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Walmart Opens New Super Call Center in Arkansas
While Walmart is the world’s largest company by revenue – it nets around $485 billion each year, according to the Fortune Global 500 List – this doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed to rule the retailing space forever. Brick and mortar retailers like Walmart are spending a great deal of time and money today in an attempt to keep up with the growth of online retailing behemoth Amazon.
Walmart has been offering ecommerce solutions to its customers for several years, but some attempts have been half-hearted, and the company has only recently been taking online sales more seriously and looking at ways to improve how their products are accessed online and how their customers are served when they’re not in the physical store. Recent highly publicized acquisitions of Jet.com, Hayneedle.com, Shoes.com, Moosejaw, and Modcloth.com have shown that Walmart is making a concerted effort.
“Meeting customers’ needs is critical as they adopt more digitally-driven lifestyles, expectations increase, and, increasingly, shopping options do not require a trip inside a store,” said Jeff Muench, Sr. Director of Business Development at Walmart.
Now, Walmart is in the process of expanding its call center presence to ensure that e-commerce customers have a place to turn when they have questions or issues. Walmart’s new corporate campus in Bentonville, Arkansas is part of the retailer’s “next generation” plan to take on Amazon and other online retailers, according to a recent article by Paul Gatling writing for Northwest Arkansas Business Journal.
Walmart’s newly opened call center in Bentonville is a massive remodel of a 130,000-square-foot building that was once a Sam’s Club store. The building includes a variety of amenities for employees including a 24-hour fitness center, full-service café, outdoor patios and dedicated spaces for training and employee development. The goal is to attract high quality employees who are doing more than filling a chair.
“It has been great to see the associates’ reaction to everything [at the new call center],” Steven Welch, who oversees the company’s call centers, told NABJ. “The previous call center I would call functional. Whereas this facility is really purpose-built with the associates in mind and how Walmart is being intentional about the design and workspaces. It’s the first taste, maybe, of some of the elements and processes that will go into the new home office.”
The facility, called “the Walmart Contact Center,” is operational 24 hours a day and seven days a week, and employs about 950 people.
Edited by Maurice Nagle