Case 08 · US premium tile manufacturer

Reducing response time across seven workflows without adding headcount

Manufacturing / Home & interiors e-commerce · Program management across seven-plus cross-trained support workflows · Nov 2023 — Jan 2026 · via Hugo

7+
Concurrent workflows supported
5
Team members led (1 TL + 4 specialists)
2h 25m
Avg. response time, inside a 2-hour SLA target
99%
Quality score at handoff
The business problem

Seven-plus workflows were being covered by five people, and response times were long enough to threaten the client relationship.

The diagnosis

Delay came from context-switching across workflows rather than from workload volume — a specific attention and interference problem.

The intervention

Restructured workflow allocation and workforce planning, and designed a Stroop-informed intervention plus process improvements to reduce switching cost.

The business impact

Response time cut from 6h 43m to 2h 25m while quality finished at 99%, with no added headcount.

Overview. The client manufactures and supplies handmade tile in the United States. Hugo ran their front- and back-end customer support operation from launch in November 2023 through steady state, and I served as Project Manager on the program from its early weeks until January 2026.

I owned delivery for a team of one Team Lead and four Support Specialists across sample requests, quotes, showroom checkout, mock-ups, refunds, chat and back-office material-library workflows. Support was cross-trained rather than workflow-siloed, so coverage and quality had to be managed as one program rather than seven separate queues.

My role
  • Directed a team of one Team Lead and four Support Specialists against client-defined SLAs.
  • Acted as the primary point of contact for client escalations and day-to-day communication with the client's operational leads.
  • Owned billing accuracy, headcount allocation, and shift/workforce scheduling across the team.
  • Ran recurring client calls and authored the program's Weekly and Executive Business Reviews.
  • Diagnosed recurring performance issues and designed the training intervention that fixed the biggest one.
The challenge

The program ran against tight, client-defined SLAs — a 5-minute average handling time on email and 1 minute on chat, with 2-hour response times on the general inbox and 1 hour on urgent tickets — while cross-training agents across seven-plus workflows inside two separate platforms.

A recurring quality issue emerged during ramp: newer agents struggled to quickly and accurately identify the correct tile colours and products in the system, which slowed handling time and created rework risk.

What I did
Program scope — workflows supported
WorkflowWhat it covers
Sample creationColour chip and size samples in default finish, requested by clients or reps
Library updatesNotifying clients of new product designs and tile style changes
Showroom checkoutCreating sample orders after in-showroom client visits
Quote creationFormal commercial quotes on behalf of sales reps
Paint sheets (mock-ups)Digital mock-ups from hand-painted, numbered colour indicators
Returns & refundsProcessed per company policy
Website chat supportLive chat inquiries against a 5-minute AHT target
Material library leads / auditBack-office fulfilment and project data-integrity checks

Billing, headcount and workforce management

I owned headcount allocation against the contracted minimum of 3 agents plus 1 QA per shift, tracked and approved overtime against client requests, and maintained the daily shift timetable across workflow assignments.

Coverage ran on a 3pm–2am WAT schedule aligned to the client's Pacific-time business hours, with no missed shifts against the minimum headcount requirement.

Client calls, WBRs and EBRs

I authored and presented the program's recurring Weekly Business Reviews — weekly snapshots, week-over-week metric trends across sample orders completed, response time and handling time, commentary on volume drivers, and next steps — plus Executive Business Reviews for broader stakeholder visibility.

The colour and product recognition problem: a Stroop-based intervention

When QA and client feedback both flagged that newer agents were slow and error-prone at matching the correct colour and product in the system, I designed a training intervention based on the Stroop effect — incongruent colour-name and product exercises, hands-on tile-sorting practice, and mnemonic aids to build faster, more accurate recognition.

I sequenced the rollout — content creation, review with the client, training content in the learning platform, then bi-weekly performance tracking — and assigned clear owners to each stage so the fix was measurable rather than anecdotal.

Weekly Business Review — five-week trend
MetricWk 1Wk 2Wk 3Wk 4Wk 5
Sample orders completed12013512213266
Avg. response time6h 43m5h 23m3h 15m3h 32m2h 25m
Avg. handling time5m 28s5m 46s10m7m 15s8m 16s

Program close-out — final week I ran

  • 01Volume: 1,007 outbound messages that week, up 45% week-over-week.
  • 02Handling time: email handling down to 3m 39s, a 23% weekly improvement, driven by a default ticket-acknowledgment workflow that let agents work the queue oldest-to-newest.
  • 03Quality: 99% quality score across communication, process compliance, email handling and client coordination, holding steady.
  • 04Back-office throughput: material-library audits jumped to 975 in the week, up from 307, at roughly 30 audits per hour.
  • 05Team: closed out with a fully cross-trained 4-agent roster and zero quality flags that week.
Results — audit summary
  • Avg. response time, start to handoff6h 43m → 2h 25m
  • Email handling time at handoff3m 39s
  • Quality score at handoff99%
  • Back-office audits in final week975
  • Workflows held in steady state7+
  • Cut average ticket response time from 6h 43m to 2h 25m over a five-week window, well inside the client's 2-hour SLA target.
  • Sustained coverage against a 3-agent / 1-QA minimum headcount requirement with no missed shifts.
  • Delivered a repeatable, trackable fix for a recurring quality issue instead of a one-off correction — client feedback specifically cited noticeable improvement in product and colour accuracy after rollout.
  • Kept the program in steady state across seven-plus concurrent workflows with a lean team of five, from pilot through January 2026.

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