This document provides an overview of Williams-Sonoma's implementation of IBM's Call Center for Commerce solution. It discusses Williams-Sonoma's business, challenges, and requirements. It also outlines the agenda, architecture, offline solution, prototyping approach, and governance/training for the project. The goal is to empower associates, provide a single customer view, and enable a consistent omnichannel experience.

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Best Practices for implementing IBM Call
Center for Commerce –
Session#1185
-Guru Samaga (WSI)
-Suresh Pillai (IBM)
-Vadi Ramamurthy (IBM)
• Email triggers
• Exception
WILLIAMS-SONOMA, INC.

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 Introduction to Williams-Sonoma, Inc.
 Profile
 Challenges
 Williams-Sonoma Requirements
 Why IBM Call Center
 Best Practices
 Embedded UI
 Offline Solution
 Extending Offline Solution
 Prototyping Approach
 Governance And Training
 Questions
Agenda

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About WILLIAMS-SONOMA, INC.
Williams-Sonoma, Inc. is a multi-channel specialty retailer of home furnishings and gourmet
cookware whose mission is to “enhance the quality of our customers’ lives at home”
Brands in our portfolio include Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Pbteen,
West Elm, Mark and Graham and Rejuvenation, all of which allow us to reach a diverse
customer group throughout different stages of life, with a mission to offering high-quality,
stylish products for every room in the house
We proudly operate hundreds of stores in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico,
Australia and the United Kingdom, and franchise our brands to third parties in the Middle
East and Southeast Asia

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About WILLIAMS-SONOMA, INC.
 Founded In 1956 by Chuck Williams, to turn a passion for cooking
into a small business with a big idea, Williams-Sonoma has
helped fuel a revolution in American cooking and entertaining
that continues today
 WSI is continually refining our best-in-class approach to multi-
channel retailing. Our products are available to customers
through 587 retail stores, catalogs and 8 e-Commerce sites.
 Over 50% of WSI $4.7 B revenue is from e-Commerce/DTC - it is
growing
 Over 2,000 Care Center Associates serve our customers from 5
Care Center locations
 Fulfillment is executed through 11 Distribution Centers (DC’s)
and 11 Hubs

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Challenges
Changing customer profile – Aspirations, Expectations and what it means to a specialty
multi-channel retailer
 Customer Experience: 59% will try a new brand or company for a better service
experience. (Source: American Express)

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Challenges
 Empowered Customer: Buyers are 70 to 90 percent completed with a sales transaction
before they engage with the vendor (Source: Forrester)

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Challenges
 Need For Single Source Of Truth: Integrate to bring system closer to a true 360-degree view
of the customer
 Channel Agnostic Service: Companies that connect all their customer service channel reports
89% customer retention, compared to 33% for those that haven’t (Source: aberdeen Group).
r e t a i l c a t a l o g o n l i n e
MULTI-CHANNEL
INTERACTIONS

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Challenges
 Know Your Customer: Massive Data For Analysis: Last year contact centers exchanged
31.8 Exabyte of unstructured data, with 76 billion hours of human interactions

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Challenges
 Our legacy AS/400 OMS (DTCMO) is WSI’s primary Direct to
Consumer order management and care center solution
 Flexibility to support future growth, incubating new concepts or
global expansion
 Out-of-the-Box solution for supporting omni-channel customer
OMS
 Key enabler for flexible eCommerce / Store / Care Center
ordering experience
 Reduce cognitive load on Care Center associates and allow them
to focus more on customer needs to enable upsell and cross-sell
 Reduce the training time to onboard Care Center associates
 Increasing flexibility for work-from-home associates
 Consistent and Seamless experience - Leveraging eCommerce
assets
 Support cross-brand selling

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Catalog & Pricing
•Support multiple active catalogs and
multiple items types
•Product details and image
•Inventory Availability
•Item Pricing
•Promotions – Coupons based, Payment
based
•Personalization Integration
Customer Profile Management
•Search Customers (Multiple search
options)
•Create/Update customer & related info
(address, contacts)
•View/edit customer comments/notes
•Loyalty tracking
•Track customer purchase and returns
history
•Catalog requests
WSI Requirements
•Capture notes on order
•Apply Coupon
•Apply and Resolve Order Holds
•Price Match
•Reship/Replace
•Appeasements
•Alert management
•Backorder alerts and actions
•Fraud alerts and actions
•Alert resolution forms
•Event Holds
•Capture WM Instructions
•Supervisor override
Other Order Management Tasks
Theming and branding
•Change logo, images and update
themes as suited to WSI
Configuration Screens
•Configuration screens such as user roles, Holds,
SKU messages etc.
Customer communications
•Email triggers & Exception Management

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Order Management
•Order capture
•Selling and parcel shipping restrictions
•Catalog and source code capture
•VAS – monogramming, personalization
and gift wrapping
•Adding line/quantity
•Related items
•Change fulfillment method
•Expedite shipping
•Change Shipping/Delivery date
•Change Shipping address
•Cancel Order - Partial and / or Full order
•Price Overrides
•Change item size/color/other variance
•Order Summary
•Order and line status
•VAS status
•Shipment and tracking status
•Vendor Drop ship status
•Invoices and Payment details
•Holiday cut off display and validation
Returns processing
•Return Search
•Return creation through call center
•Provide Return options
•Support shipping charge refunds
•Return tracking and visibility
•Even/Uneven exchanges
•Blind Returns
WSI Requirements
Offline Call Center
•Edge Server Solution
•Enterprise Order Cache (EOC)
Order Management
•Order Search
•Search using tender used on order
•Tender using multiple payments
•Tokenization interface for PCI data
•Multiple Tender type
•Credit Card
•WSI Card
•Check
•Gift Card

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Architecture Framework - IBM Call Center for Commerce
WILLIAMS-SONOMA and11
 IBM Standards:
 IDX toolkit,
 Globalization and Accessibility
 Presentation Layer
 Dojo/JS/HTML/XML/JSON
 Runs in a IE, Firefox, Chrome,
or Safari
 Filters
 Authentication
 Other Application Filters
 Mashup Layer
 Authorization
 Handling data between
presentation and business logic
layers
 Conversion from JSON to XML
Data
 Invoke external Web Services
 Business Logic Layer
 Application specific Business
Logic through exposed APIs
Presentation Layer
(Browser)Dojo, HTML5,
Javascript, JSON
Filters
Authentication Other Web Application Filters
Mashup Layer
Handling Data
for Business
Layer
Additional
Security
Conversion from
JSON to XML Data
Business Logic Layer

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External UI/service Integration
Seamless Integration Of Personalization UI
 HTML5/Jason based
integration
 External Web page opens
within the Call center
application enabling CSR
to see what customer
sees
Sample URL:
http://www.qa.markandgraham.com/mono-
pz/input.html?quantity=5&sku=1706357
Sample Response:
{"sku":"1706357","quantities":[{"quantity":5,"vas":
{"type":"monogramming","pzFontColor":"IJ","pzFontStyle":"5
39","pzTextLine1":"WSI","pzTextLine2":"","pzTextLine3":""}}]}

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Integrate with UPS to show delivery status for an order
External UI/service Integration
More use cases
Display 6 months price history for an item
Integrate with Salesforce for B2B customer

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Offline Solution – Edge Server
Order Management
(Cluster in Rocklin Data Center)
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Call
Center
App
OMS DB
Order Search
Order
Processing
Amendments
Returns
Alerts
Services:
Payment
Promotion
Inventory
LDAP
Others
LoadBalancer

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Offline Solution – Edge Server
Order Management
(Rocklin Data Center)
15
Call
Center
App
OMS
DB
Order Search
Order
Processing
Amendments
Returns
Alerts
Services:
Payment
Promotion
Inventory
LDAP
Others
LoadBalancer
Order Management
(Edge Solution At Las Vegas Care Center)
Local
OMS DB
Order Capture
Order Search*
Services:
Payment
Promotion
Inventory
LDAP
Edge Order SyncMaster Data and
Inventory Sync

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Extending Offline Solution
EOC - Enterprise Order Cache
C-Level execs are citing Business
Intelligence and Analytics as their #1
priority as part of their 2015 planning
activities

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Prototyping Approach
 Build stubs to represent each system
 Enables testing of all flows in absence of respective systems
 Enables crisp requirements
 Identify Gaps if any quickly
 Enable Business to experience the application during blue print
phase
 Feedback on user experience
 Quick decisions – Eliminate working through static screenshots
»

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Governance And Training
 Program Governance
 Involvement of IBM Execs
 Close collaboration with business during all phases
 Interface with business to demo every 3-4 weeks
 Collaboration with PLM and Services to resolve all the gaps
identified during the WCC pilot with business prior to kick off
 Some of the gaps were resolved by partnering with PLM
 Some of the gaps were incorporated into the scope for services
team to resolve
 Training
 Train the trainer immediately after kick off. Multiple sessions by
IBM team to train the BA and QA team on the new Web Call Center
 End of each development milestone a demo was given to BA and
QA team. The demo was recorded for training purpose.
 Assign a developer to work closely with the IBM team. His role is
to triage issues and fix minor bugs with assistance from IBM
team.
 Provide copy of demo instance for training in initial stages

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WILLIAMS-SONOMA and19
Thank You

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Notices and Disclaimers
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