How a Leading eCommerce Retailer Cut Contacts by 23% and Boosted CSAT by 46.5%

The Client

A leading global eCommerce company operating in the Japanese market was experiencing growing friction in its customer support operations. Despite strong product-market fit, the Japan Line of Business (JP LOB) was struggling to meet customer satisfaction benchmarks and saw consistently high volumes of incoming support tickets.

Internal QA processes were failing to explain why the dissatisfaction persisted, leaving leadership with limited visibility into the true issues affecting their customer experience.

The Challenge

While standard QA focused on agent behavior and surface-level metrics, it wasn’t uncovering the systemic drivers of dissatisfaction. CSAT scores remained below target since the business unit’s launch. Every attempted fix seemed to fall short.

Two persistent complaints dominated call volume:

• Promotion issues – customers were unable to redeem discount codes
• Shipping delays – delivery windows often exceeded expectations or commitments

These complaints were broadly categorized under “redemption” and “shipping” without further segmentation. As a result, root causes were misdiagnosed or completely overlooked.

The Analysis

1840 & Company deployed its CX INSIGHTS team to uncover the deeper, underlying causes of customer dissatisfaction.

Using a structured 3P analysis framework—People, Process, and Product—our team conducted:

• Data reviews across six weeks of customer contact history
• One-on-one interviews and focus groups with frontline agents
• Quality assurance audits tied to ticket-level feedback

This holistic approach surfaced unexpected issues that were not visible through conventional contact center QA.

Key Findings:

• IME Incompatibility: Japanese customers were using Zenkaku (full-width) keyboard settings that caused discount codes to be misread by the system. These characters were double the standard size, triggering errors that blocked code redemption.
• Shipping Reliability Gaps: The shipping provider used in Japan delivered only once per week. In some cases, redelivery delays extended fulfillment timelines up to a month—far beyond the SLA and customer expectations.

The Solution

Based on the findings, 1840’s CX INSIGHTS team worked with the client to build and implement an actionable, cross-functional roadmap to resolve these issues.

Process Improvements:

• Added front-end disclaimers instructing customers on proper keyboard format (Hankaku vs. Zenkaku) during checkout and code entry
• Developed internal training materials for agents to better recognize and resolve IME-related complaints

Operational Changes:

• Client replaced its legacy shipping provider with a faster logistics partner offering daily delivery windows
• Integrated monitoring of SLA breaches tied to location-based delivery patterns

Ongoing QA Feedback Loop:

• Continued weekly DSAT driver analysis
• Ongoing collaboration between QA and operations to permanently eliminate top contact drivers

The Outcome

The client achieved a 46.5% increase in CSAT scores over a five-month period—moving from 58.7% to 85.9% satisfaction. Support contact volume dropped by 23%, reducing pressure on the contact center and resulting in annualized cost savings of over $330,000.

Beyond the numbers, the organization gained:

• Greater alignment between customer feedback and operational change
• Stronger QA methodologies for future issue identification
• A more streamlined, localized experience for Japanese customers