Recently we caught up with Baxi Heating, our 2016 CXA winner for the ‘Contact Centre, Small – Customer Loyalty’ category, and asked them some questions in regards to recent, post-award, developments.

Baxi is a beloved company at Awards International and we want to thank them for letting us ask them a few of these questions in order to give our readers some new and interesting information on recent developments.

Baxi’s Award Winning Initiative

Baxi is a well-known distributor and manufacturer of commercial and domestic water heating systems as well as space heating systems. Their winning initiative displayed the hard work put in by their customer support team who focus on achieving customer loyalty by making it easy to do business with Baxi.

In 2013, Baxi customer support started improving customer satisfaction through smarter working methods and high quality training for staff. This initiative was all encompassing in the form of ‘EASE’ (Engage, Adapt, Sole and Empower), which was designed to deliver outstanding customer experience through improved ‘one call’ resolution.

Understanding the Context

The rationale behind the changes was defined in the need to overcome customer caution as feedback carried out showed that many people are wary of boilers and reluctant to engage themselves in such products and services.

Baxi also carried out other surveys in order to see what has the largest impact on customer loyalty. A survey of 125,000 customers revealed that 96% of the customers asked would walk away from a brand after experiencing difficulties.

Furthermore, it was also noted that four out of five causes for disloyalty were directly related to the resolution of customer issues and the service provided. The surveys also showed that exceeding customer expectations doesn’t directly influence the loyalty customers feel and that customers are more interested in great service that resolves issues quickly.

The Changes Post-Analysis…

In order to encourage staff to participate in the customer-centric changes, Baxi introduced an ‘X Factor style’ approach to the initiative where colleagues were asked to identify what behaviour they demonstrated, corresponding to three categories; Backing Singer, Pop Star or Rock Star.

The ultimate goal would be to strive towards ‘the headliner’ – someone who delivers a consistent ‘rock star’ performance that incorporates the following points; identifying and addressing both the emotional and technical needs of the customer, never use jargon and focus on what they can do to help instead of what they cannot do.

In order to reach headliner status, staff need to learn and demonstrate the ability to listen and understand, not just respond, spate emotional and technical issues, effectively question, form a bi-lateral agreement with the customer and leave a positive, lasting impression.

All of these demands were supported through full training programmes that brough together the business strategy, mission, vision and core business values.

Training included weekly individual coaching sessions, focused on customer service and call quality and support.

This allowed Baxi to develop multi-skilled staff that is able to meet the demand and go beyond the call of duty to ensure customer loyalty and excellent service.

Questions and Answers From Our Recent Catch-up

Question 1: Has winning your award impacted your business somehow? Perhaps in regards to PR, positive customer response, marketing, or in some other way perhaps?

‘Having our progress and success recognised by a professional body has encouraged us to continue challenging areas of our business that fall short in delivering a brilliant customer experience.  It is yet another example of the success of our Baxi Customer Support contact centre which was voted in the top 10 of the Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service on four consecutive occasions. We were able to publicise our success internally throughout the Business, to other stakeholders in our supply chain in our trade press and social media, reaching our customers with the good news. We have had some really great feedback from trade and consumer customers as a result!’

Question 2: Have you made any significant changes to your business post-award? Perhaps you’ve developed your winning initiatives further or changed them altogether? 

‘It has reassured us that focussing on the moments of truth that really matter and make a difference to our customers is key, and this continues to be our priority.  Customer experience is at the heart of everything we do and our Learning and Development programme for our contact centre colleagues continues to focus on the brilliant behaviours needed to deliver a brilliant customer experience.  We have now extended our CX programme to our field service engineers to further drive customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.’

Question 3: What does your award mean for you? Does it symbolise the effort you’ve put into your business and how do your employees see it?

‘Our mission as a business is to create lifetime customer loyalty and our UK Executive team invited us to present at our recent Baxi UK Management Conference on how we won our Customer Experience Award.  The Baxi Customer Support Contact Centre was recognised as an area of best practice and we were really pleased to be able to share our success with our senior colleagues.’

Get Involved!

Baxi Heating is a great example of a successful company with a clear view of the future. The developments they implement always stay in-tune with customer needs and market trends. We want to wish them the best of luck and thank them once more for taking the time to answer our questions.

We hope to see more developments from them and from all our participants. We also want to encourage anyone out there with initiatives that deserve recognition to get involved and get noticed!

As you can see, awards are a great way to boost morale and overall customer approval. Recognition of your hard work and the hard work of your employees is something very important in the business world and we like to think that our Events are a great way to bring people together and give them the spotlight they deserve.

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