Epicor’s customer service transformation is “everything you hope for”

Not many companies can replace all their systems and still show improving metrics

Winning a Stevie® Award one time is an honor not many companies can claim. Winning a Stevie a second time? That’s an even rarer accomplishment. But that’s exactly what Epicor Software Corporation has done, with back-to-back wins in the Customer Service Department of the Year category. How they accomplished it is a true story in customer service transformation.

Founded in 1972, Epicor serves over 20,000 customers in 150 countries. They are the world’s fifth largest enterprise resource planning software vendor, primarily serving the manufacturing, distribution, retail, and services sectors, with annual revenues of ~$800 million. Specific to service, they have 16 support centers around the world serving customers in 21 languages.

Epicor rose to their current size through a series of acquisitions, mergers, and shareholder changes. As a result, processes had become very convoluted. Multiple systems supported the business. This complexity was especially present in support operations, with over 15 support systems and more than 50 customer portals–costly infrastructure to maintain. Consequently, customer service was inefficient and inconsistent and was reflected in Epicor’s low Net Promoter Scores. With support and maintenance fees constituting nearly half of the company’s annual revenues, this was a cause for concern.

Something needed to change. That was when the concept of EpicCare was born.

EpicCare would be a major investment into a transformational project for support. It would deliver a single global support platform for all customers and partners across their entire product portfolio, driven by a desire to improve customer satisfaction. The search began for a state-of-the-art platform to simplify customer engagement and drive new efficiencies.

They ultimately chose Customer Service Management. It not only offered the capabilities they were seeking but introduced them to a service management-style of serving customers: taking problems beyond the walls of customer service to engage with other teams. In this way, issues were collaboratively isolated, assigned to the team responsible for a solution, and permanently solved for current as well as future customers.

Once Epicor was live in 2016, they found their bet on this transformative project was paying off. They realized many benefits, including:

  • More than 33% of their 500,000 cases per year are created from their customer service portal
  • Adopting Knowledge-Centered Support (KCS®[1]), resulting in a 20% reduction in monthly case volume after nine months
  • $11.4 million in expected benefits over 3 years from improved retention, incremental revenue growth, and efficiencies

Customers quickly noticed the change. They praised the new system, with comments like “EpicCare is working well and support has been great” and “The new portal is amazing—it’s everything you hope for in a modern support portal.” But the proof would come in their NPS scores, which saw a 10-percentage point increase in the first 10 months following EpicCare’s rollout.

One of the judges summed it up nicely in their initial win in 2017: “A transformative year for Epicor. Not many can replace all their systems and still show improving metrics.”

Is it any wonder EpicCare was described as Epicor’s most successful project to-date when they shared their journey during the recent Knowledge18 conference? And they called this “the end of the beginning” because their journey of continuous improvement won’t ever stop. It sounds like they’re going to need a bigger trophy case!

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[1] KCS® is a service mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation.