Process cycle times were drastically reduced, enabling a significant improvement to the customer experience recognised externally by achievement of the sector leading score for process quality in the following year's annual J D Power survey.

Priorities

Our client was the Customer Services Director of a national operating company within a global wireless carrier. The operation comprised over 4000 people located in four Contact Centres with two additional Outsourcing Centres. The business had moved from a customer acquisition to a retention focus requiring market differentiation on the basis of service and relationships and with the rate of new product introduction and the associated complexity of operations increasing dramatically.

Responses to competitive activity needed to be answered faster and more innovatively, and the customer experience needed to be made consistent regardless of where they touched the business. The complexity of the business dictated that eight functions interfaced with customers at the various stages in business life cycle.

Our client’s priorities were multiple and complex. They required a significantly improved capability to deliver a differentiated service with a focus on adding value to customers. They were required to deliver year on year cost reductions, meeting opportunities and challenges more quickly, flexibly and innovatively. Inter-relationships across the business needed to be strengthened to maximise end-to-end performance and the use of technology needed to be exploited to serve customers and support staff appropriately. A key priority was to significantly shorten process cycle times.

TRIMENTIS were invited to lead a detailed process re-development of all core customer-facing processes across the business using the principles and practices of Performance Leadership.

Results

  • Core customer-facing processes were re-engineered together with supporting IT changes to enable customer service agents to respond to a new high level customer value indicator developed by Marketing, resulting in the delivery of a differentiated service in a planned, consistent and robust way and with margin and revenue improvements realised.

  • Process complexity was reduced, handoffs were improved and in-process errors were significantly reduced, enabling year on year cost reductions to be realised.

  • A software solution was developed to assist with product technical look-up routines used by customer service agents, resulting in reduced average call times delivering a potential of up to £2.5 million per annum savings alone.

  • A software solution was developed to assist with contact centre manpower planning resulting in improved planning, reduced errors and more accurate forecasting through improvements to their original planning model.

  • Process cycle times were drastically reduced enabling a significant improvement to the customer experience, recognised externally by achievement of the sector leading score for process quality in the following year’s annual J D Power survey.

Approach

TRIMENTIS lead the implementation of our core Performance Management Process, using this as the lever to orchestrate the considerable resources available in what had been disparate efforts across multiple functions with conflicting priorities. There was a gulf to bridge between action oriented operations people and technically competent support teams. Literally an opportunity waiting to be exploited. However, previously there had been no means put in place to enable the collaborative working necessary to achieve a consistent customer experience.

A Performance Review Meeting (PRM) was established as a monthly routine to oversee the end to end customer facing process, comprising nine core sub processes, chaired by Customer Services and including eight functional heads representing all ‘touch points’ in the customer experience.

The team clarified relationships between the Marketing Strategy and all supporting functional strategies such as technology, customer service operations, product management and customer finance. This enabled the definition of a unified Customer Facing Process Strategy. This in turn enabled the definition of a high level customer facing process model, allowing subject experts to work on a common playing field and to clarify process and functional interfaces as the basis for detailed process re-design.

TRIMENTIS developed an automated scorecard for the end-to-end process used during the monthly PRMs to establish a shared understanding of performance issues that were prioritised and directed for change.

Issue resolution workshops attended by subject experts were facilitated to identify root causes for priority issues and to develop solutions. A variety of rational analysis and decision making tools were introduced to guide the work of the teams, including the development of a shared ‘change log’ to co-ordinate activities.

The overall effort involved approximately 40 cross-functional experts from the client, part-time over a 12 month period. Six of the nine customer facing processes were targeted as priorities guided by the overall PRM and each sub-process implemented their own PRMs. Approximately five change teams were working on process improvements at any given time, being introduced to appropriate lean six-sigma type process improvement techniques such as failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA).

Testimonial

We had already set ourselves the stretch goal of achieving a top place in the J D Power survey. We had to do many things including process development work to achieve our goals, much of it to do with cultural changes. I’m very grateful for the experience TRIMENTIS has brought to us.

Director Customer Services, National Operating Company within a Global Wireless Carrier

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