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John Smedley Follows a Tradition of Heritage and Innovation
Founded in 1784, at Lea Mills, in Matlock, Derbyshire by Peter Nightingale and his associate John Smedley, John Smedley is renowned throughout the world as a leader in the production of fine gauge knitwear products. Still family owned, the company continues to innovate while retaining the hand crafted finishing techniques that has established its reputation for more than two centuries.
In its early days the mill specialised in the production of muslin and spinning cotton to send out to local cottages with hand frame looms. Towards the end of the 18th century the company had extended its activities to include knitting and hosiery manufacture and by this time John Smedley was running the business alone, although the Nightingale family retained an interest in the property.
In 1819 John Smedley's son John was apprenticed to the company, and after thorough training took over the helm six years later at the age of 24. With great energy and vision he set about modernising and expanding the company, with the intention that all the manufacturing processes required to produce finished product should be under one roof, using the finest quality raw materials available. These principles continue to be the cornerstone of the company's success.
In 1875 the business was passed onto a third John, a cousin J T Marsden Smedley, who after his death in1877 entrusted the company to his son, the fourth John B Marsden Smedley. He was to thrust the company expansion even further, remaining chairman for an impressive 70 years. During this time he installed up-to-the-minute knitting machines and made the decision to become a limited company in 1893, producing more versatile garments such as underwear and knitted outerwear.
Over the next 50 years the company extended its underwear production to incorporate swimwear and nightwear for men and women. During the 1960's the signature sweater line was developed which was responsible for the growth in overseas markets. Today more than 70% of all John Smedley product is exported to over 35 countries throughout the world.
John Smedley use only materials of the very best quality and have unparalleled experience in sourcing the world's finest luxury fibres.
Signature products are produced in two categories, New Zealand merino wool and John Smedley's sea island cotton. John Smedley are renowned for knitting fully-fashioned, fine-gauge products, mostly 30 gauge, an ultra lightweight fine knit that is rarely produced by other manufacturers. Once knitted, the body panels and sleeves are linked together by hand, stitch for stitch, to create the impeccable neat seams which remain one of the hallmarks of real luxury knitwear.
After knitting, the garments are scoured or washed using water from John Smedley's three springs - this is a crucial stage in the manufacturing process giving the garments their characteristic 'soft handle'. Additional processes render the garments shrink resistant and machine washable, a unique feature considering such delicate techniques are applied. Each John Smedley garment goes through three stages of hand supervised pressing to ensure correct fit and shape before highly trained seamstresses hand finish the garments, applying neck trims, buttons and John Smedley labels.
The first John Smedley retail store was opened in 2000 with Softroom, a leading architectural team, providing the cutting edge store design in London's Brook Street just off Bond Street.
Today the John Smedley product is regularly seen on the pages of the world's leading magazines and newspapers. Celebrities worldwide are fans of the John Smedley brand, for the simple fact that the garment quality and design is second to none. A few examples of John Smedley fans are Tom Cruise, Madonna, Harvey Keitel, Sean Connery and Nicole Kidman.
Success still drives John Smedley further. In today's fast paced environment where quality and style are essential requirements, John Smedley product stands unique. From the design stage through to each area of manufacture the company strives for the best, and successfully combines tradition with modern techniques to produce garments unparalleled in design excellence.
John Smedley still has its base at Lea Mills, extolling the family virtues that were responsible for the growth of the Smedley business.
John Smedley along with other brands such as Alfred Dunhill, Asprey, Boodles, Financial Times, Harrods's, Liberty to name a few are now members of Walpole a non-profit-making organisation that furthers the interests of the British luxury industry.
John Smedley is available in leading department stores and boutiques throughout the world for further information click here
Live Chat Objective
Celebrating their 225th Year the family owned business is renowned for its history and innovation, this ethos runs throughout the organisation including its e-commerce website. In its quest to continually identify ways to innovate and evolve John Smedley identified various online initiatives to improve their online customer support whilst also drive additional revenue through the website, Live Chat formed part of these online initiatives.
John Smedley went out to market to identify a solution that was intuitive enough to monitor website visitor activity in real time and also provide historical statistics so they could track website trends over time, ultimately enabling them to make continual improvements to the website. In addition to advanced analytics capabilities they also required chat functionality, the solution they identified that met those requirements and also fitted their budget constraints was WhosOn.
John Smedley took an initial trial of the software to test not only its core functionality but also to assess its impact on www.johnsmedley.com, within a short period of time the benefits became obvious to the organisation and they successfully implemented WhosOn.
Solution Overview
WhosOn is used by thousands of organisations across the globe including some of the worlds leading retailers, financial institutions, insurance providers, and government agencies. WhosOn is able to provide a stable and proven chat and analytics platform, high levels of responsive technical and sales support, an established history of implementation and a continued software development program. All of these factors contributed to John Smedley's choice of strategic live chat partner.
John Smedley selected the hosted edition of WhosOn, as an alternative to the installable platform, this managed platform enabled them to better control costs and contract length, more importantly it meant that they could focus on their own core strengths and in-house developments safe in the knowledge that WhosOn was being managed and maintained independently with no hardware infrastructure being required directly by John Smedley. WhosOn was deployed on the main John Smedley website following the sites re-design in early 2010, sceptical of its initial success it was initially ran as a trial on the site, before it was adopted by the e-commerce team to help improve their customer service offering and to improve online revenues. John Smedley wanted to ensure that their customers experienced a positive shopping experience via the website. Since its introduction and acceptance, online revenues have increased and the number of chat agents has also doubled.
Enhance The Customer Experience. Prior to live chat john Smedley relied heavily on traditional telephony, this had a significant impact on the business and an associated cost, calls were taking a long time to complete during standard working hours, they were also missing valuable customer enquiries outside of normal working hours. Live chat enabled John Smedley to provide an alternative method of communication for its customers, since its integration call volumes have significantly decreased with live Chat enquiries significantly increasing.
Out of Hours Customer Support. John Smedley operate on a worldwide basis as a result enquiries from new and existing customers are received on a 24 hour basis 7 days a week, before Live Chat a significant percentage of these enquiries were being lost. WhosOn with its analytics and request a call back functionality enable John Smedley to track website visitors in real time and historically, this gives them a deep insight into the volume of visits they are receiving out of hours, where these visits are coming from and at what times of day. The request a call back functionality seamlessly integrates with the WhosOn client, enabling site visitors to request a call back outside of working hours contact details and notes are left by the site visitor, this information is then displayed within the WhosOn client for the chat agent to follow up with a telephone call.
Increase Employee Productivity. Live Chat has overtaken traditional telephony within John Smedley not only has this led to significant cost savings but it has also enabled John Smedley to improve employee productivity not only are agents taking less time to handle an enquiry via live chat than on a standard telephone call but agents can handle multiple enquiries using live chat.
Reporting and analytics. Comprehensive reports enable the effective management of chat agents and improvements to be made to the website in real time. Chat transcripts are stored and can be accessed at any time for reporting/review down to an individual chat operator level. To improve customer relationship management for returning visitors previous chats histories can be instantly searched so agents can see what has been discussed previously.
Results
John Smedley have a positive response to Live Chat, comments include
"we are happy to promote any service which has a positive effect on our business"
"Customers love the live chat, we receive more live chats than phone calls now"
Live Chat has enabled John Smedley to generate a significant amount of new business inline with other online initiatives revenue in the last year has increased by a staggering 40%
Live Chat is providing a convenient method of communication method for its customers which in turn is having a significant positive effect for the company.
Live Chat is also reducing shopping cart abandonment for John Smedley as it enables the chat operators to walk the end users through the checkout procedure as and when required.
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