Right Tool For the Job? Using Toolkits To Help Increase Customer Satisfaction, Revenue, Staff Engagement and at the Same Time Provide Reassurance to Contact Centre Managers – Andy Williams, Director Sagaciti Consulting Ltd
Introduction:
Murder investigation and public sector command may seem an odd foundation to help increase customer satisfaction, company revenues and improve staff engagement. Especially when claimed it will additionally provide reassurance to Board members that the improvements made will achieve the outcomes they are seeking.
But the use and application of an evidence based review framework that combines the benefits and learning of ‘what works best’ across the commercial and public sector has been used to do both (some readers may be forgiven for dismissing any commercial benefits being taken from any public sector learning – a major national retail contact centre were glad they didn’t).
Why have a Toolkit?
Within the public sector, review and inspection often follows disaster or critical incident failure. Inspecting authorities descend in numbers, producing reports based on frameworks that are often not shared with the organisation in advance. When ‘shared’, frameworks are typically designed centrally,with limited or no local flavour, leaving organisations feeling‘done to’ rather than ‘worked with’. Apples are compared with pears, and the process creates fear, stress and uncertainty for all involved…careers and reputations are at risk!
Within the commercial sector we found similarities, especially within the contact centre environment, when external reviews were commissioned by executives outside of the Management Team.
At Sagaciti Consulting (pronounced ‘suh-gass-i-tee’, meaning foresight and discernment), we used “good judgement, practically applied” to develop our new and innovative Sagaciti Toolkit™ that can be utilised to remove fear, provide support during all phases of change and above all, provide evidence based reassurance that the direction of travel is in line with the organisations’ desired outcomes. Ultimately we have designed a Toolkit™ that completely transforms the pressures and stresses often experienced by contact centre managers, into a supportive process that can provide Executive Board members with a genuine feeling of confidence and reassurance.
What Exactly is the Toolkit™?
The Sagaciti Toolkit™ provides an assessment against ‘5 Key-Principles:-
1. Customer / Service User focus (Purpose & Customer Experience)
2. Delivering Excellent Service (Performance, Process, Procedure & Policy, Workflow Mapping, Systems, Structure & Infrastructure, Estate and Assets)
3. People, Culture & Leadership (People, Culture & Values, Leadership)
4. Value (Finance)
5. Metrics (Data)
Sat behind the ‘5 Key-Principles’ of the main Toolkit™ is a set of forensically detailed ‘evidenced-based’ questions, designed to provide a comprehensive ‘End-2-End’ organisational review and more importantly, identify what to do next!
Outcomes & Benefits
A major retail customer, and high-risk offender management team found applying the Sagaciti Toolkit™ produced the following outcomes:
• Significant improvement in the responsiveness to customer needs which in turn increased customer numbers;
• 25% increase in contact centre staff engagement with the company change and improvement plans;
• Collaboratively bringing agencies together to improve efficiencies while at the same time reducing and managing risk;
• Delivered and defined prioritisation for change;
When the Toolkit™ was deployed for the national retail company it identified 55 key recommendations and 6 strategic risks that directly threatened their business strategy. The Customer Service Manager admitted she was very apprehensive about the review and extremely sceptical about any learning from the Public Sector. Our approach, methodology and deployment of the Toolkit™ soon had the opposite effect and our Toolkit™review was directly credited for helping to double the budget allocated for contact centre improvements.
Additional Information
Andy Williams is Director at Sagaciti Consulting Ltd who can be contacted by Email
The Sagaciti Free Self-Assessment Toolkit™ is currently under final development with the launch via contact-centres.com Autumn 2016.
For additional information on Sagaciti and their contact centre Toolkit visit their Website
