Innovation Award Winners Transform Service
United Kingdom - Autoglass and British Gas recognized for outstanding initiatives
Eight winners gained prestigious innovation awards for
outstanding initiatives that transformed their operations both
within and beyond the contact centre.
The overall winner was Autoglass, with individual category
prizes taken by Apex Credit Management Ltd, British Gas, gem,
LV=, Portsmouth City Council, Shop Direct and Surrey County
Council.
They showcase innovations that are transforming the experience of customers and employees and demonstrate how planning can make a real difference.
Autoglass
The awards were presented at the Planning
Forums 11th anniversary conference in Birmingham on 12th April,
where each talked about how they achieved their success. In June
these organizations are opening their doors as part of specially
facilitated site visits within the Planning Forums best practice
programme.
Autoglass was presented with the overall 2011 Customer Contact
Innovation Award for their highly successful but radical
approach to enterprise resource modelling, which, aligned to key
metrics created capacity and flexibility in the branch network
to serve an extra 3,500 customers monthly, at no cost, and at
the same time raise customer satisfaction. They also won the
Innovation Award for Enterprise Planning.
Marketing worked on the principle of fish when the fish were
biting in other words, advertising heavily when demand was at
its highest. We had to make them aware of why this wasn't the
best approach unless the whole operations resource levels were
aligned to meet this demand, explained Sven Hill, Head of Total
Net Conversion. We had to change from managing budget to
managing opportunity. Every single branch needed visibility of
opportunities to make that happen, added Tim McKeegan,
Performance Manager.
Service delivery in the branches has been transformed by
forecast and capacity utilisation models, developed by the
contact centre planning team, which raised peak branch resources
by 27%. Implemented alongside contact centre initiatives,
extended branch opening hours and increasing flexibility in all
areas, the models have focussed on understanding revenue leakage
and maximising opportunities upping Total Net Conversion by 4%.
In the space of a year, time-to-serve has drastically
improved and customer Net Promoter® scores raised by 10 points.
The approach at Autoglass has been adopted as best practice by
the parent company and is being rolled out globally.
This is a fantastic achievement from their planning team, says
Paul Smedley, Executive Director of the Professional Planning
Forum. Autoglass have made a colossal cultural shift and
actually changed the way that they manage operations across the
whole company. People now work when and where there is demand,
as a result of getting the right metrics and planning real
flexibility. Its had a massive impact on the customer
experience. Every senior management team can learn something
from Autoglass approach; that's what makes the company such a
worthy winner.
The winners were selected by a team of judges who visited each
of the 20 shortlisted organizations, and then assessed them
against a strict set of criteria. Every year judging gets more
exciting. The customer contact industry is changing so rapidly
and each year we see new innovations that challenge the way
organizations work, with impact reaching well beyond the contact
centre, comments Steve Woosey, the Planning Forums Membership
Director.
Seven further awards recognised innovation in specific areas.
The Customer Contact Innovation award for Integrated Outbound was awarded to Apex Credit Management Ltd for the way in which their use of SAS and speech analytics have transformed debt collection strategies and data segmentation, increasing cash collected per agent hour by 30% and liquidation by 20%.
Apex Credit Management
The Customer Contact Innovation award for Planning Insight was
won by LV= for how listening to customers and colleagues,
combined with a
ground-breaking approach to planning change, has helped triple
profits and drive employee engagement.
LV=
The Customer Contact Innovation award for Performance Culture was won by British Gas for their pioneering work using speech analytics to focus coaching so that everyone makes specific personal changes in how they speak to customers sustaining changed behaviour for a year and doubling sales, compared to a control group.
British Gas
The Customer Contact Innovation award for Customer Interaction was secured by gem for their new culture of customer interaction. They engage social media as part of a broader contact strategy for clients, capturing better customer insight and helping to improve the customer experience.
gem
The Customer Contact Innovation award for Service Transformation
was presented to Portsmouth City Council for how the housing
service at
Portsmouth Council halved the cost of repair and saved £2m pa
across the service by transforming the service to focus on what
actually matters to the customer.
Portsmouth City Council
The Customer Contact Innovation award for Enterprise Intelligence was gained by Shop Direct due to how their new management information strategy created the unifying vision that enabled the business to halve complaints and improve the cost: demand ratio by a quarter.
Shop Direct
The Customer Contact Public Sector Innovation award was won by Surrey County Council as a result of how their new model of contact centre became a diagnostic tool for the entire council, driving savings of over £500,000 and halving complaints.
Surrey County Council
Launched last year, Planning Forum Hero awards were presented to
five outstanding customer contact planning professionals.
Recognising their
exceptional personal contribution in developing the contribution
of planning within their own organizations, the 2011 Heroes are
Gerry Chambers,
Forecasting and MI Manager at Student Loans Company, Paul Milloy,
National Resource Planning Manager at British Gas Services, Su-ann
Pauline, Resource Planning Manager at Aegon Scottish Equitable,
David Hingley, Head of Management Information at Shop Direct and
Debbie Grundy, Manager at the Department for Work and Pensions.
Planning Forum Heroes 2001
Previous winners in 2010 were Phil Anderson, Resource and
Planning Manager at Gold Medal Travel, Adrian Hawes, Resource
Optimisation Manager at Aviva, Aaron Gourlay, Senior MI and
Resource Analyst at Eurostar and Nick Lane, Director of Strategy
and Planning at Orange UK.
The Customer Contact Innovation Awards were presented on 12th
April at the Gala dinner at the close of Customer Contact
Planning 2011 conference. A hugely successful conference with
over 600 people in attendance for the conference and the gala
awards dinner, it continues to be a key event in
Contact Centres managers diaries.
About Professional Planning Forum
Every year, the Planning Forum produces case studies, for all
organizations on the Innovation Awards shortlist, and organises
facilitated site visits to meet with winners and finalists - the
idea being to provide its members with examples of best practice
from some of Europe's most innovative customer contact
operations. Previous winners have included Scottish Power, QVC, EDF Energy, Salford City Council, Tesco, HBOS, Norwich Union and
T-Mobile. Contact the Professional Planning Forum for more
details on any of these award winning case studies at
http://www.planningforum.co.uk.
