Case Study: Managing the Customer Journey for Eaglemoss

The Client

Eaglemoss Collections, an international partworks publisher with operations in Europe and Asia. Independently or in partnership with other publishers, Eaglemoss creates around 80 partwork magazine collections every year.

Aimed at mass consumer markets, partworks consist of a finite number of magazines that build into a collective work to which consumers are invited to subscribe. Because partworks carry no advertising, revenue depends entirely upon successful subscription sales.

The Challenge

To manage the entire customer journey for Eaglemoss’s partworks business across Europe.

The Solution

Comdata provides a complete subscription and fulfilment operation to Eaglemoss across multiple channels and in two languages.

Comdata’s multichannel contact centre operation (phone, email, online and white mail) responds to subscription requests generated by high-profile TV advertising. Payments are processed via direct debit, credit card, cheque and PayPal, all secured by Comdata’s PCI and DSS compliant processes.

Comdata’s flexible team manages significant volume peaks and troughs – contacts levels can increase by over 500% during new product launch periods. At such times Comdata’s contact centre extends both staffing and opening hours.

In addition to its contact centre operation, Comdata is responsible for fulfilment, ensuring that all products are securely despatched to subscribers’ homes, while their personal details are securely housed in its sophisticated CRM system.

Comdata is also responsible for design and build of web ordering sites that reflect the look and feel of each partwork. The entire operation is managed within Comdata’s ISO9001 quality framework.

Results 

Comdata has successfully managed sales and end-to-end customer experience for over a million partwork subscribers for over ten years, generating over £150 million in revenues for Eaglemoss. In that time it has handled around:

• 3 million calls
• 250,000 emails
• 750,000 letters
• 500,000 web orders
• 200,000 coupon orders

And the work continues – fully compliant with the Direct Marketing Association’s Code of Practice, of course.

The commercial contract between the two companies links Comdata’s remuneration directly to sales, on a ‘payment per despatch’ basis.

This ensures that Comdata is focused on sales success and process efficiency. Comdata is also committed to generating ideas for continuous improvement. A single change recommendation created over £250,000 additional revenue for Eaglemoss in a single year.

Finally, real-time reporting of sales performance allows Eaglemoss to make timely decisions about media spend during launches, ensuring that advertising budgets are allocated effectively.

“Comdata manages our subscriptions from order to despatch, including payment processing, customer service and fulfilment. The level of customer service is excellent and, over the last few years, we have seen a steady decline in unnecessary customer contact, thanks to improvements in processes and service.” Gareth Watkinson, Subscriptions Manager, Eaglemoss.