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08.05.2008 Planning makes the difference for 2008 award winners Success was celebrated this week by six contact centres who demonstrated exceptional improvements in making their organisations a better place to work and to contact. The Awards were presented to EDF Energy, British Gas Services, Canterbury City Council, Carphone Warehouse, Orange and Vodafone at Contact Centre Planning 2008, the 7th annual conference of the Professional Planning Forum on 29th April in Manchester. The prestigious Contact Centre Innovation of the Year Award 2008 was presented this week to EDF Energy for using analysis of the root causes of customer contact to halve workload in key areas and create a ground-breaking end-to-end service for new customers. The planning team involve advisers in creating and using bespoke end-of-call surveys to pinpoint areas where process or product changes can most improve results and establish a baseline for measuring the success of business cases for investment or service development. “This has totally changed how managers see planning”, explains Penny Wright, Resource Planning Manager at EDF Energy. As Su Martin, Head of Marketing Operations and Customer Experience, confirms “it’s taken us to a totally different level … we don’t just react, we plan”. Glen Ewing heads New Customer Acquisitions, who have developed the pioneering end-to-end service in the Pontoon department. “It’s changed the business and how we make decisions”, he comments. “I think the Internal Investment Board was surprised. It made them realise that they need a different approach”. “Making life easier for customers, who currently need to make repeated or unnecessary calls, is still the biggest challenge for customer-focussed organisations”, comments Paul Smedley, Executive Director of the Professional Planning Forum, the Award’s organisers. “The successes at EDF Energy demonstrate the outstanding results that are possible for contact centres when they systematically preventing the service or communications failure that otherwise forces customers to call”. Project work has led to reductions of 50% in direct debit queries and 60% in the billing helpline – increasing customer loyalty by 80% and freeing up time for 1:1’s and team meetings. The award was presented at Contact Centre Planning 2008, the Professional Planning Forum’s seventh annual conference in Manchester on 29th April. Almost 500 industry specialists gathered for the Gala dinner and the two-day conference at which all the award winners presented their achievements. The following awards to recognise innovation in specific areas were also given: The Management Information Innovation Award went to Carphone Warehouse for a rapid transformation of MI that gives visibility to the customer experience and has developed a coaching culture within the contact centre. The new reporting platform is outperforming external specifications at a fraction of the cost and saving £1.5m pa in Microsoft licences alone. The Resource Planning Innovation Award was presented to Vodafone, for applying call centre planning to retail stores in the Czech Republic, growing sales by 18% and reducing cost overspends. This approach is now being rolled out in the UK. British Gas Services gained the Innovation Award for Integrated Planning for a resourcing strategy that joins together recruitment, training and resource planning. In just one year, the centres have cut churn by 20% points, boosted new starter quality scores by nearly 60%, and increased employee satisfaction by 6%. The Innovation Award for Lifestyle Planning went to Orange UK for Your Time, creating new lifestyle shift options, to attract and retain a deliberately diverse mix of employees, involving radical changes to recruitment, induction training and management practices on the operational floor. Canterbury City Council won the 2008 Public Sector Innovation Award for a uniquely flexible approach to home working and job variety, supported by integrated planning for both front and back office. |
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06.05.2008 Softigator Call Center Radar 28-04-08 to 05-05-08 All members are invited to participate and send press releases, comments and ideas to service@softigator.net. To see the abstracts of the following articles, go to the member area at Softigator.com and click on “Start” or go to http://www.softigator.com/callcenterbusinessnetworking/start.html. If you are not a member yet, registration is free and takes 1 minute. Just go to the top left button, register yourself and confirm link in the verification email which you receive seconds later. ************************************************************************************ General: Researchers at the University of Birmingham are asking volunteers from the west midlands city to have their voice recorded to help hone voice technology. ************************************************************************************ Europe: CPP will open a new contact centre in July in Chesterfield that will see over 300 new jobs created by the end of the year. Energy company E.ON has announced it is creating 465 jobs at three of its sites in Nottingham. Swinton is expanding its Norwich workforce at its city centre call centre. Hundreds of staff at ITV Digital in Plymouth have escaped redundancy. Tesco is to take on another 300 people at its call centre in Dundee. Leading UK lifestyle data provider DLG has acquired specialist call centre and lead-generation experts Positive Response for an undisclosed sum. Around 70 call centre jobs have been axed from a Black Country loans and mortgages company which has gone into administration. Home working is still not a popular option for creating flexibility in contact centres, in spite of the widespread availability of broadband and advances in technology, research has revealed. York District Hospital has been chosen as one of a handful of hospitals in the UK to try out a new way of dealing with phone calls from patients. Four into one: £15m new call centre for mobile phone company. Working from home is set to become the "next big trend" in the call centre industry, said Brendan Dick, director of BT Scotland. Marusa Marketing Inc. has confirmed it is shifting work out of its call centre in Cambridge. COMPUTER giant Dell is making up to 40 workers redundant at a call centre in Glasgow next month as part of a global drive to push up profits. The call centre operated by Crimestoppers is expecting its millionth phone call this month, a new report observes. ************************************************************************************ North America: Call center operator PRC Inc. will permanently close its facility in Carrollton on June 30 and eliminate 339 jobs. Union representatives and workers who were laid off from an AT&T passport call center in Dover (New Hampshire) are meeting with New Hampshire Congresswoman. A Lauderdale Lakes-based telecommunications firm is opening a Delray Beach call center that will eventually create 450 jobs. Just days after Dell Inc. announced it will lay off 1,100 of its 1,200 employees in Kanata and close its call centre operation, a small, new technical support company is setting up shop. Global Hyatt Corp. will put a new shared service center for North America in Oklahoma. Canada - About 400 downtown St. Catharines call centre jobs will disappear when TeleSpectrum Inc. shuts down in July, Mayor Brian McMullan said Thursday. Dell Canada is closing its Ottawa call centre after only 21/2 years in operation. Five hundred people have immediately lost their jobs and another 600 will be laid off at the end of June. ************************************************************************************ Africa: Local contact centre equipment suppliers should look to the small and medium enterprise (SME) market for new growth opportunities, says global analyst firm Frost & Sullivan. South Africa’s outsourced contact centre industry has enjoyed sound growth and expects to see the number of outsourced seats reach about 60 000 in the next five to seven years. ************************************************************************************ APAC: The State Opposition is demanding the Federal Government honours plans to create new call centre jobs in Launceston. IDT Global Services, which operates call centers around the country and is possibly the country's largest employer of native English speakers, has begun to downsize in a move that has so far eliminated dozens of positions. |
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This section is for articles that indicate how one can cut call center costs or improve call center performance. Please send your article to the editor at service@softigator.net and we will review it shortly.
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Planning makes the difference for 2008 award winners
Softigator Call Center Radar 28-04-08 to 05-05-08
Planning makes the difference for 2008 award winners
Softigator Call Center Radar 28-04-08 to 05-05-08