We’ve all heard them, the Lands’ End “legends of customer service”—things like free fabric swatches, complimentary tailoring on dress pants, custom-made chinos and extended phone conversations with friendly call center reps.
Indeed, its laser-like focus on customer satisfaction is one reason the company garnered a 93-percent net income increase in the last fiscal year. Undoubtedly it’s also one of the reasons why retail giant Sears in May announced plans to acquire 55 percent of Lands’ End’s stock for an estimated $1.9 billion.
“[T]his company ... is well-known for high-quality products produced according to rigorous manufacturing standards,” stated Sears CEO Alan Lacy in a May 13 Webcast. “Customers recognize the value Lands’ End products represent.”
Such esteem comes from the mouths of friends and competitors alike.
When Chris McCormick, president of L.L. Bean, recently was asked which competitor he most admires, he didn’t hesitate to name Lands’ End. “They’re good marketers and their creative is doing a fine job. They execute perfectly. We’re learning a lot from them,” he said.
A peek inside Lands’ End reveals an operation that is dedicated to implementing the motto of company co-founder Gary Comer: “Take care of the people, take care of the customers, and the rest will take care of itself.”
Needling the Threads
Superior service begins with superior merchandise. “There’s not a button that goes on a pair of pants, or a thread on a skirt that isn’t tested by our quality assurance lab,” says Karen Centner, Lands’ End’s vice president and general merchandise manager of e-commerce and international.
The company’s quality-assurance machines test tensile strength and tear resistance, colorfastness, shrinkage, abrasion resistance, flammability and more. If a product doesn’t meet the company’s tough quality or measurement standards, it’s removed from the shipment and re-routed to a Lands’ End outlet or returned to the vendor.
“We believe the most efficient way to guarantee quality is to start from the very beginning,” reports Centner. That means quality assurance is factored into merchandise planning, both in design and fit.
Company officials concentrate on preserving the classics-oriented style for which it is widely known. Centner says she can define the Lands’ End look by what it isn’t: “Not overly accessorized, not overly feminine or frilly. It’s not conservative so much as simple, classic and elegant.”
To measure whether a product lives up to that standard, Lands’ End goes right to the source—customers. Every month, teams compile reports of customers’ comments from all ordering channels; organize the data by category; and distribute it to the merchandise staff.
“We take statistically large requests or responses very seriously,” says Centner. “We’ll act on what we learn by developing new products, colors, fabrics or customer service initiatives.” These formalized feedback loops enable merchandisers and managers to maintain a sharp focus on product quality and customers’ desires.
Centner says the company strives to balance the classics with trendier apparel. Rather than introduce an all-new line of products each year, merchandise and design staffs collaborate to pair well-known styles with newly updated colors.
Even staple products are refreshed occasionally. For example, the Lands’ End chino has undergone a mini-evolution since 1993. Until then, it was a simple twill pant: well-constructed, but stiff in feel. Customer feedback sent the merchandise team looking for a softer fabric, which it found and has successfully incorporated into its product line.
To help improve fit, Land’ End enlists professional fit models who travel to the company’s Dodgeville, WI, headquarters once a week to try on all of its men’s and women’s apparel. (Employees’ children are used to fit children’s apparel.) Once the proper fit for each size is determined, catalog executives give photographers, stylists and professional models photos of the garments on the sizing models to better enable replication.
Centner says such careful attention to detail ensures that buyers will get exactly what they see in the catalog—a strategy that not only fosters customer satisfaction, but also helps to reduce returns.
Of course, not all standard sizes accommodate all customers’ preferences. To let these customers create pants to fit their needs, Lands’ End last year introduced custom-made chinos.
Here’s how the program works: Customers visit the cataloger’s Web site, type in their measurements and answer general questions about their proportions. The answers are funneled through
special software developed by Archetype, a Richmond, CA-based technology company. The software determines a customer’s weight distribution and ideal trouser measurements, and then sends size specifications via the Internet to a factory specially equipped to cut fabric for each order. Customers get their pants directly from the factory in two to three weeks.
Sales records reveal that most of the customers buying customized chinos aren’t regular chino customers, says Centner, thus satisfying the company’s goal to widen its customer base. Lands’ End introduced customized denim in April, and it plans to launch custom dress shirts this fall.
The Front Line
While such measures undoubtedly help ensure product quality, they’re not the only way the cataloger endears itself to its valued customers. Its front line of 1,500 call center reps is a carefully selected and highly trained workforce, according to Phyllis Irish, recruitment and development manager.
Ann Olson, vice president of sales and service, agrees, adding: “We see customer service as a strategic advantage.”
Applicants for call center rep positions, for example, are first interviewed on the phone. “We want to hear how they sound, how friendly they are, their tone of voice, etc.,” says Irish.
Once applicants make it through the first cut, recruiters look for reps who can deal easily with all types of people and who possess problem-solving skills. Finally, recruiters looks for individuals who fit the company’s community-based brand image.
Once hired, reps complete a two-week, 70-hour training session, during which they learn about the Lands’ End culture, customers and ordering system. Olson estimates it takes a new call center rep about six months to get up to speed with customers and product information.
Last year, 56 percent of new applicants came from employee referrals, says Irish. The company offers a $50 bonus to both the referring employee and the new recruit if they stay on board through the following holiday season. The cataloger hires hundreds of additional call center reps during peak season when about 40 percent of the company’s annual sales come in, says Irish.
Continuing training is mandatory for all levels of call center reps. Once a month for up to three hours, reps learn about new products and receive systems training and/or special training for specific product categories.
Employees are rewarded—sometimes right on the spot—for offering exceptional service, says Irish. For example, spot bonuses ranging from $20 to trip giveaways are given to associates, including call center reps, whose performance exceeds their job descriptions. Other perks for top performance include time off, “Bravo” cards that provide employee recognition, and local merchant gift certificates.
Such strategies in employee recruitment and retention seem to be working. Lands’ End recently was named one of Fortune magazine’s Best Places to Work.
Olson notes that Lands’ End is determined not to outsource customer service operations, as some catalogers have done. “We don’t feel comfortable giving that much control to somebody else.”
Though the training for call center reps may be structured, the way they handle calls is not. Reps are given the autonomy to take care of customers as they see fit. Calls are neither scripted nor timed.
Says Olson, “If you start to focus on the number of calls people take, or how long they take, you can easily drive the wrong behavior.” In particular, reps are discouraged from rushing callers; instead, they take the time necessary to answer questions and give the customer a satisfying shopping experience.
In this way, reps can build strong relationships with customers. Says Tara Roth, a company spokesperson, “Without those human touches, our customers’ experiences become de-personalized, and that’s not what we’re about.”
Online Operations
The cataloger translates this customer-centric approach to its Web site, landsend.com. It offers several Web applications, including:
- Lands’ End Live: A real-time, online chat service, which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- My Virtual Model: According to company officials, this is Lands’ End’s most popular Web tool. The model allows shoppers to create and save their own 3-D models to determine how clothes will fit. Average order value increases 9 percent when the model is used, according to company reports.
- My Personal Shopper: A search engine that can recommend product styles and colors based on the customer’s preferences. The system uses conjoint analysis, which is a series of questions, each with a mathematical formula behind it. The analysis totals the responses to these questions to determine whether the shopper prefers, for example, color instead of style.
Roth calls conjoint analysis a “versatile marketing research technique that can provide valuable information for market segmentation, new product development, forecasting and pricing decisions.”
- Shop With a Friend: An application that enables two people to shop online and view the same Web pages at the same time.
“One of the things that still amazes me is that every month I get a stack of letters from customers that’s about an inch thick, talking about how they had a great experience with us,” says Centner. “It’s a ‘Wow!’ for us, and it reinforces that what we’re doing is the right thing to do.”
The folks at Sears seem to agree.
Lands’ End at a Glance
Headquarters: Dodgeville, WI
Year Founded: 1963
Year Company Went Public: 1986
Number of Catalogs Mailed: 272 million in fiscal year 2002
Number of Types of Catalogs: 8
Number of Employees: 7,700, and 10,200 worldwide during holiday peak season
Annual Revenue: $1.57 billion in fiscal year 2002
Number of 12-month Buyers: 7 million
Type of Products Sold: Men’s, women’s and kids’ apparel, home decor, luggage, school uniforms and b-to-b apparel
Call Center Facts
Number of Call Center Reps: 1,500, with hundreds more hired during the holiday season
Average Queue Time: 89 percent of calls are answered in 20 seconds or less
Average Call Length: 4.5 minutes
Number of Annual Calls: Almost 17 million in fiscal year 2002
To Try:
Action Tips from Lands’ End
- Superior service begins with superior merchandise. Products must meet the company’s tough quality and measurement standards.
- To help improve fit, the company enlists professional fit models who travel to the company’s headquarters to try on all apparel.
- Applicants for call center rep positions are first interviewed on the phone so recruiters can hear how they speak, their tone and other crucial skills.
- Newly hired call center reps complete a two-week, 70-hour training session, during which they learn about the Lands’ End culture, customers and ordering system.
- Land’s End offers a $50 bonus to both the referring employee and the new recruit if they stay on board through the following holiday season.
- Employees are rewarded—sometimes right on the spot—for offering exceptional service.
- Reps are given the autonomy to take care of customers as they see fit. Calls are neither scripted nor timed.
Lands’ End’s Strategic Advantage
We’ve all heard them, the Lands’ End “legends of customer service”—things like free fabric swatches, complimentary tailoring on dress pants, custom-made chinos and extended phone conversations with friendly call center reps.
Indeed, its laser-like focus on customer satisfaction is one reason the company garnered a 93-percent net income increase in the last fiscal year. Undoubtedly it’s also one of the reasons why retail giant Sears in May announced plans to acquire 55 percent of Lands’ End’s stock for an estimated $1.9 billion.
“[T]his company ... is well-known for high-quality products produced according to rigorous manufacturing standards,” stated Sears CEO Alan Lacy in a May 13 Webcast. “Customers recognize the value Lands’ End products represent.”
Such esteem comes from the mouths of friends and competitors alike.
When Chris McCormick, president of L.L. Bean, recently was asked which competitor he most admires, he didn’t hesitate to name Lands’ End. “They’re good marketers and their creative is doing a fine job. They execute perfectly. We’re learning a lot from them,” he said.
A peek inside Lands’ End reveals an operation that is dedicated to implementing the motto of company co-founder Gary Comer: “Take care of the people, take care of the customers, and the rest will take care of itself.”
Needling the Threads
Superior service begins with superior merchandise. “There’s not a button that goes on a pair of pants, or a thread on a skirt that isn’t tested by our quality assurance lab,” says Karen Centner, Lands’ End’s vice president and general merchandise manager of e-commerce and international.
The company’s quality-assurance machines test tensile strength and tear resistance, colorfastness, shrinkage, abrasion resistance, flammability and more. If a product doesn’t meet the company’s tough quality or measurement standards, it’s removed from the shipment and re-routed to a Lands’ End outlet or returned to the vendor.
“We believe the most efficient way to guarantee quality is to start from the very beginning,” reports Centner. That means quality assurance is factored into merchandise planning, both in design and fit.
Company officials concentrate on preserving the classics-oriented style for which it is widely known. Centner says she can define the Lands’ End look by what it isn’t: “Not overly accessorized, not overly feminine or frilly. It’s not conservative so much as simple, classic and elegant.”
To measure whether a product lives up to that standard, Lands’ End goes right to the source—customers. Every month, teams compile reports of customers’ comments from all ordering channels; organize the data by category; and distribute it to the merchandise staff.
“We take statistically large requests or responses very seriously,” says Centner. “We’ll act on what we learn by developing new products, colors, fabrics or customer service initiatives.” These formalized feedback loops enable merchandisers and managers to maintain a sharp focus on product quality and customers’ desires.
Centner says the company strives to balance the classics with trendier apparel. Rather than introduce an all-new line of products each year, merchandise and design staffs collaborate to pair well-known styles with newly updated colors.
Even staple products are refreshed occasionally. For example, the Lands’ End chino has undergone a mini-evolution since 1993. Until then, it was a simple twill pant: well-constructed, but stiff in feel. Customer feedback sent the merchandise team looking for a softer fabric, which it found and has successfully incorporated into its product line.
To help improve fit, Land’ End enlists professional fit models who travel to the company’s Dodgeville, WI, headquarters once a week to try on all of its men’s and women’s apparel. (Employees’ children are used to fit children’s apparel.) Once the proper fit for each size is determined, catalog executives give photographers, stylists and professional models photos of the garments on the sizing models to better enable replication.
Centner says such careful attention to detail ensures that buyers will get exactly what they see in the catalog—a strategy that not only fosters customer satisfaction, but also helps to reduce returns.
Of course, not all standard sizes accommodate all customers’ preferences. To let these customers create pants to fit their needs, Lands’ End last year introduced custom-made chinos.
Here’s how the program works: Customers visit the cataloger’s Web site, type in their measurements and answer general questions about their proportions. The answers are funneled through
special software developed by Archetype, a Richmond, CA-based technology company. The software determines a customer’s weight distribution and ideal trouser measurements, and then sends size specifications via the Internet to a factory specially equipped to cut fabric for each order. Customers get their pants directly from the factory in two to three weeks.
Sales records reveal that most of the customers buying customized chinos aren’t regular chino customers, says Centner, thus satisfying the company’s goal to widen its customer base. Lands’ End introduced customized denim in April, and it plans to launch custom dress shirts this fall.
The Front Line
While such measures undoubtedly help ensure product quality, they’re not the only way the cataloger endears itself to its valued customers. Its front line of 1,500 call center reps is a carefully selected and highly trained workforce, according to Phyllis Irish, recruitment and development manager.
Ann Olson, vice president of sales and service, agrees, adding: “We see customer service as a strategic advantage.”
Applicants for call center rep positions, for example, are first interviewed on the phone. “We want to hear how they sound, how friendly they are, their tone of voice, etc.,” says Irish.
Once applicants make it through the first cut, recruiters look for reps who can deal easily with all types of people and who possess problem-solving skills. Finally, recruiters looks for individuals who fit the company’s community-based brand image.
Once hired, reps complete a two-week, 70-hour training session, during which they learn about the Lands’ End culture, customers and ordering system. Olson estimates it takes a new call center rep about six months to get up to speed with customers and product information.
Last year, 56 percent of new applicants came from employee referrals, says Irish. The company offers a $50 bonus to both the referring employee and the new recruit if they stay on board through the following holiday season. The cataloger hires hundreds of additional call center reps during peak season when about 40 percent of the company’s annual sales come in, says Irish.
Continuing training is mandatory for all levels of call center reps. Once a month for up to three hours, reps learn about new products and receive systems training and/or special training for specific product categories.
Employees are rewarded—sometimes right on the spot—for offering exceptional service, says Irish. For example, spot bonuses ranging from $20 to trip giveaways are given to associates, including call center reps, whose performance exceeds their job descriptions. Other perks for top performance include time off, “Bravo” cards that provide employee recognition, and local merchant gift certificates.
Such strategies in employee recruitment and retention seem to be working. Lands’ End recently was named one of Fortune magazine’s Best Places to Work.
Olson notes that Lands’ End is determined not to outsource customer service operations, as some catalogers have done. “We don’t feel comfortable giving that much control to somebody else.”
Though the training for call center reps may be structured, the way they handle calls is not. Reps are given the autonomy to take care of customers as they see fit. Calls are neither scripted nor timed.
Says Olson, “If you start to focus on the number of calls people take, or how long they take, you can easily drive the wrong behavior.” In particular, reps are discouraged from rushing callers; instead, they take the time necessary to answer questions and give the customer a satisfying shopping experience.
In this way, reps can build strong relationships with customers. Says Tara Roth, a company spokesperson, “Without those human touches, our customers’ experiences become de-personalized, and that’s not what we’re about.”
Online Operations
The cataloger translates this customer-centric approach to its Web site, landsend.com. It offers several Web applications, including:
- Lands’ End Live: A real-time, online chat service, which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
- My Virtual Model: According to company officials, this is Lands’ End’s most popular Web tool. The model allows shoppers to create and save their own 3-D models to determine how clothes will fit. Average order value increases 9 percent when the model is used, according to company reports.
- My Personal Shopper: A search engine that can recommend product styles and colors based on the customer’s preferences. The system uses conjoint analysis, which is a series of questions, each with a mathematical formula behind it. The analysis totals the responses to these questions to determine whether the shopper prefers, for example, color instead of style.
Roth calls conjoint analysis a “versatile marketing research technique that can provide valuable information for market segmentation, new product development, forecasting and pricing decisions.”
- Shop With a Friend: An application that enables two people to shop online and view the same Web pages at the same time.
“One of the things that still amazes me is that every month I get a stack of letters from customers that’s about an inch thick, talking about how they had a great experience with us,” says Centner. “It’s a ‘Wow!’ for us, and it reinforces that what we’re doing is the right thing to do.”
The folks at Sears seem to agree.
Lands’ End at a Glance
Headquarters: Dodgeville, WI
Year Founded: 1963
Year Company Went Public: 1986
Number of Catalogs Mailed: 272 million in fiscal year 2002
Number of Types of Catalogs: 8
Number of Employees: 7,700, and 10,200 worldwide during holiday peak season
Annual Revenue: $1.57 billion in fiscal year 2002
Number of 12-month Buyers: 7 million
Type of Products Sold: Men’s, women’s and kids’ apparel, home decor, luggage, school uniforms and b-to-b apparel
Call Center Facts
Number of Call Center Reps: 1,500, with hundreds more hired during the holiday season
Average Queue Time: 89 percent of calls are answered in 20 seconds or less
Average Call Length: 4.5 minutes
Number of Annual Calls: Almost 17 million in fiscal year 2002
To Try:
Action Tips from Lands’ End
- Superior service begins with superior merchandise. Products must meet the company’s tough quality and measurement standards.
- To help improve fit, the company enlists professional fit models who travel to the company’s headquarters to try on all apparel.
- Applicants for call center rep positions are first interviewed on the phone so recruiters can hear how they speak, their tone and other crucial skills.
- Newly hired call center reps complete a two-week, 70-hour training session, during which they learn about the Lands’ End culture, customers and ordering system.
- Land’s End offers a $50 bonus to both the referring employee and the new recruit if they stay on board through the following holiday season.
- Employees are rewarded—sometimes right on the spot—for offering exceptional service.
- Reps are given the autonomy to take care of customers as they see fit. Calls are neither scripted nor timed.