The client

From humble beginnings, Direct Wines has quickly become the world’s largest online wine merchant, and now also produce a large amount of their own wine, leading to exceptional quality at very competitive prices.

Direct Wines are responsible for brands such as Laithwaites, The Sunday Times Wine Club and Averys.

As customer concerns and questions can often be as complex as some champagne tasting notes, a well-oiled and highly trained team is always expected to reflect the excellent quality of the wine on offer.

Services provided

Across the 10+ years relationship, RSVP has provided inbound & outbound sales alongside inbound call, chat and e-mail support. Like many of RSVP’s FMCG clients, Direct Wines see large seasonal volume fluctuations, which RSVP helps manage, utilising our unique, flexible resourcing models.

As well as utilising this unparalleled flexibility, Direct Wines also have a number of full time staff working from RSVP as Personal Wine Advisors (PWAs). These staff curate their own community of customers, who only order through their PWA. This commitment from Direct Wines to allow RSVP staff to develop their own customer list, speaks to the quality of RSVP’s staff. All PWAs have a WSET level 2, and a large number now also have Level 3.

The mixture of consistent activity, working alongside ad-hoc and seasonal campaigns, ensures that the continuity of service can be guaranteed, keeping staff who have been heavily invested engaged with the account.

Results

Using RSVP’s best-in-class agents, of whom approximately 80% hold a degree, Direct Wines has been able to outsource highly technical and knowledge-led campaigns. RSVP are benchmarked against in-house agents, to ensure that continuity of service is offered to new and current customers. RSVP prides itself on ensuring an in-house equivalency, and often our PWAs will say they work for Direct Wines, rather than RSVP – which we encourage.

With RSVP agents’ in-depth wine knowledge, coupled with their performance skills, RSVP have often been asked to host wine stands at Laithwaites famous wine shows. This interaction with Direct Wines’ customers is an important one, and helps embed RSVP’s agents further into the Direct Wines team.