet its customers at any touchpoint, any time.

The best part? Digital technology like AI and analytics now empowers agents to better understand and address their customer needs before customers even reach out. For example, Vera Bradley found that customers were often reaching out with specific product questions — e.g., inquiring about the pocket size of bags — to determine if a product will integrate perfectly into their lifestyle before they place an order. Able to anticipate these questions, Vera Bradley can have answers readily available, making it faster and easier to get shoppers the information they’re looking for as soon as they reach out.

Staying Busy

Cyber Monday — which raked in revenue that topped Black Friday by over $2 billion, according to Adobe — is always one of the busiest days of the year for contact centers. NICE technology took Cyber Monday customer activity to the next level for Vera Bradley.

Vera Bradley said its number of interactions last Cyber Monday was comparable to 2019 numbers for the first time since the start of the pandemic. Vera Bradley not only saw a 23 percent surge in call volume in 2022, but the company notes SMS inquiries were up substantially on Cyber Monday and several surrounding days, seeing an over 100 percent increase from the previous year. Vera Bradley attributed this increase to the brand resonating with and marketing to younger generations, including Gen Z.

Meeting the Challenge

Over the last five years, NICE’s solutions have contributed to a 75 percent reduction in call abandonment and a five-point increase in Vera Bradley’s engagement score. Furthermore, Vera Bradley’s team was more prepared for the peak holiday season. With the holiday shopping season starting earlier than normal, the retailer was able to bring in 18 new seasonal agents two weeks earlier than normal for comprehensive training and support before go-time.

With heightened consumer expectations and demand for instant gratification, it’s more important than ever for brands like Vera Bradley to revisit how to best understand and connect with their customers and provide them with a personalized, efficient experience that promotes repeat visits and lifelong loyalty. Investing in your customers not only helps increase brand perception, but also leads to larger and more frequent purchases and increased revenue, which is always critical for retailers, but especially so in times of economic uncertainty.

Elizabeth Tobey is the head of marketing, digital solutions at NICE, a customer experience software provider.