Dennis Publishing

Keeping customer service well covered

As the company behind some of the UK's top-selling magazines, Dennis Publishing is a major player in the worldwide publishing industry.

With a focus on computing, gaming and lifestyle titles, its stable includes such well-known names as Maxim, Auto Express and PC Zone, and the business prides itself on being a market leader and innovator.

In the UK, PC Pro and Computer Shopper are the top selling magazines in their sector, pulling in well over 300,000 readers a month and the publisher was the first to introduce free cover-mount DVDs to complement its successes with cover-mount CDs.

With around 360 employees at its London headquarters and a further 300+ at its offices in New York and Los Angeles, the company has been in business since the early 1970s.

Key to its ongoing success and future growth of its titles is the ability to provide high quality customer support to readers who buy magazines with the cover-mounts and then, for whatever reason, encounter problems.

This could be anything from trouble running the disc or software, replacement of faulty discs, provision of discs missing from magazines or help for inexperienced users or those with inappropriate systems software or hardware. 

Although the publishing house had always used external support facilities to meet this need, 18 months ago it realised that the increasing success of its magazines required a supplier with a larger capacity to deal with readers' enquiries more efficiently.

Sarah Gilliver, EPU Publisher at Dennis Publishing, said: "Cover-mounts are a very important and successful part of our business and obviously readers who buy our magazines expect them to work. If there are problems, then it is vital that we have the right systems in place to be able to help deal with readers' enquiries. Previously, if people were having trouble getting the information they needed they'd call our editorial staff and obviously this wasn't an ideal situation, so we needed to make changes."

In addition to a more traditional call centre approach, Dennis Publishing was also looking for a supplier which could deal with reader enquiries via email as well as phone.

Separate lines were set up for each magazine, making it easy for the call centre team to give fast and accurate responses to queries or problems. Dedicated product training ensures that each of them is aware of the latest cover-mounts and knowledge sharing among the team means resources can be channelled to wherever the greatest need is at any one time.

The call centre handles an average of around 800 enquiries a month and the success of the Interchange operation means 90-95% are successfully dealt with first time around.

Although specialist operators can be called on if more technical expertise is required, Interchange's policy is for all team members to be able to handle the majority of enquiries and this pays dividends by reducing the number of callbacks necessary.

"We've found that the service provided presents us in a much more professional way and there is no doubt that customer relationships have been improved," said Sarah. "Queries are now dealt with much more effectively and efficiently than they were before and calls have been diverted away from the editorial team, which is what we wanted to achieve.

"We always make sure that copies of the DVDs or CDs go straight to the Interchange team at the same time as they go to the manufacturers, which means that they have time to really get to grips with the technology and test out all the software so that they're ready to deal with any problems that readers might throw at them. 

"We find doing it this way really works, both for us and our customers."

Other benefits include regular feedback and reporting from the Interchange team, easy capture of information and the ability to upscale customer support levels as required, depending on anticipated responses to reader campaigns.