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Presss Release - October 2009 Customer Consulting celebrates its tenth anniversary – and advocates a strategic approach to customer management Customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL) has celebrated its tenth anniversary by entertaining its clients and consultants at an event at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London. Speaking at the event, Simon Rustom, CCL’s managing director, commented: “Current issues involve the use of the web, and especially social networking, for customer contact and customer care but, ten years ago, everyone was buying Siebel and we were being told that ‘you won’t need call centres in five years time’. “We witnessed the outsourcing of call centres – first to Ireland and then to places such as India. Yet, in this decade, call centres have not only become ‘multimedia contact centres’ but we have begun to see some businesses bring these centres back to the UK. Over the last ten years, CCL’s standing and expertise has been increasingly recognised - with its executives being in demand to provide industry benchmarks and to judge industry awards such as the European Call Centre Awards. “In that time, we’ve made a big difference to some of our client companies,” Rustom added. “As part of a global contact centre strategy, we reduced one client’s costs by 17% and significantly improved service levels to its customers. “We raised employee satisfaction within a division of a UK retail bank from 59% to 85% and raised the NPS score for how a Train Operating Company (TOC) handles delays from 29% to 46%. Moreover, we saved the same TOC £75,000 on an Automatic Call Distributor. “We increased the retention of ‘lost’ financial services customers for a large insurance client from zero to 40%, as well as designed and planned a large call centre virtualisation project for a global travel group. “We acted alongside our client in a major Avaya IP Genesys installation to quality assure the deliverables from the technical and consulting suppliers. We also reduced processing backlogs by 80% within 12 weeks for a major health provider to achieve service levels and stop customers leaving. “We improved sales productivity for a client in the financial services sector by 300% in just eight weeks,” he added. “We also designed and implemented an operational improvement programme for a major blue chip company, which resulted in a six per cent increase in customer satisfaction.” Although the party celebrated CCL’s considerable achievements over the past ten years, it also provided an opportunity to look to the future, with the launch of CCL’s revolutionary approach to customer management. Rustom believes that many current customer management programmes fail because of inadequate customer strategy; adopting a piecemeal or un-sustained project approach; placing too great an emphasis on technology; inadequate implementation skills, and lack of flexibility, alignment and leadership. Consequently, Rustom advocates a three step approach to customer management: ‘fixing the basics’ and defining strategy; embedding best practice, and then growing customers’ lifetime value to the organisation, enhancing brand value, matching investment with potential in marketing, sales and customer service while also reducing marketing and sales costs. End
Presss Release - August 2009 Customer Consulting combats contact centres’ failure demand Customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL) estimates that some 40 per cent of all calls to contact centres, especially those in the financial services sector, are the result of failure demand. CCL’s managing director, Simon Rustom, believes that, “Failure demand results in more costs for the business because of the time and resources spent in responding to additional customer enquiries and complaints as a result of processes that do not work.” “Not only are these costs hidden within the operating costs of the contact centre but they mask the real problems that the organisation is facing in not meeting customers’ wants and needs first time,” he said. “Organisations find it hard getting to grips with this area of wastage. In fact, the only way is to carry out a ‘root cause analysis’, which discovers facts about the real causes of unnecessary contact and the resulting costs of failure demand.” Failure demand occurs where an organisation fails to deliver clear and timely information – be it about a product or a service – to a customer. That failure generates a demand for customer service. Often that demand is registered via the organisation’s customer contact centre. Ever responding to new requirements, contact centres tend to evolve. Consequently, their staff tend to undertake complex tasks and operate non-standard processes using multiple technology platforms. All of this can prevent contact centres integrating smoothly with the rest of their organisation’s business. For example, a product doesn’t get to a customer on time, or the customer’s bill is incorrect – and so the customer telephones the supplier to query what has happened. Or, maybe, a ‘standard’ letter sent to a customer does not reflect the content of an earlier telephone conversation – so, again, the customer telephones the supplier. Some customer contacts occur because of the need to comply with industry regulations and staff’s reluctance to act purely on telephone discussions. Nonetheless, this process can be time consuming, thus irritating customers and creating extra work for company staff. “In my experience, an average of 40 per cent of all calls to a contact centre could be prevented.” believes Brian Jopling, CCL associate director. “Saving 40 per cent of the costs of a contact centre and, as a consequence, producing more satisfied customers is a key goal for any company with a contact centre – especially for companies which employ several thousand people. “These savings could be achieved if companies took a strategic approach, got back to basics and rethought how they do things,” he said. “In practice, the way we reduce failure demand is to identify the root causes and eliminate them. This often affects other departments outside the contact centre and so requires a strategic approach – enlisting Board level backing – to achieve success.” “Contact centres are always under pressure to reduce costs, especially in today’s economic climate – and, as in any recession, there is currently a tendency to meet challenges with ‘knee jerk reactions’,” he continued. “Yet – despite any short term indications to the contrary – the level of phone-based customer contact activity is likely to grow during the next period.” “So, the challenge for any organisation with a contact centre is how to grow those contact centres to respond to this trend when, currently, 40 per cent of the activity shouldn’t be happening.” “If nothing is done about this, in a few years’ time, contact centre staff numbers will have doubled – and so will the inefficiencies, along with tangible and intangible costs!” In Jopling’s view, not only does this state of affairs have adverse effects on customers, it also produces adverse effects among contact centre staff. He explained, “Knowing that 40 per cent of what you do is unnecessary, it wears you down, staff morale and engagement levels fall - causing rising human resources-related costs.” End
Presss Release - August 2009 Customer Consulting launches new healthcare division: Transforming Patient Pathways Customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL) has launched a new division whose offerings are aimed at the healthcare sector. The division, called ‘Transforming Patient Pathways’ (TPP), was set up in response to the increasing levels of work that CCL and its consultants are carrying out in both the NHS and the commercial healthcare sectors. Brian Jopling, who heads the TPP division, believes that CCL’s extensive experience in customer management and communication centres is proving to be of great value, both to the NHS and private providers – and will become increasingly relevant as the NHS reduces budgets from 2011. He explained: “CCL has over 25 years experience in helping major organisations develop the infrastructure, skills and culture needed to improve the quality and efficiency of their customer management. TPP “While many NHS Trusts have defined their strategy for more effective, integrated services, the challenge is how to deliver a robust and sustainable solution,” he continued. Where services across the urgent care system are not well coordinated or integrated, patient and professional pathways can become unclear, inconsistent and fragmented. This results in sub-optimal service delivery, poor patient experience and significant – and avoidable –waste, such as unnecessary acute hospital admissions, re-admissions and excess bed days. Simon Rustom, CCL’s managing director, added: “Last year, the University of Southampton carried out some research for the Department of Health which revealed that, while some innovative ways of working are in place, their impact remains limited or localised. The report concluded that a more ‘joined up approach across stakeholders is needed to achieve sustainable change’. “With this in mind, TPP is already carrying out work within the NHS to improve its ability to manage and coordinate both patients and professionals in order to provide more ‘joined up’, integrated services,” he said. “This requires single, standardised processes and greater co-operation and alignment between the different service areas of primary, community and secondary care. It also involves a cultural and mindset challenge requiring new skills and behaviours and a reduction in ‘silo working’.” The benefits of instituting TPP’s approach include:
According to Mohammed Khan, TPP’s business development consultant: “In addition to improving patient care, our approach has the benefit of improving staff efficiency and, therefore, job satisfaction because staff get more chances to ‘make a difference’ for good.” End Press Release - August 2009 Customer Consulting explores how to retain ‘promiscuous’ customers ... As a result of its work with companies across a wide range of industries over the last ten years, the specialist customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL) has revealed that successful customer relationship management – and customer retention – depends on offering the right product or service at the right price in way that makes it easy for the customer to both buy from, and trust, the supplier. Unfortunately, CCL’s experience in this period shows that companies tend to be happy spending money on brand advertising, channel incentives and direct sales – but see customer service and retention as a cost. “Many companies believe their customers want to be promiscuous – but, in reality, that’s not true,” said Brian Jopling, associate director of CCL. “Customers tend to view their relationship with a provider like a marriage rather than a one-night-stand. Of course, this means that both parties in the relationship need to work at cementing their commitment to each other.” “Customers are always prepared to put in some effort to make the relationship work. They are more prepared to consider buying more products from the same supplier because they want to believe that they made the right choice of provider in the first place,” he explained. “This should benefit the provider because the more products a customer buys, the more profitable that customer will be. Yet a number of companies are not proactive in investing in their customers because they don’t realise that putting time and energy into developing existing customer relationships will pay off.” Jopling believes that promoting new deals to new customers rather than developing existing customers can only go on for so long before existing customers realise what’s going on and become unhappy. “Companies tend to believe – erroneously - that their customers don’t want to put ‘all their eggs in one basket’,” he observed. “Yet many people like convenience, simplicity and the ease of having to deal with only one company. That’s why Tesco is doing well at the moment – because it is offering its customers a wide range of products and services, from food to motor insurance in a one-stop-shop at a competitive price.” “Customers want to be loyal – so companies should make it easier for them to be so,” explained CCL’s managing director, Simon Rustom. “It’s not just about having loyalty schemes, although these can help. It’s really about helping customers to ‘buy in’ to the company’s values as well as its products and services.” Jopling added, “Our experience – and that of our client base across a range of industries - over the years has been that, if you give your customers a high level of service and develop that relationship with the customers, you find opportunities to cross- and up-sell. So we have found that maintaining an effective customer retention strategy is more cost-effective than seeking new customers.” Unfortunately, it can be difficult for companies to identify existing customers and contact them to introduce other products and services, because sales effort tends to be focused by product-specific areas across different sections of the company. Jopling explained, “Partly because of various company amalgamations and partly because each product is its own ‘profit centre’, company data tends to show a particular product’s contribution to the firm’s profits - rather than providing the contribution data of existing customers. These systems are product- not customer-centred.” “So companies tend to accept, as a fact of life, the current ‘leaky bucket’ situation where you pour lots of new customers in at the top – and leak customers from the bottom of the bucket. Yet we have proved that there are effective ways of tackling this situation – and, in many cases, greatly reduced the degree of ‘customer leakage’, to the benefit of both suppliers and customers.” End
Press Release - March 2009 Customer Consulting helps First Great Western to improve its customer information process First Great Western (FGW), one of the UK’s Train Operating Companies (TOCs), is about to implement a ‘customer information during disruption’ (CIDD) programme across the company, designed by the specialist customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL). Starting with a detailed ‘cross departmental’ ‘fact-find’ during February 2008, CCL spent three months developing a clear and robust plan that would enhance the flow of customer information across the organisation, taking all of the different users of information into account. CCL then mobilised and worked with an internal team to develop the customer information flow processes and procedures from which they could enhance the flow of information delivered to staff and to their customers. During the second half of 2008, CCL worked closely with FGW to map out the processes and detailed procedures required to deliver clear, concise, timely, accurate information to the correct destinations when it was most needed; gaining ‘buy-in’ at all levels to create the necessary sustainable change. By Christmas 2008, FGW had designed a User and Reference guide, enabling them to systematically implement the new and improved processes and procedures, allowing for enhanced delivery of information to both staff and customers, particularly in times of disruption. This is just the latest manifestation of CCL’s work with TOCs – begun in 2004 – to improve customer information and customer satisfaction levels. CCL’s Managing Director, Simon Rustom, explained: “Much of CCL’s work with TOCs revolves around helping their staff to make more effective use of TRUST, a system designed by Atos Origin which they use. Using this system, workers type messages and the system distributes these messages to the relevant people. “Currently, we’re working on helping TOCs’ staff to adopt a relationship-based approach, rather than a transactional-based approach, to customer service. “In particular, communications between the TOCs and Network Rail, which controls the UK’s railway tracks, have not always been at their most efficient and effective – and this has implications for the railways’ customers. “Helping TOC and Network Rail staff to understand each other’s corporate culture requires an outside facilitator – such as CCL. Consequently, CCL is currently running a series of workshops for staff from Network Rail and a TOC - South West Trains – which address this issue,” he explained. “The workshops’ aims are not just to bring cross-cultural understanding and co-operation between the staff of the two organisations but also, thereby, to improve customer care, customer service and especially, CIDD.” CCL has a proven track record in helping TOCs to improve the quality of their customer service, as measured by Passenger Focus, an independent public body set up by the Government to protect the interests of Britain's rail passengers. Every six months Passenger Focus carries out a National Passenger Survey (NPS), which looks at levels of customer satisfaction with the UK’s railways. Working particularly with South West Trains and Heathrow Express (HEx), CCL has helped to increase customer satisfaction levels – including helping HEx in 2007 to achieve the highest recorded level of customer satisfaction (96 per cent) ever recorded by the NPS. Latest figures for FGW ...... End
Press Release - Feb 2009 Customer Consulting stresses help for redundancy survivors In the current economic climate, almost every industry seems to be contemplating or making redundancies but those people remaining after these job cuts are just as important as those who leave. Ignore that at your peril is the advice of the specialist customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL). CCL’s Managing Director, Simon Rustom, commented: “Redundancies are very much in the news. Employers in all sectors of the economy are thinking about whether or not they need to make them and, if so, how to make them with the minimum cost and disruption to their operations. “While plenty of advice is being directed towards making redundancies or being declared redundant, the people who continue to work for the organisation and deal with its customers are arguably more important – at least to their employers,” he added. Paul Seymour, as Associate Consultant with CCL, explained: “The people who stay will continue to deal with customers – and so their employers need to ensure that these workers provide a high quality service. Yet these people will be going through the same bereavement-like emotions as their less fortunate colleagues. “If you’re going to keep up their morale and motivate them, you must recognise this and give them attention,” he said. “Despite all the things you say, they will still feel they are next – so you must give them regular reassurance that they are safe.” When voluntary redundancy is offered, it is the best people in the organisation who have the confidence to move on and so they tend to leave first, Seymour observed. He added: “So it is always important to have a rigid selection process that assesses the key skills that are needed going forward; rate everyone against this matrix; be open about the process, and don’t be tempted to compromise the process just to achieve the numbers.” In Seymour’s view, you can minimise the risk of de-motivating staff if you avoid announcing redundancies on a Friday, since it’s difficult to support staff – both those being made redundant and those who are not – over a weekend. “Moreover,” added Seymour, “Don’t get a junior member of staff to deliver the news: it must come from a senior executive who is visible throughout the process.” When it comes to controlling the ‘organisational grapevine’, Seymour advocates an ‘ABC’ approach in that you should:
Furthermore, he recommends creating a project team with representation from across all the organisation’s functions. This team will co-ordinate the whole procedure, determining the way in which the news is given to the workforce; by whom; where and when, and the support structures for those who are leaving and for those who will be remaining. “Make sure there’s plenty of support available after the ‘big day’ as well,” said Seymour. “And expect productivity to drop – and account for it.” CCL’s Simon Rustom added: “As change management specialists, CCL has a great deal of experience and expertise to offer its clients – across a wide range of industries - who are about to make redundancies and who want to emerge as a stronger, more productive organisation with more highly motivated and engaged employees. “The key message is that, to achieve the best overall results from organisational change such as a redundancy programme, employers should look for specialist advice and guidance.” End
Press Release - January 2009 Customer Consulting expands to meet growing demand While some firms are finding that the current economic downturn is adversely affecting their activity, the specialist customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL) is seeing demand grow for its brand of practical business advice. As a result, CCL has appointed two people to key positions within the company:
“CCL has an excellent track record in producing sustainable business results for its clients – it’s that dedication and willingness to go that bit further by the consulting teams that our customers seem to value, this creates great confidence when talking to the marketplace.” said Ralph. Jopling worked for CCL for some five or six years before joining Catalyst IT Partners as Managing Director. He then worked with the business consultancy, Budd, but has returned to CCL because he ‘likes CCL’s approach’. Robertson was similarly attracted to CCL’s down-to-earth strategy of creating business results for its clients through a customer-focused approach. After leaving KPMG, Robertson joined Scottish Equitable, looking after front and back office operations, making significant improvements to the customer experience through speeding up and improving the quality of processes. Simon Rustom, CCL’s Managing Director, commented: “The current economic downturn has brought an increase in demand for CCL’s advice. Organisations seem to be turning for advice to companies - such as ours – which has the ability to get results.” CCL’s operating ethos is based on helping its clients adopt a balanced approach between people, process and technology. Rustom explained: “We work at Board level, taking a customer-focused approach to growing our clients’ business by developing strategy and increasing operational effectiveness, through the managers and staff, which results in reduced failure demand and cost; increasing service levels and customer retention, thereby creating improved customer satisfaction and more sales.” End
Press Release - January 2009Customer Consulting helps clients bring calls back from India – and save moneyA large financial services organisation is looking to save some £3m in the first year, thanks to advice from the specialist customer and change management company Customer Consulting Ltd (CCL). That advice would move the ‘front office’ aspect of its customer contact centre back to the UK from its base in India. CCL’s Managing Director, Simon Rustom, explained: “Our research shows that the cost of running a full end-to-end customer contact centre in India – including both the ‘back office’ administration and ‘front office’ voice elements of telephone calls, emails and faxes to customers and potential customers – is some £18m a year. “On the other hand, the cost of bringing back the ‘voice’ (front office) element of the operation to the UK, leaving the administration in India, is some £21m. However, according to our research, this results in increased customer satisfaction and higher levels of customer retention. “Indeed, our research reveals that the cost of customers lost through using India-based contact centres is some £12m a year,” he stated. Consequently, CCL recommended to it’s financial services client that the administration (back office) stayed in India but the voice element was brought back to the UK. This is because – in terms of customers retained and increased customer satisfaction – the move would more than pay for itself in just one year, and then continue to be highly profitable in subsequent years. Rustom added: “We’ve found that these figures generally hold true, in proportionate terms, for any overseas contact centres – although India houses some 80 per cent of UK-related off-shore contact centres.” CCL has found that this principle is true not just for financial services but for organisations in other sectors, such as logistics/transport and health. Currently, companies have financial problems and, because there seem to be potential cost savings to be made from moving customer contact centre operations abroad, these companies could be tempted to do this. However, Rustom pointed out, CCL’s research show that this can be a false economy. “There has been a big debate for some years over whether overseas contact centres are worthwhile. Only now are the figures emerging,” he said. “Principally, there are problems with operators’ accents, cultural understanding and, in the logistics/transport sector, the ‘mispronunciation’ of place names.” According to Rustom, companies are now bringing the ‘voice’ aspect of their contact centres back to the UK – or thinking twice about sending them abroad in the first place. Part of CCL’s specialism is helping to design contact centres – by moving contact centres to India in the first place, organisations have lost skilled and knowledgeable staff who knew about designing and developing customer contact centres. Subsequently, strategic and operational management knowledge and skills have been lost in these companies and it is this knowledge and those skills that CCL is being increasingly called upon to supply. “We know of contact centres in India where three teams are contracted. One team is over-utilised and many calls are lost, or dropped while the other two teams are under-utilised. Contractually they are not able to move people from the under-utilised teams to the over-utilised team – thus not improving the efficiency of the operation and increasing costs to the UK-based client. “The client just pays more and still has two teams under-utilised,” he said. “At least, if you bring this aspect of the operation back to the UK, you stand a better chance of managing it efficiently and effectively – which, in our clients’ cases, is what seems to be happening,” Rustom concluded. End
April 2008 BUPA
April 2008 First Great Western
April 2008 Visa Europe
Nov 2007 CCL highly commended in National Business Awards
Sept 2007 The CCL BIG Conversation
June 2007 GNER National Express The CCL BIG Conversation
July 2006 After 7 years of excellent service it is finally time for Tony
Morley to retire. Tony who will be 69 this year and is still life
and soul of any party (and a favourite with the girls) is finally
going to step back and ‘spend more time with his family’.
Those of you who know Tony will know that he has kept the company
safe and has always added value to our team, the associate consultants
and our clients; our sincerest thanks and good wishes go with him.
Customer Consulting Ltd have
been working with South West Trains on improving Customer Information,
particularly in times of disruption. The work they have carried
out resulted in a 7% rise from 29% - 36% in the last scores - and
in the latest scores this has risen by a further 10% to 46%.
6 June 2006 CCL are providing an opportunity for delegates
at the Customer Management 2006 Information Exchange to meet and
talk with their senior consultants about key issues that are affecting
CCL specialise in Customer Management Strategy and
Implementation, Contact Centre strategy, Contact
Centre Performance Improvement and Change Management. Visit our link at CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT 2006 Our Directors look forward
to seeing you on the day ASK FOR
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