The past decade has seen a significant shift in organisations’ approach to customer management. Pre financial crunch saw companies aggressively building market share and rapidly deploying voice channels to drive the increasing volumes in customer contact. But over the years, customer acquisitions plateaued, markets matured and social media exploded onto the scene. What was a numbers game became a value game, as organisations came increasingly under pressure to deliver a competitive advantage through enhanced customer experiences. This sea-change in the perception of contact strategy has greatly impacted how customer management outsourcers position their offerings as well. Outsourcers today are moving from transactional to consultative interactions in their contact centres, driving down costs through self-service and process excellence.
New models emerging
A traditional outsourcing model leaves more to be desired when it comes to infusing continuous improvements to make for a more agile and future-proof customer management program. Thankfully, new models are emerging which are geared towards long term and strategic partnerships between the outsourcer and the client. One such model – transformational outsourcing focuses on dramatic improvements in business outcomes – namely around customer experience, revenue and costs, all founded on the outsourcer’s commitment to improve performance over a fixed period of time. In this feature, we will discuss how customer management outsourcer HGS entered into a transformational outsourcing contract with leading telco TalkTalk to deliver a more agile, growth-oriented and customer- focused service for the latter’s retention program.
History
In July 2012 the UK telco giant, TalkTalk, transferred management of its contact centre operation in Preston Lancashire, along with its staff, to the company’s outsourced service provider, HGS. The aim was to establish Preston as a Centre of Excellence for Customer Retention, relying on expertise developed within the partnership over the past three years. The contract was predicated on the understanding that HGS as an outsourcer had the capability to transform performance through introducing new technologies to facilitate multi-channel service delivery and improve customer experiences. Almost a year and a half later, the deal is bearing fruit. The centre has set the gold standard in customer retention and loyalty delivering extremely high retention rates at a significantly lower cost-per-customer. It is also contributing to revenue growth by cross selling TalkTalk’s TV alongside phone services, helping meet its revenue bottom lines.
What it involves
Deals of such nature are fast becoming popular within the contact centre outsourcing industry. In the first place, such deals are typified by transfer of the contact centre operation’s physical assets, its building lease and work force to the outsourcer. For clients like TalkTalk, this translates into alleviating a long term asset management cost into an operating expense while reallocating its resources to areas outside of front line customer retention operations. That responsibility now rests with HGS, in addition to maintaining a state-of-the-art contact centre to run a world-class retention program. For HGS, this meant bringing about operational excellence through effective change management to evolve into a lean and responsive business process committed to continuous improvement.
An Engaged Work Force
Since takeover, HGS envisioned that one of the ways to achieve a step-change in the contact centre’s customer management capability would be through effective staff engagement. A significant investment in recruitment and training of a specialist work force was a natural step in this direction. So were initiatives offering employees opportunities to progress their career within the contact centre. The centre runs a successful nationally recognised apprenticeship scheme which trains staff in vocational skills allowing them to progress into managerial positions. A highly motivated work force has contributed greatly to boosting agent productivity and elevating the performance of the retention program.
Results Galore:
The vindication of this strategy came in the form of stupendous results less than a year after the transformational takeover.
- Outstanding retention performance: The contact centre has set the bar , retaining an extremely high percentage of TalkTalk customers, feat uncommon in the telecom industry. What’s more, a very high proportion of customers stay with TalkTalk, 38 days after the initial decision to re-engage – the true test of the effectiveness of the retention campaign.
- Revenue Maximisation: HGS is not just holding onto TalkTalk customers but increasing their involvement through effective cross-sell and upsell campaigns. The contact centre was an instrumental force behind the successful uptake of TalkTalk’s new TV service among its customer base. By end of December 2013, around 730,000 customers had taken the new TV service, and TalkTalk expects to sign its millionth TV customer at the end of the financial year.
- Satisfaction on the Rise: All along, customer satisfaction and first call resolution has been trending positively with the centre achieving the highest CSAT scores amongst TalkTalk’s entire outsourced network. Meanwhile the contact centre’s own employee satisfaction score has been inching up the charts, with over 90% of staff recommending the centre as a ‘great place to work’
- Service Improvement Through Analysis: Transformational deals by their nature, foster intelligence gathering and collaboration that drive mutual benefit. HGS utilises technologies such as speech analytics to identify the root causes of customer dissatisfaction. Through the contact centre , TalkTalk is thus increasingly hearing what customers might find frustrating or compelling and can take action to position themselves more powerfully in the marketplace.
Award and Recognitions
This approach, while highly successful for TalkTalk and HGS, has not gone unnoticed by the contact centre industry. The centre won the title of ‘Best Mid-sized Contact Centre’ at the 2013 Global Contact Center awards, in addition to winning a special recommendation at the ‘2013 North West Contact Centre Awards.’ It was also honoured by Smart Training as ‘North West Employer of the Year’ for fostering a culture of life-long learning, development and progression within the organisation.
Is a transformational approach the right fit for you?
As management at HGS would testify, the strength of its transformational program relies largely on its increased role in delivering strategic change through mutual collaboration with TalkTalk. Organisations looking to harvest the benefits of a transformational outsourcing deal will need to choose their partner carefully. Look for outsourcers who have had experience in managing similar contracts and the confidence in taking on a financial risk based on their ability to deliver transformational change. An amount of transparency is called for – surrounding the client’s customer management ambitions and the strengths and weaknesses of the assets that are under plan to transfer. Only then can such a deal bring about a sustainable and contractually committed programme of cost reduction and service improvement over time.
Matthew Vallance, CEO – HGS UK
Matthew Valance is Chief Executive Officer of HGS Europe and is responsible for the business’ expansion and growth strategy in key European markets. He has over 20 years of experience mainly in the BPO industry with significant expertise in the BFSI , Telecom and Media industry segments. He has significant experience in global outsourcing both with onshore and offshore models. Prior to HGS, he had held senior executive roles with Sutherland Global Services and First Source Solutions.
Matthew holds a BA Honours degree in European Business Studies from Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College and the Ecole Supérieure de Commerce from Clermont-Ferrand in France. He has also completed an Advanced Management Program from the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania.