Providing excellent customer service

Guinness Northern Counties overcame commercial organisations to win the Best Small Call Centre in Europe 2007 award. The organisation’s vision is to make a difference to customers, homes and services by achieving excellence and creating neighbourhoods where people really want to live.

The 45 seat Customer Service Centre, based in Oldham, operates from 8am to 8pm, six days a week and is the first line of contact of Guinness Northern Counties' customers. It was created in March 2006 with the clear business aim of improving customer service and freeing up employees to spend quality time working with customers in their neighbourhoods and communities.

The range of services provided in the Centre includes enquiries about availability of homes, rent queries, payments, arranging repairs, aids and adaptations to homes and managing anti-social behaviour.

The need for change

Guinness Northern Counties has always placed emphasis on acting upon customer feedback and in 2004 the organisation took a long hard look at itself through its customers’ eyes. The statistics showing an inconsistent and poor telephone service delivery (only 62% of calls were answered in December 2005) and disappointing customer and employee feedback confirmed that action was needed. This recognition changed the way Guinness Northern Counties did business with its customers across the whole of the organisation.

A significant change programme was undertaken to ensure every employee truly put customers at the heart of the business. Guinness Northern Counties selected a cultural change programme called the Gober Method^TM, which puts excellence in customer service as a priority. Everybody in the organisation was trained, including the Chief Executive and Board Members.

Following consultation with customers and employees, extensive research and the development of a clear Target Operating Model, Guinness Northern Counties decided to create a Customer Service Centre. A project team co-ordinated the delivery of a Customer Service Centre able to meet and exceed customer expectations:

• A Customer Services Steering Group asked the ‘challenging customer experience’ questions.

• Process re-engineering was undertaken driven by the need to provide an interface between the Centre and the local offices, with clear accountabilities.

• New staff structures were established in local offices to improve customer service delivery and increase a generic skill base mirroring, the Centre’s multi-skilled approach.

• Accommodation plans for the Centre provided employees with an excellent working environment.

• Employees with proven track records in delivering quality customer services were recruited into the Centre.

• A Customer Relationship Management system was developed to record every interaction of each customer case, providing a highly effective tool to support the central/local interface.

• Induction training was developed to include customer standard trigger test points.

Customer engagement

Throughout the Customer Service Centre project customers were consulted via various forums. A Customer Panel worked with Guinness Northern Counties to shape the Centre helping to:

• define operating hours
• agree the telephone strategy, including adherence to a request of “please no Greensleeves or press button options”
• train employees
• complete user acceptance system testing
• report progress to the Regional Committees and the Residents Council.

The organisation migrated customer telephone calls from the local offices to the Centre on a phased programme. The first region “went live” on 20 March 2006 followed by two further transfers in April and May. The Leasehold Business Unit completed the transfer in November 2006.

Achieving targets

As a comparison to the local office performance, which averaged 62% of calls answered during 2005, the Centre achieved its target service levels less than six months after full migration of all calls and reduced its average handling time by three minutes since taking the first call.

Quarter	Percentage calls answered
Mar - Jun 2006	81%
Jul - Sep 2006	84%
Oct - Dec 2006	89%
Jan - Mar 2007	85%
Apr - Jun 2007	95%

The impact of the Centre on customer satisfaction levels is continuously measured. Guinness Northern Counties conducts 400 surveys per month. The reaction from customers can be seen through the improving Customer Satisfaction figures:

Category	Before launch of Centre	After launch of Centre
Ease of getting through	79%	82%
Speed of answering	77%	83%
Dealt with in a professional manner	80%	94%
Good at resolving requests	59%	76%
Employees fully trained to deal with requests	63%	90%

Continuous improvement

The project team was retained after ‘go live’ to drive through further development of the Centre. The goal remains the resolution of customer queries at first point of contact when possible. Examples of improvements made as a direct result of Guinness Northern Counties' ability to look across the business include:

• standardising local office practice with the organisation's auto-compensation process, leading to a 40% efficiency gain

• implementing online rent payments to improve customer experience through shorter processing times

• working with the organisation's repair contractors to standardise the repairs appointment process and improve lead times.

A bonus of the Centre's small size is that management and employees know each other individually and personally at all levels and people are encouraged to work with colleagues outside their team. Since opening, six people have been promoted with 18 employees transferring into the Centre from other areas of the business.

Improving processes

Customer and employee feedback are the key drivers to improve processes between the Centre and local offices:

• Customer Service Advisors meet regularly with the Centre’s Manager and offer ideas for service improvements at the Centre’s Employee Focus Group meetings.

• Centre employees attend the Residents Council meetings and their feedback directly influences change. For example, a telephone queuing call-back process was switched off as a direct result of adverse feedback.

• Team Leader forums have been established by the central and office Team Leaders, encouraging office employee visits to the Centre and ‘buddy-up’ with their colleagues to job shadow them.

Performance

The Centre has become a focal point of best practice and this has made other teams keen to share its experience. An example of this has been its absence management framework, which within only four months, has seen employee absence drop from nearly 8% in December 2006 to just over 1% in April 2007.

In summary, the success of the Centre has brought huge benefits for Guinness Northern Counties' customers and employees. It has proved to be a catalyst for change and has enhanced Guinness Northern Counties' values across the whole organisation, giving service to its customers through the commitment of its people.

Angela Lomax of Tribal Consulting said “The success of the Centre is amazing. I have worked in Housing for 20 years and hand on heart said it would never work!”