Contact Centre Transformation for an Energy Supplier
The Background
The purpose of the project was to deliver an improved customer
experience whilst enabling the client to handle customer contacts
more efficiently. It focused on the close integration of telephony
and other customer contact channels with the business applications
and data, rather than on the replacement of technology for its own
sake. Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) techniques were used where
these created an advantage in terms of functionality, running costs
or future proofing. Otherwise the project extended the life of
existing telephony assets that were perfectly serviceable for years
to come.
The contact centre solution sat alongside a suite of new business
applications including SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP
CRM) and SAP Industry Specific Solution for Utilities (SAP IS-U),
which were to be phased in during a 15 month customer migration
process.
The Challenge
1. The contact centre project started 2 years after the main
business transformation programme and had to move at significant
speed to be ready for Q1 2010
2. The new solution had to be delivered in a way that allowed legacy
and new world telephony to operate in parallel during the 15 month
introduction of SAP
3. The project had to deal with the recent failure of a previous
technology-driven initiative to replace the telephony systems
4. Several legacy telephony systems had become unsupportable so the
new solution had to be brought in early to support the legacy call
workload
5. The solution had to be consistent with industry regulations for
inbound and outbound customer contact
6. The solution had to support the client's application to be a
level 2 card merchant within the Payment Card Industry Data Security
Standards (PCI-DSS)
The Response
Damian Jones acted as a client-side advisor and project manager
through the lifecycle of the telephony project, covering the
following:
1. Definition and maintenance of the business case
2. Definition of the solution architecture and options
3. Competitive procurement of systems integration services
4. Negotiation and contracting within vendors for equipment and
carrier services
5. Management of sub-contractors to deliver the project within the
overall business transformation programme
6. Definition of phased technical and business deployment process
7. Definition of technical support arrangements
The benefits of the work were at three levels:
Customer Experience
1. Different channels for customers to interact with the client
according to preference - voice, text, email, web, web chat and in
future smart phone apps
2. Emphasis on quick and natural system interactions enabling
customers to self-service, with rapid transfer to an agent if they
get stuck
3. Integration of channels with underlying applications, so that the
data is validated up-front and the system can make intelligent
suggestions within context
4. Integrated experience so that customers are never asked for the
same information twice during a contact
5. Strategies for dealing with peak demand, such as call-me-back and
self service options reducing customer waiting times
Business Experience
1. Upfront identification of the customer allows contacts to be
presented to agents within context (details of the account and how
the contact arrived) which means calls are handled quicker
2. Common means of handling contacts of different types; voice,
email etc. which means the contact process is simplified
3. Common source of management information and reporting enabling
comparative reporting across contact centres and real-time reports
4. Flexibility over how the workload is routed and handled enabling
load sharing at peak times between contact centres
IT Ownership Experience
1. Contact centre "intelligence" is consolidated to the data centre
alongside the business applications, allowing expensive Automatic
Call Distribution (ACD) platforms to be retired resulting in lower
operating costs
2. Contact centre infrastructure is standardised to a single
platform and simplified - every site can be different for the
business but the same for IT, providing greater flexibility and
lower costs for managing change and system upgrades
3. Legacy telephone trunk infrastructure is steadily replaced by
consolidated IP connections, voice and data are increasingly carried
over converged IP networks with lower running costs
The Benefits
By integrating the solution with legacy business applications, we
enabled the contact centre project to be implemented ahead of the
planned SAP CRM and ISU implementation which brought forward some of
the business benefits for customer experience and operational
efficiency.
By acting independently of technology vendors, Damian Jones has
helped to achieve good value in the procurement of new equipment and
software where it was needed whilst retaining and extending the life
of existing equipment. Our sourcing assistance during the early
stages of the project saved at least £500k on telecoms equipment and
software. We also worked closely with call centre staff to ensure
they were part of the solution, for example by making the call
centre agent's job easier by giving consideration to the working
environment though the use of noise-cancelling headsets.
The client will achieve significant avoided costs over time as the
new solution is much easier to scale up and to add new call centre
teams and staff. This is because it is a highly centralised
software-based solution as opposed to a site-centric solution
requiring lots of infrastructure at the call centres. The IT running
costs for the solution are the same as the legacy solution, despite
having greater functionality and channel capacity, as well as much
greater flexibility to support future business change.
The main financial benefit of the project is to support the business
case of the overall transformation programme. Within this around
£1.5m pa of business benefits are directly assigned to the new
telephony solution, in the areas of agent efficiency and self
service. For example, the new contract negotiated with the call
carrier as part of the project will save around £200k pa in reduced
charges for 0800 calls.