Major National Brand Improves Star Ratings & Slashes Support Costs by 30%

Returns, damages, and calls to support have traditionally been higher than average for several product categories at this major national brand. Most products in these categories required extensive or complex assembly and were typically responsible for 75% of total customer complaints.

For this brand, the assembly-related support calls alone cost $750,000 annually for the products in the assembly-intense categories.

4-Month Test

The brand ran a 4-month test on the effect of BILT 3D Intelligent Instructions on a product that ranked among the top offenders in complaint call volume. The test product was selected not only because of call volume, but also because it was representative of the average assembly time for the category (roughly 7 hours), and Q&A analysis revealed that ease of assembly was a top concern for potential customers.

The national brand included BILT Intelligent Instruction callouts on the online product information page but could not affect packaging or instruction manuals until the last 2 months of the test phase. Because of the limited exposure, only 28% of customers used BILT for assembly, but the results were immediate and exceeded all expectations.

BILT Delivers Immediate Gains

In 4 months, with 28% BILT adoption on the test product, the brand experienced:

• 30-point swing in the Net Promoter Score (+32 to +62 NPS)
• 5% increase in star rating, from 3.75 stars to 3.95 stars
• More than $72,000 sales lift in 4 months — a small percentage of the expected long-term lift
• 30% reduction in calls (more than $4,500 cost avoidance within 4 months)
• 3.7% drop in returns (more than $10,000 cost impact in 4 months)

Combining the sales lift and savings on support costs and returns meant BILT 3D instructions positively impacted a single test product by more than $86,500 within 4 months.

The brand expects the full-season cost avoidance to exceed $100,000, with the total impact to exceed $250,000 for the single test product.

Strategic Rollout for Maximum Impact

The brand has moved forward with upgrading their customer experience for hundreds of additional products. The first round of products was selected based on the following criteria:

• Ability to impact top-line sales
• Opportunity to affect profitability
• Existing customer sentiment & complaint analysis
• Assembly complexity & pain points

22x ROI Forecast

As the brand upgrades their product instructions with BILT, executives anticipate a 22x total ROI from BILT by the first half of the year. The company expects to reduce returns & support costs for the entire company by 15%, with some products seeing a 70% improvement.

This estimate comes from forecasted improvements throughout the business on several key metrics, including the following:

• 15% increase in NPS & star ratings
• 20% reduction in returns
• 20% reduction in customer support costs
• 7% sales lift due to higher consumer confidence

In addition to the significant profitability improvements, the brand sees BILT as a differentiator, a key selling point to retailers. The brand anticipates an increase in the volume of positive reviews resulting from an improved customer experience. The BILT app collects ratings, reviews and product registrations, as well as assembly data analysis.

Customers can store and easily access warranty information in the BILT app, another benefit the brand considers important to long-term loyalty. And, as one brand executive noted, “Successful customers are happy customers.”