Contact Center Innovation Awards Shorlist Announced

Nineteen diverse organizations reached the closely-fought shortlist for the Contact Centre Innovation Awards 2010, today.

For the very first time, the list includes innovations that also put the customer at the heart of outbound and back office operations, with many driving performance improvement that works across the entire customer contact operation.

Presented by the Professional Planning Forum, the winners are announced at Customer Contact Planning 2010 on April 19-20 in Birmingham, where the finalists will all be speaking about how they achieved such outstanding results.

“These organisations have achieved exceptional bottom-line improvement in difficult times”, explains Paul Smedley, Executive Director of the Professional Planning Forum. “They’ve done this by understanding what the customer really needs and they’ve stripped out the cost of other things that were just getting in the way. For the first time we can see that a real end-to-end customer contact operation is beginning to emerge.”

The full list of finalists is: Anglian Water Services, Aviva UK General Insurance, British Gas – Cardiff, Dorset County Council, Glasgow City Council, Gold Medal Travel, Harrow Council, HM Revenue & Customs, Invesco Perpetual, L&G Retail Savings Operations, Nationwide Building Society - Regional Brands, Northants Police, Orange UK, Prolog Logistics, RSA, Scottish Power, Shop Direct, Ventura (Speech Analytics and Ventura Business Solutions (Outbound).

“Fantastic, a real privilege” was the reaction of Ray Browne, Performance Improvement Manager at Shop Direct. Adrian Hawes, Resource Optimisation Manager at Aviva said their success was due to “perseverance” while Derek Maitland, MI and Planning Manager of Glasgow City Council described the “huge amount of work that had gone into their initiative.” He was “looking forward to sharing it with others” through the Professional Planning Forum’s best practice programme.

The record number in the shortlist reflects the depth of quality and the fantastic breadth of entries this year. For the first time, 3 outbound
entries demonstrate how to put the customer at the heart of an outbound campaign – focusing the calling list on people who want to talk to you. The four back office innovations cover industry-leading achievements in planning, process improvements and delivery of effective end-to-end service.

The five public sector innovations include three local councils, Northants Police and HMRC. Other finalists include the implementation of speech
analytics technology, the engagement of front-line staff in adapting to change despite recessionary cut-backs and innovations that make fundamental changes in the areas of resource planning and management information.

The judges visit all finalists in February or March for a more in-depth evaluation, and each finalist is asked to make a commitment to host a site visit and to talk about their work at Customer Contact Planning 2010 on 19-20 April where the awards are presented. Each short listed nomination is written up and added to a much-consulted case study series; the 2010 case studies will also form part of the Planning Forum’s 2010 Best Practice Guide. Info: planningforum.co.uk

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