News / Articles / Cases

April, 2010

The Rules of Engagement

by Andrew Brooman and Dave Ditmars
Companies put themselves at risk in the marketplace if they don’t address social media with effective monitoring and engagement.

Ring … ring. Ring … ring. RING … RING!
To John Cronce, director of consumer affairs at Jockey
International, this is the familiar sound of consumers
contacting him.  Yet this ringing isn’t coming from the
phones in the call center, it’s coming from the Internet:
from consumers using social media to express their opinions
and request assistance.

Whether or not you are leveraging social media, it’s
clear that it’s here to stay: 80 percent of Americans who
communicate online participate in social media.  Twitter
has about 75 million active users, of which over 6 million
are new each month.  And, on average, each Twitter user
has 27 followers.  Facebook has 400 million users—half
of whom log in daily!  One hundred million users access
Facebook from mobile devices.  And, 33 percent of the
North America’s 253 million Internet users read blogs.  As companies participate more in social media, consumer
affairs will, without a doubt, need to engage more in
social-media dialogues.  More  This article appears in Customer Relationship Management, the journal of SOCAP International.

February, 2010

New Social Media Analysis and Response Tool Meets Growing Critical Need

Columbus, Ohio – Responding to the rising amount of social media commentary about consumer brands, Wilke/Thornton has launched its Social Media Analysis and Response Tool (SMART^TM).  The new online subscription service provides consumer products companies with the ability monitor social media commentary about their offerings and to engage individual consumers directly in dialogue.

The service monitors targeted social media sources—blogs (e.g., Blogger), micro-blogs (e.g., Twitter), video services (e.g., YouTube), social networks (e.g., Facebook), and online retailers (e.g., Amazon) with customer-contributed product reviews—enabling users to retrieve current opinions and sentiments.  Using SMART, clients easily set up key search terms and social media sources to monitor.

The Web and wireless networks provide instant access to interactive social outlets where consumers praise and vent about products and services.  Unflattering commentary spreads instantly from one to many social media users, causing much buzz and potential marketplace impact.  To mitigate negative commentary, companies need to react quickly to protect themselves and their brands.  Download

January, 2010

WD-40^® Company Solves Sticky Customer Service Issues with TMP Direct and Wilke/Thornton

WD-40 Company and TMP Direct announce they are partnering with Wilke/Thornton to provide its consumer relationship system solution to enhance the relationship between the WD-40 Company family of products and their consumers. TMP Direct is rolling out Version 9.6 of Wilke/Thornton’s Consumer Relationship System (CRS) to support WD-40 Company customer care. TMP Direct customer care representatives will use CRS to support WD-40 Company customers, handling all in-bound telephone, email, and Web contacts.

The WD-40 Company, headquartered in San Diego, is a global consumer product company whose brands include: WD-40, Spot Shot^®, Lava Soap^®, 3-In-One^®, Carpet Fresh, BLUEWORKS (TM), 2000 Flushes^®, X-14^®.  These products deliver superior performance and exceptionally good value to customers in the retail and industrial markets. WD-40  Company products are found under the sink, in the garage, and in toolboxes in over 160 countries.

"For the past ten years WD-40 Company has relied on TMP Direct to manage the relationship between our brands and our consumers,” states Rob Busacca, WD-40 Company Vice President-Global Quality.  “Now we are coupling TMP Direct’s deep customer service experience with Wilke/Thornton’s contact handling system to enhance customers’ experience when they contact us.  Wilke/Thornton’s CRS provides intelligent processing and analytics that will strengthen our customer relationships and help us broaden our markets.”  Download

April, 2009

At-Home Reps Provide Big Benefits for Home-Shoring CPG Companies

As home-shoring makes a comeback, teleworkers offer a new workforce pool.

by Dave Ditmars and Krystal Sautter

“Companies are becoming more comfortable in letting their customer service representatives work at home,” says Stephen Loynd, IDC program manager for contact center services.  Consumer products and service companies successfully adopting work-at-home customer service practices include hotels and airlines like Hilton Hotels and JetBlue, with 900 and 1,200 at-home reservation agents, respectively.

And ConAgra Foods, a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company, has over 80 at-home customer care representatives.  Operating customer care through home agents is new for CPG consumer affairs and customer relations departments and is proving attractive because the benefits can be significant for the companies, their representatives, and their customers. Tasks that customer care agents perform regularly in contact centers can be handled as effectively and efficiently in a home office. In addition to taking consumer calls, many contact centers receive a third—if not more—of their inquiries as emails. These too may be handled as easily in home offices as in company cubicles. Similarly, inquiry response letters and contact center activity reports may also be processed online from home offices.

Read more in ICMI's Customer Management Insight, or Download.

February, 2009

CEO Recognized at TechColumbus Innovation Awards

Mike Wilke, president and CEO of Wilke/Thornton, was recognized as a finalist in the TechColumbus Executive of the Year competition among central-Ohio technology companies.

Co-founding Wilke/Thornton, Inc. in 1981, Mike has been the principal individual responsible for the software firm’s continuing success.  Mike guides provision of Wilke/Thornton's Consumer Relationship System (CRS)—the leading specialized customer relationship management (CRM) system that automates contact management for Consumer Affairs and Customer Relations contact centers of over 160 consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies worldwide.  CRS is the de facto standard for its niche market.

Since 2000 Wilke/Thornton has provided its proven solution as a Web-based subscription service called CRS On-Demand.  Wilke/Thornton subsidiaries in Europe and Australia support global Fortune clients in 52 countries on five continents.

Long-time, household-name clients include Cadbury, Campbell's, Carnival, Colgate-Palmolive, Coty, Del Monte, Heinz, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg's, Kimberly-Clark, LEGO, Mars, Norwegian, Quaker Oats, Revlon, Tyson, and Wrigley. 

Mike was elected to the Board of Directors of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals International, the global professional association of which most clients are members.

During the Innovation Awards’ qualification period Mike and John Goodman, the internationally-recognized customer satisfaction expert and founder of TARP Worldwide, authored “Make Your Contact Center the Focus of an Actionable Voice of the Customer (VOC) Process”, featured in Customer Management Insight, the worldwide journal for customer contact center professionals.  Their article presents best practices with CRS for CPG companies to capture and apply customer feedback for improving products and services to deliver more value and to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

January, 2009

Wilke/Thornton Awarded for SaaS Excellence

Progress Software recognized Wilke/Thornton as their 2009 top independent software vendor (ISV) partner in delivering software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to consumer packaged goods (CPG) company clients worldwide.

Progress presented the new award at its annual Partner Kickoff at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Progress recognized the importance of the software-as-a-service business model (Online application service subscriptions paid for as used.) early on and created one of the first SaaS partner programs.

The SaaS approach to automating and delivering business processes aligns business service delivery with Web-based software systems, and its benefits are the stimulus for the emerging SaaS market.

Wilke/Thornton began offering its Consumer Relationship System (CRS) as a hosted, Web-browser-based online service in 2001.  Now, most clients subscribe to CRS On-Demand and pay monthly transaction fees for use of their custom-tailored online CRS applications.

December, 2007

Achieving Excellence by Listening to Customers

Yokohama Tire’s Consumer Affairs Contact Center attained world-class performance through excellent relationships with its customers and being very receptive to their changing needs.

by Karen Simmons

Producing world-class tires requires applying the most advanced technologies, materials and production techniques. As important as these ingredients are, listening to our customers’ reactions to our tires is essential to our success as we create products that embody a shared vision of a quality experience that satisfies — even exceeds — expectations. More  This article appears in International Customer Management Institute's Customer Management Insight and Progress Software's Case Studies (December 2007).

September, 2007

Make Your Center the Focus of an Actionable VOC Process

The critical functions required for an effective VOC process, and the benefits of deploying it with a consumer relationship system (CRS).

by John Goodman and Mike Wilke

Nobody likes unpleasant surprises, particularly if they signal missed opportunities and avoidable missteps that bring losses to the organization . . . lost market leadership, recalls, lost profits, and lost market share.  Have you ever encountered any of the following experiences?

- A product problem that resulted in a spike in support calls, a recall, or regulatory action that seemed to come out of the blue.
- A competitor introduces a product or service that is clearly superior to yours that you could have also produced had you recognized the opportunity.
- Complaints from customers or channel partners about quality issues when products leaving the factory meet specs literally 100% of the time.
- Completely contradictory input from sales, service and operations or manufacturing on what an updated product or service should look like.
 

The cause of these surprises is the lack of an actionable Voice of the Customer (VOC) process. The call center is in the perfect position to rectify this weakness because it is constantly receiving the most timely, comprehensive input from customers. This article, in International Customer Management Institute's May Callcenter Magazine, suggests critical functions required for an effective VOC Process and discusses how a consumer relationship system (CRS) may be deployed to establish the process. More.  This article appeared also in ICMI's online Customer Management Insight (September 2007).

May, 2007

Wilke/Thornton and RQA Provide More Efficient Consumer Products Retrieval Services

Wilke/Thornton’s RQA Retrieval Request Interface for its Consumer Relationship System (CRS) provides joint consumer products company clients with a single push-button method to quickly and efficiently submit retrieval requests of items purchased by clients’ consumers.  When a consumer has some reason for dissatisfaction with an item, and the company needs to examine the item in order resolve the issue to the customer’s satisfaction, the RQA Retrieval Request Interface is an ideal solution.

Clients’ call center representatives simply press a ‘request retrieval’ button in the CRS Rep Desktop to submit retrieval requests.  Clients contract with RQA for product retrieval services designed to mitigate risk of liability and handle recalls and withdrawals.  More

March, 2007

Old Mother Hubbard Moves from Old-style Classic to Best-in-Class with CRS

by Karalyn A. Naiburg

Old Mother Hubbard has adopted Consumer Affairs best practices using CRS to improve how it listens to customers. With a consumer affairs function that responds effectively to customer inquiries and issues, Old Mother Hubbard feeds consumer commentary and insights to its marketing, manufacturing, and product development teams so they can apply them to improving their products.  More  This article appears in Customer Relationship Management, the journal of SOCAP International.

January, 2007

Wilke/Thornton Expands into Europe

Columbus, Ohio – Wilke/Thornton, Inc., pioneer supplier of Consumer Relationship System (CRS) solutions for consumer products and services companies worldwide, today announced establishment of Wilke/Thornton Europe.  The subsidiary will promote CRS software and service solutions in Europe.

 Wilke/Thornton Europe (WTE) will open its first full-service office in London in March to begin European operations and will continue to work with Fraser Williams to ensure current clients receive the service they desire.

"Establishing a strong direct presence in Europe enables us to better promote our CRS solutions and to provide direct expert support to new clients’ international and global consumer response center operations,” said Mike Wilke, president and founder of the company.  More

December, 2006

Taming the Uncontrolled Email Beast:  Kimberly-Clark's Best Practice for Handling Consumer Response Email

by Jen Plamann and Pat Sallee

Handling the growing volume of consumer response emails has become a significant challenge for Consumer Affairs departments.  As more and more consumers are choosing the Internet as their primary means of communication, companies are scrambling to adapt their practices to meet consumer expectations. The rapid increase in consumer email correspondence can be overwhelming and can seem like an “uncontrolled beast that needs to be tamed.”  

How would your Consumer Affairs department answer these questions?  Do you want to reduce the time and resources needed to respond to consumer’s emails?  Do you have Contact Us pages on your company websites? Do you have an automated process to bring Contact Us submissions into your consumer relationship system (CRS)? Do you respond to your consumers in a timely manner?

Kimberly-Clark's approach to handling email enabled it to respond “YES” to each question. We developed best practices for managing handling consumer emails more effectively and efficiently. We believe we “tamed the email beast” and hope that the insights and best practices we share help others facing similar challenges.  More  This article appeared in Customer Relationship Management, the journal of SOCAP International.

May, 2006

Wilke/Thornton Celebrates Silver Jubilee at Smithsonian Castle

Wilke/Thornton, Inc. and the Smithsonian Institution hosted over 100 Wilke/Thornton clients in an appreciation and recognition gala dinner celebration of the firm’s 25 years of achievement in providing consumer relationship system solutions and for contributions to advancement of Consumer Affairs.

The Smithsonian is committed to enlarging understanding of the national identity by providing authoritative experiences that connect visitors to our history and heritage as Americans and to promoting innovation, research and discovery in science.  It is fitting that this milestone celebration take place in the Smithsonian Castle, the first building of the Smithsonian’s founding over 155 years ago.

Mr. Bob Clouston, president and chief customer officer of Sargento Foods Inc., gave a keynote presentation on how Customers Are a Competitive Advantage.

January, 2006
Technology Council Recognizes Wilke Technology Team

Columbus, Ohio—Wilke/Thornton, Inc.’s Consumer Relationship System development and consulting team was recognized as an Outstanding Technology Team Contributing to the Advancement of Technology by the Columbus Technology Council on January 12, 2006 at its annual TopCAT Awards event.

Wilke/Thornton, Inc.’s information technology team creates and supports Consumer Relationship System (CRS) solutions that serve 202 consumer packaged goods and services companies, including 26 of the Fortune 500, in 29 countries worldwide. 

Distinguished IT Teams competing for the 2006 Award included those from other world-class organizations such as American Electric Power, Chemical Abstracts Service, Dispatch Companies, Liebert Corporation, OCLC, and The Ohio State University Medical Center. 

2006 marks Wilke/Thornton’s 25th year of providing Consumer Relationship System^TM (CRS)—the de facto standard that automates Consumer Affairs and Customer Relations departments of the world’s most respected companies.  CRS On-Demand^TM is the vanguard Web Service that Consumer Affairs representatives use to provide optimal response value to customer care—instantly, everywhere. Annually CRS processes millions consumer response contacts worldwide. More

September, 2005
Going Global: Challenges and Benefits for Consumer Affairs

by Michael Wilke

Establishing global Consumer Affairs functions enables multinational companies to provide worldwide best-practice consumer response and achieve local market success.

Multinational consumer products companies face complex challenges when undertaking global integration of their Consumer Affairs functions. They must address the challenges carefully and deploy best practices to achieve effective multi-location, multilingual, and multi-cultural operations. Chief benefits that can accrue from going global are improved consumer perception, increased customer satisfaction, reduced operating costs, and richer understanding of consumer behavior—all essential ingredients in the creation of a sustainable competitive advantage. Realizing these top- and bottom-line benefits requires consumer affairs departments to establish new integrated processes and deploy flexible application tools and infrastructure technology that adequately support their requirements and resolve implementation issues.

Responding to insights derived from listening to local market preferences is an essential element for attaining global success. “Consumers live in a global market where the Internet and CNN are significant sources of information for consumers worldwide,” explains Linda Pell, Kellogg Company’s Senior Director of Consumer Affairs. “While consumers prefer products and services that conform to their cultures, customs, and languages, they expect multinational companies to treat them in accord with the companies’ images and reputations.” Indeed, the prime justification for having global contact centers is to enable companies to better maintain and expand their brands in all markets. Globally integrated contact centers can protect their companies by communicating consistent product and service messages in all markets served. Companies who sell worldwide and have manufacturing plants in one or more countries are candidates for globalizing their consumer contact centers. More  This article appeared in Customer Relationship Management, the journal of SOCAP International.

May, 2005
Contact Centers Benefit from Web Service Trend: Software-as-a-Service

by Dave Ditmars

The past century brought tremendous technology advances that make it possible for today’s companies to enter a new era, spending, on average, less than half of their operating funds on manufacturing. Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of business’ ‘softer side’— customer service, marketing, product research, and sales—has now moved to the foreground as companies apply their success strategies. Focus is on customer satisfaction, product quality, and using information technology to build better operations.

Consumer contact centers, because they gather the consumer’s response to their companies’ products and services, benefit from IT solutions that give them more efficiency and effectiveness. Expert software vendors now offer turnkey application services by subscription, similar to the pay-as-you-go model of long-distance telephone and electricity. Centers consume the service as needed—on demand—to meet their fluctuating activity volume. Software-as-a-service, or SaaS, is becoming common parlance.

SaaS Simplifies Operations
An online application service is like a traditional utility—a commodity delivered as needed through standard outlets. To operate our laptop PCs and coffee makers we plug them into electricity outlets. Similarly, we can view online customer relationship management (CRM) services as utilities. For example, Salesforce.com provides sales force automation to over 10,000 customers (some 200,000 end-users) as an online subscription. SaaS vendors supply their application services through the Internet via a Web browser.

SaaS providers embraced the utility model in recent years to provide efficiencies that reduce their customers’ operating costs. While company procedures may still require some tailoring and customizing to meet unique requirements, with SaaS, tailoring can be at lower cost than with licensed software. Total cost of ownership with SaaS is significantly less than the same licensed application. More  This article appeared in Customer Relationship Management, the journal of SOCAP International.

November, 2003
Revlon Chooses Wilke/Thornton and TARGUSInfo to Enhance Consumer Contact Experience

Vienna, VA — TARGUSinfo®, through its newly formed partnership with Wilke/Thornton, announced today that they have signed an agreement with Revlon to provide real-time customer information to enhance consumer interactions and increase efficiencies.  

Through the agreement, Wilke/Thornton and TARGUSinfo will provide Revlon with the ability to streamline interaction with their customers, by obtaining instant access to consumer information.  Linda Porter, Director of Consumer Information and Claims at Revlon explains, “We chose this product because of its ease of use and seamless integration into our current system.  And, perhaps best of all, the match rate for us is an impressive 87%.  Reverse Phone Append decreases our call time by at least 15 seconds and saves us countless keystrokes, which also eliminates input errors. It doesn’t just affect our bottom line, it also dramatically improves the consumer’s experience.”   More

April, 2003
Wilke/Thornton Receives Prestigious Computerworld Honors Award

Developer of Successful Customer Relationship Management Tools Becomes Part of Global Case Study Archive Including the Smithsonian Institution

Dublin, Ohio – Michael Wilke, Founder and President of Wilke/Thornton, Inc., was presented with the prestigious award at a formal ceremony held at City Hall in San Francisco, CA.  “It was such an honor to be recognized among such elite and impressive leaders in the technology industry.  Twenty years ago, it was never in my wildest dreams that our vision for a better customer care solution would have the impact it has had. It is a true testament to the integrity of our organization and the loyalty of our customers. We are very proud of this accomplishment and honor.” More

March, 2003
Wilke/Thornton, Inc. Marks 2002 as Another Record Year
Developer of Successful Consumer Relationship Management Tools Continues to Grow with its Proven Technology

Dublin, Ohio – Mike Wilke, President, announced yesterday: “WTI has achieved another record year in revenue and gross profit.  Given the economic and industry climate at this time, we are very happy and thank our clients.”  This is the second consecutive record year for WTI who achieved this with no increases in prices for professional services or software and actually decreased transaction and hosting prices, which reflect WTI’s increasing efficiency in their ASP services offerings. Their Consumer Relationship System^TM (CRS) grew in strength by over 250% and Item Locator Service^TM (ILS) increased by 45%.  Both of these products each make up just 10% of WTI’s revenue. More

April, 2002
Twenty Years of Growth

Columbus, Ohio. Locally based Wilke/Thornton, Inc. celebrates 20 years of growth Wilke/Thornton, a Dublin, Ohio based developer and provider of the Consumer Relationship System^TM (CRS), marked 2001 with revenue growth of nearly 40%, employing 32 employees, while most of the S&P's high-tech sector limped along at less than -1 percent growth. Founder and owner Mike Wilke stated "I am very pleased that WTI has been able to buck the trend in the industry. I believe our product decision of a few years ago to embrace the web and offer a hosted solution are key factors in our success." More

June, 2002
Wilke/Thornton Sees Increased Revenue and Longevity with Rental Model

CRM Leader Bucks the Technology Trend Celebrating a 40 Percent Increase in Revenues and 20 Years of Growth for its Customer Relationship System (CRS) 

Dublin, Ohio, and CHICAGO––June 4, 2002––Wilke/Thornton (WTI), a Dublin, Ohio-based global developer and provider of the Progress® OpenEdge^TM-based Consumer Relationship Systems (CRS), marked 2001 with revenue growth of nearly 40 percent, while most of the S&P's high-tech sector limped along at less than a 1 percent growth rate. Sixty new customers accounting for more than half of the revenue growth have signed on for WTI’s new Application Service Provider (ASP) offerings. Based on technology from the Progress Company, a business unit of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS) and a leading supplier of technology for building business applications, Wilke/Thornton hosts two separate Progress-based applications via the ASP model, CRS On-Demand™ and the award-winning Item Locator Service™ (ILS). Revenue for Wilke/Thornton Item Locator™ alone shot up an astounding 700 percent due to its ASP availability. More. 

July, 2000 
Progress Software and Wilke/Thornton extend applications to 11 high-profile end-user customers via ASP model

Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a leading supplier of application development, deployment and management products and services, today announced several early Application Service Provider (ASP) customer successes with Wilke/Thornton Inc., a leading worldwide provider of consumer affairs management technology and an early partner in Progress Software's ASPEN™ 2000 Program. Wilke/Thornton now boasts ASP application deployment to more than 11 leading end-user organizations, including General Mills, Club Med and Starkist. These end-users represent a new customer base Wilke/Thornton now serves as an ASP.
More

ASP Pulse: Trix Aren't Just For Kids
General Mills Inc. The maker of such household names as Trix cereal, Hamburger Helper and Yoplait yogurt is relying on an ASP to steer clients to local supermarkets. More

June, 2000
APPLICATION SERVICE PROVIDERS Upstart ASPs can be fruitful for IT

General Mills, the Minneapolis-based consumer foods conglomerate, is one exception. The company is working with Wilke/Thornton, a Dublin, Ohio-based ISV and ASP that specializes in consumer data. Wilke/Thornton's Item Locator Service (ILS) allows General Mills' customer service representatives to tell customers which stores near them sell a specific item. It can also create a street-level map for driving directions. More