Phil Pettifer
It's not surprising that a social housing group should invest in a cutting edge contact centre to enhance customer services and drive cost efficiencies. But how does senior management assess risks and quantify benefits and savings in doing so?
Walsall Housing Group (whg) has taken part in a ground-breaking joint study programme assessing these complex issues. Conducted by Forrester Research and commissioned by Siemens Enterprise Communications, the research aims to understand the benefits of a move to a single 30 seat customer contact centre, based on a new communications and telephony infrastructure. This new platform has replaced the existing mix of voice networks across our operation.
The whg is a not-for-profit provider of social housing accommodation in the West Midlands. The Tenant Services Authority has already encouraged providers to improve customer service for tenants and customers. To help address this need while driving down costs, we implemented Siemens OpenScape Voice and Contact Center, an integrated communications platform which is able to handle all telephone, email and SMS contacts.
The study looked at the system pilot, main installation programme and then looking forward over the next five years, took account of our migration to the new system and colleague familiarisation.
Researchers investigated how a centralised communications infrastructure replacing existing local office-based networks could contribute to improved customer services and streamline operations. Three main categories were identified: better service, return on investment and colleague productivity improvement.
For customers, key service improvements were identified:
• 90% first time call resolution, (far above existing levels)
• customer requests automatically logged and accessible by any colleague, increasing responsiveness
• number recognition enables whg staff to instantly access tenant details
additional contact centre colleagues brought into the telephony platform 'virtually ' either from home or another location
• contact centre team leaders can monitor what's effective and allocate more operators to a service area if there are increased tenant calls
From whg's point of view, there is increased colleague productivity. The study indicates that after five years' operation, the new platform will ultimately avert 68,400 follow up calls by colleagues and thereby save a total of 3,420 contact centre colleague hours every year. As a consequence, resources freed up by this consolidation can be redeployed in other frontline areas of the business.
Senior management naturally need hard and fast figures to quantify the investments. The study has outlined some significant projected five-year savings, including £161,000 saved on transferring colleague phone numbers between offices; £200,000 cut back over five years on maintenance of the three legacy telephony systems; and £133,000 saved on system administration and £73,000 on third party IT services support respectively.
The overall result is an estimated two year programme payback on our investment and a five year 121% return on investment (ROI) for the integrated communications platform.
The study has clearly quantified the benefits from shifting to a single Internet protocol based communications platform. Our single contact centre will ensure enhanced responsiveness to customer calls, greater operational efficiency and reduced need for colleagues to follow up calls. It will also eliminate third party infrastructure maintenance charges and cut administration costs.
It's a heartening thought that as social housing customers and providers alike have been hit so hard by the downturn, Forrester's findings confirm that a third sector organisation can make the business case for a breakthrough customer service investment. Our group can not only point to customer service uplift but also to hard ROI figures and system-based efficiencies in the future.
Phil Pettifer is head of Information Services, whg
