Case Studies

The Business

After years in the planning and after successful purchase of the £ multi billion new generation 3G licence, Hutchinson was the first to launch new 3G mobile services into the UK in 2003. Initially it was expected that the handsets would be sold for around £500 to £600, but initial trials with friends and families showed that as all the technology was new, including the handsets, people would be unlikely to want to spend that type of money for something that was still being developed. Neither were all the services and features available, nor network coverage sufficient to meet new customer expectations.

Whilst the public wanted the next generation 3G services, their expectations exceeded the fact that 3G was a totally new service, not an upgrade from the then existing mobile services. Most significantly, as it required the building of a totally new 3G network, initial coverage would be no where near that provided by the existing 2G networks. In addition, the phones had to have the capability to switch between 3G and 2G services (Supplied by O2) whenever 3G was not available.

After having sunk so much cost into the licence, technology and set up costs, the far East owners decided that they had to grow customer numbers quickly and in April 2003 brought in a new CEO and COO, both of whom had been in similar roles before with Orange. They quickly developed a new strategy where they would supply the handsets free, with £35 or £25 per month “bundled” packages, offering both 2G and 3G services.

When launched this strategy saw the customer numbers start to exponentially increase, but to a point where the customer service and support infrastructure in Glasgow and Mumbai, India, could not deal with the number of customer calls generated. This lead to a situation where up to 200 calls were queuing at busy times and increasing number of e-mails were not being responded to. From May to mid October the customer numbers grew from just 11,000 to over 179,000!

The Requirement/Roles

Ian Munro was approached by the COO in June 2003 to join them as an Interim Customer Director to sort out the customer service problems. Ian started work with them in July and it quickly became apparent that they were rapidly heading for meltdown, as the abandoned call rates were exponentially rising and the service levels in freefall. It was quickly recognised that the existing team did not have the time or skills to rectify the problems, so he brought in 4 other operational experts to provide the following functions – Resource Planning, Scheduling and Forecasting, Head of Performance Improvement Team, Head of Improvement implementation and Process re-engineering. In addition he also brought in an independent trainer for a training review. Whilst the key area of activity would be focussed in Glasgow, the team also had to incorporate Mumbai and the head office in Maidenhead and ensure that the changes would be introduced there at the same time. This necessitated various trips to the facility in Mumbai and up and down the UK.

Key Achievements

The attached PowerPoint graphs show the huge impact of the work conducted by the team, where in the space of under 4 months they had completely reversed the meltdown to a point where the customer service and delivery was above where it had originally started with when they only had small numbers of customers!

Whilst there was a significant mix of different initiatives which would be far too many to document here, the key ones were:

• Setting up a cross business function Operational Task Force which project managed changes and ensured customer facing and business benefits on delivery
• Introduction of fast track IT changes that had immediate effects on the contact centre agents.
• Re-engineering all the existing processes to Lean and systems thinking to remove repeat actions, duplication and waste of effort, time and cost
• Re-deployment of some existing staff from Maidenhead to Glasgow on secondment
• Ownership and sponsor of new CRM2 platform
• New complaints handling system including executive complaints
• Development of integrated working relationships between Customer Service and all other departments
• Development and introduction of new agent key performance indicators
• Integration of email with call handling
• Development of new IVR and call routing for better customer choice and experience as well as more effective use of resource in Mumbai
  

The Business

AXA Direct Sales operated out of two sites, Morecambe and Darlington and provided telephone based new sales for house and contents insurance as well as motor vehicle insurance products. They had identified problems in so much that there targeted average conversion for all such sales were 17%, but were actually only achieving 14%. They were also not reaching the target of quotes to calls. In addition, they were experiencing increasing call volumes and lost calls, which saw a dramatic decrease in their targeted service levels.

AXA were also investing in setting up simpler and more structures desk top systems and were engaging on training the new systems to all staff. They were also planning to introduce new resource planning and scheduling software.

The Requirement/Role

AXA wanted an operational expert to take control of the Sales Department to increase the conversion rates back to their target level. It quickly became apparent that there was also a need for an experienced operational sales manager for the Morecambe site, as well as new training for Team Managers and sales agents.

It also became obvious that there was a morale problem as staff were being inundated with calls from irate customers who were calling the 0800 sales number as they were unable to get through to either the customer service or claims 0845 numbers when they needed to make a policy change or claim.

Internal marketing was also claiming that there campaign activity was driving in up to 25,000 new calls a week, but the statistics available in the call centres did not match up to this fact. All in all, the department was in danger of completely losing the ability to service new business effectively and the business in danger of being unable to compete in the sector they operated in.

Key Achievements

• Within 2 weeks of start, completed a full audit of all issues and problems, together with an action plan for change, covering people, processes and technology
• Set up of new IVR to re-route non sales calls to the correct departments as priority calls
• Full analysis map of call type and requirements on a weekly basis to validate the actual number of saleable calls – this was found to be on average 10,000 a week, not the 25k claimed by marketing
• Restructure of the sales teams, with new role definitions and expectations
• Development and introduction of new on line key performance indicator matrix for all staff, with easy to understand “RAG” status displays
• Development and delivery of new Sales and Performance Management training for all team managers
• Set up of a new pilot team to test and evaluate changes
• Introduction of a new and easier to understand bonus system
• Development and delivery of new and better sales training for sales agents
• Integration of reactive quality and compliance monitoring into sales teams as a proactive part of sales delivery
• Within 3 ½ months increased the average sales conversion by a staggering 50%, from 14% to over 22% and the quote to call ratio to 64%
• Reduction of lost calls to below 3% and increased average service level to consistently over 90% of all calls answered in under 15 seconds
• Development of a highly motivated a happy workforce
• Reduction in sickness and attrition rates
• Development of complete new budget forecast moving forward
  

The Business

Birmingham Midshires (BM) - part of the HBOS group - had begun a pilot for the referral and sale of specialist mortgage product from the South West region of Halifax Branches in April 2001.

This was to test whether there was the potential for BM to become the Groups specialist lending arm, as well as to capitalise on the missed specialist mortgage products that the Halifax did not offer.

The test had not been set up on a proper project basis, the only proposed customer channel was the telephone, referred calls were being handled ad-hoc by the direct mortgage teams, the budget and revenues had been established based on assumptions and not fact, it was assumed that the existing processes – which included numerous work rounds - would be used, personnel were being recruited based on service not sales and BM had made a commitment to go live to all 600 Halifax Branches and the 3 Halifax Direct call centres by mid November! In addition to this their existing call centre technology did not allow skill based routing or multi-channel interaction and would need upgrading or replacing.

The Requirement/roles

BM requested the help of independent contact centre operational professional who would take the key role of Programme Director and Interim head of Group Specialist Lending. There was also a requirement for an Operational Delivery Manager, Process Designer, Process Analyst and Training Team. This team would be responsible for set-up and delivery of a new multi-channel contact centre business operation, capable of handling over £1bn referred specialist mortgage business from over 4000 staff in all 600 Halifax branches and the Halifax Direct Call centres. The role would necessitate the health checking of activities to date and the development of best practice and new processes that would be rolled back across all BM call centre business units.

In addition, there was no current relevant training material and they were committed to recruiting new people, many of which would not have any financial service experience. This would require Contactcentres.com to develop a whole new induction programme and content, together with the ability to successfully deliver this to the new staff.

Key achievements

• Setting up whole project as a full programme with delivery workstreams with named owners from scratch
• Development of customer management strategy and channel strategy, involving self serve options and extensive use of web interactions
• Development of full quality plan
• Development of content and production of a completely new and branded Group Specialist Lending Induction Training Programme
• Delivery of all training to new recruits
• Setting up solus pilot with full MI to validate or not assumptions made
• Based on MI, getting Board to agree to changing year 1 revenue targets and move implementation to January 2nd 2002
• Profiling product and risk to establish initial rollout for Buy to Let mortgages only
• Developing completely new processes and literature design to enable accurate and appropriate skill deployment to customer need and agent skills
• Developing business case and implementation plan for browser based POS for desktop application and to enable applications on line by defined customer type
• Full implementation achieved in 3 months, over £500k under budget
• Setting direction and strategy for deployment of multi channel contact centre, with full business case and presentation to the board. This case established ongoing cost savings of £2.5m per annum against existing BM call centre operations
• Recognising and rectifying problem areas of operational delivery, process design and sales and service training content through utilising correct additional resources and process design and mapping technology
• Implementing e-mail delivery channel for sales and outbound customer follow ups
• Reducing anticipated initial headcount from over 200 to 47 with associated cost savings of over £3m
• Hitting go-live date of 02/01/02
• Reviewing HBOS Group contact centre strategy with numerous recommendations for changes/improvements and identification of operational cost savings in excess of £25m per annum
• Developing processes and best practice procedures to ensure delivery of sales conversion targets and exemplary customer service. Average service levels were in excess of 90% of all calls answered in under 10 seconds
• Developing better training, processes and systems to reduce application handling from average 45 minutes to 25 minutes – full POS, enabling technologies and multi skilled staff will in future reduce this to 7 minutes
• Developing and applying the business rules and user requirements against the new technologies to be deployed
• Developing the strategy for the application of the benefits of approach to the whole of the business
• Year 1 revenue capability of over £300m
  

The Business

The Head of the Credit Card Centre in Southend had suddenly resigned after not getting the operations director role. This was at a time approaching year 2000, as well as an aggressive growth in credit card business, with over 49 products including JV’s with organisations such as Tesco. In addition, the call centre was experiencing call queues in excess of 100 calls at busy times, with a high reliance on temporary resource who had little or no training. There was also a very high drop out rate from the automated IVR balance enquiry service and an increasing number of complaints, a high proportion of which were reaching the CEO in Edinburgh.

The Requirement/role

RBS needed an experienced operational professional interim Head of Credit Card Centre Operations, not just to fill a gap until a permanent replacement was found, but also to rapidly make some significant changes to ensure that the whole operation was brought up to scratch. This ability to influence and act quickly was especially needed as the new operations director (Chris Morson) had come from a strategic background.

The role was responsible for over 1,000 staff and c 2million customers, with full p&l accountability and over £61million cost budget. There were 5 main requirements; setting up management processes and procedures for Year 2000 compliance; significantly improving the service levels in the call centre; process re-engineering to remove duplication and unnecessary costs; setting up a new central complaints procedure with full trend analysis and setting up new 300-seat call centre in Manchester.

Key achievements

• Development of full management processes and procedures for Year 2000 compliance requirements in less than 3 weeks
• Development of integrated and trend analysed complaint’s procedure in 8 weeks
• Development of project managed pilot team to test new processes, procedures and initiatives and measure and analyse impacts and benefits to customers, staff and business before full introduction
• 65 % improvement in service levels in main call handling areas in 3 months
• Rectification of automated IVR through changing wording and steps
• Development and implementation of balanced business score card down to 8 direct reports
• Full IT review, with total change in structure and procedures following findings to enable required mission critical stability and performance
• Development and introduction of new Communications strategy and delivery mechanisms, with fully cascaded briefings. This also included a new monthly news magazine
• Operational delivery of new call centre in heart of Manchester on time and in budget
• Development of operational integration with Nat West Credit card operations, following acquisition
• Preparation of business case and development of joint IVR platform for Nat West and RBS credit card services
  

The Business

JLT is one of the top five Insurance Broking Companies in the world. It has an established reputation, particularly with Lloyds London Markets and are considered experts in the sector. With a turnover approaching £750m, much of their growth in the UK has been through acquisition, which meant they operated out of over 15 disparate locations, many with different systems, management and overheads. In addition, for the majority of their Non-Advised and Affinity business operations, the legacy database system was cumbersome, costly to change and maintain and did not have the capacity or capability to meet the needs of growing consumer facing products and services.

In early 2009, the Group Board commissioned an Ernst & Young review into their UK Advised and Non-Advised Broking Business, which resulted in the recommendation that they centralised a number of disparate business operations, set up a new Target Operating Model and replaced the legacy database system. The recommendations were branded under an initiative called “Lodestar III”.

The Requirement/role

JLT needed an operational expert who had detailed and extensive knowledge and experience in taking a proposed strategy and turning it into a detailed delivery programme that would meet their new requirements. As a “cradle-to-grave” total turnkey solution, they needed someone who could deliver what they needed from the bottom up, could apply “best of breed” in all delivery and create a centre of excellence that would be the first of its kind in the broking industry.

The UK COO, Chris Caine, who had significant insurance industry expertise but no volume management operations background turned to Ian Munro to deliver the solution. Chris wanted to have a “hands-off” role where he would empower Ian from start to finish. As such, Ian was able to deploy the total “systems thinking” solution, because he had to deliver all requirements from a totally “hands-on” perspective, with very little, if any internal support. This covered everything from location, premises, design, fit-out, furniture, infrastructure, role assessments, recruitment, training, CRM, BPM, Automated Workflow, new Database, Claims engine, new telephony, new desktops and completely new processes.

Achievements

The programme set-up, control and delivery are a model for how to set up a non budgeted centralised new business operation from scratch to an outstanding environment, capable of improving revenues from £22m to over £100m and increasing profitability five-fold. In addition, despite the delivery requiring totally new IT infrastructure, database, CRM and telephony systems, there was no JLT internal IT work stream owner! The centre was set-up to enable five existing disparate business operations (Gloucester, Birmingham, Coventry, Maidenhead and Southampton) to operate as a single entity, with the additional capacity for organic growth and other acquisitions.

The following design and photographs show what state-of-the-art means. The whole centre was just 19.000 sq ft of empty space until 10th January 2010 and the centre fit out was completed for “live” operations on 22nd March 2010. Whilst these are only a “snapshot” of all the work being conducted, they bear witness to what can be achieved in 10 weeks if you have the quality of resource, planning and programme management. That’s what Contactcentres.com brings to a business!

 

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