Whilst society as a whole has shown care for those at risk or need, illustrated by the large number of people signing up for voluntary work and the weekly ‘clap for carers’, has the business community done the same? Will companies who have given customer service priority to the elderly, vulnerable and essential workers continue after the crisis has passed and at what cost? Have lessons been learned already and will these provisions be written into future crisis management and business planning?

In this article, I offer my thoughts on the subject of Corporate Social Responsibility in times of crisis – highlighting both the opportunities and pitfalls organisations could face in the future.

Will opportunity and reputational pressure drive change?

There is a considerable opportunity for brands who recognise this pandemic as an opening to improve how they deal with the most deserving groups of customers. This includes not only the vulnerable and elderly, but the essential workers and front line carers who are trying to cope with limited time,  heightened stress levels and the need to fulfil their roles.

Building effective ways to prioritise these customers and deliver a great experience, under pressure, will ultimately result in more effective businesses in the long term, not just when the chips are down.

On the other side of this argument, brands who do not perform their duties and illustrate a level of corporate social responsibility may suffer irreparable damage to their brand reputation. Virgin Group, Wetherspoons and Sports Direct, for example, will need to work hard to overcome the damage caused by the well-publicised and unpopular decisions made early on in the lockdown period.

Lesson learned from the pandemic

The massive change in the demand for customer service support, during this period, has put many organisations under extraordinary strain in unexpected areas. Some contact centres have witnessed unprecedented volumes at precisely the same time they have been forced to implement mass moves from office to homeworking. Call queues have been longer, with customers sometimes waiting hours and the prioritisation of customers becoming a real challenge.

Some major brands have made great strides. The largest supermarkets have been given access to the Government’s list of 1.5 million vulnerable people to help them prioritise deliveries to those most in need. This initiative has only been allowed by measures in the Data Protection Act, which enable public authorities to share relevant information to provide essential services. Coupled with their own data, this has enabled them to deliver priority services to those who need them most. However, the data is sensitive and the Information Commissioner has instructed supermarkets to delete it when this crisis is over.

Some brands already have a great reputation for the way they deal with elderly and vulnerable employees. B&Q is a good example of this. Do they have the ideal opportunity to build that reputation with vulnerable customers too? How do organisations engage and prepare now for future crises, how will they grasp that opportunity now, whilst still a hot topic and then critically maintain that commitment until the next crisis?

Improving customer care for the elderly, vulnerable and essential workers

The companies that deal successfully with all their customers will do so by overcoming significant challenges. This includes how the most deserving groups are looked after. There will be a time when we reflect on how businesses dealt with Coronavirus, which will include their treatment of specific customer sets.

Now is the perfect time to plan, develop and build new systems and processes for the future. The huge changes which have been and still are necessary to simply stay in business, during this extraordinary time, maybe the basis for improved business practice as the crisis abates. Incorporating additional care for the most vulnerable customers now should, in theory, set brands up to deliver excellent service to those people when the pandemic is over.

This is the perfect opportunity for businesses to identify, if unaware, customers who are vulnerable or classed as essential workers and develop the most effective ways to service those groups. It is important to build trust so data collection must be seen to be done for the benefit of the consumer and rather than to exploit their position.

Increasing loyalty through problem-solving

Many larger brands already have sophisticated loyalty schemes, used to reward customers and to gather data on buying habits. Why not extend these schemes to vulnerable members of registered customers’ families? This is an ideal opportunity to broaden the reach of your brand and to give a positive experience to your loyalty scheme members and their extended families. Enhanced loyalty schemes for families of the elderly and vulnerable, or key workers, could undoubtedly deliver enormous long term benefits for customers and of course for the brands who do it right.

At the contact centre, simple Business Continuity processes could reap immediate rewards, for example the creation of a special number only for vulnerable and elderly customers to call and who are then routed to a team trained to deal empathetically with their demographic. FAQs can be built up quickly in times of crisis, improving the results of calls in the minimum time by concentrating the effort in a focused team. It may be possible to offer customers an ‘honesty button’, allowing them to press a phone option to be put straight through to the team dealing with vulnerable customers. Agents could qualify by asking for the government-issued reference number, then CLI can be used to route future calls from the same number for optimal results. In this way, a brand can build up their understanding of this important customer group, in the minimum time, whilst delivering a trustworthy service and great experience, tailored to their most at-risk customers.

Make the vulnerable part of your business planning

It is not just good Corporate Social Responsibility to look after the elderly, vulnerable and essential workers. Brands who take the chance now to build systems, which help those in need at times of crisis, will emerge with improved loyalty and insight from these customers and a higher brand perception from the wider populous.

In a previous article we published in September 2018, we pointed out, using DMA statistics, that only 4% of agents felt they knew when they were speaking with a vulnerable customer. Now is the chance for businesses to make big improvements on that disappointing statistic and to enhance the customer experience of those groups receive. A group that will become increasingly important, from a financial perspective, as the average age of the population increases.

What happens next?

Once this difficult time subsides, most businesses will need to look into cost-cutting measures to survive. However, good customer service must be maintained or customers will be lost. Organisations who are able to deliver prioritised services to their elderly, vulnerable and essential worker customers, without overtly affecting their overall service delivery, should reap the rewards of increased loyalty, brand reputation and better customer handling processes and customer insight.

The pandemic offers a wonderful opportunity for businesses to shine, embracing their Corporate Social Responsibility and delivering the highest levels of customer experience to those who need it most. The cost of a damaged brand, including the impact on sales, employees and customer retention, will more than outweigh any increases to the cost of service delivery.

Interview with John Greenwood, Head of Technology & PCI Compliance.

As many businesses are forced into homeworking, the need for remote access to internal systems to enable home-based agents to provide a full service has never been higher.Companies who can adapt quickly will improve their chances of long-term survival, emerging from this crisis with higher customer satisfaction and lower attrition rates.

We spoke to our very own John Greenwood, lead contributor to the PCI SSC Information Supplement (Protecting telephone-based payment card data) and authority on payments compliance in the contact centre and BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) sector. We asked John what advice he would give to organisations with customer service teams on coping with these pressures and his tips on how to rapidly build an improved operation for the future.

What new challenges are businesses facing?

John explained some of the major factors affecting business decisions in the sector today, “Quick alterations in the way customer service departments and contact centres work are placing new challenges in front of organisations. To maintain business as usual, major changes are having to be made to how people work. Amongst the issues that need to be dealt with are:

• Stable and secure connectivity to multi-channel communications – including voice, webchat, plus social communications like WhatsApp, Twitter and Facebook Messenger.
• Secure and reliable connections to business applications – systems normally accessed within the office need to be reliably used from many remote homeworker locations.
• Processing orders in line with regulations and contractual requirements – the need to collect customer data and take payments in line with DPA 2018 / GDPR and PCI DSS, protecting customers and the business alike.

These operational challenges are daunting enough, but now there is a requirement for rapid deployment of home working solutions, which many existing technological solutions struggle to cope with.”

What are the biggest risks of a rapid move to homeworking?

John stated that, “Moving system access and agents away from a central site carries some significant risks. The introduction of chip & PIN payment technology moved payment fraud away from face-to-face and towards the ecommerce payments acceptance channel. As the minimum international data security standard for taking card payments (PCI DSS) has evolved to reduce ecomm’ fraud, so crime groups are adapting and the payment card industry is playing a continual game of catch up. Payment card details are valuable and easily monetised to fund organised crime, criminals are increasingly targeting businesses who use the MOTO (Mail Order, Telephone Order) payment acceptance channels. Contact centres have been an obvious target and now mass homeworking offers the unscrupulous a new opportunity.”

He continues, “It is not easy for organisations to fully replicate all the people, process and technology security measures that are in place in their contact centres, particularly as the transition to homeworking is happening so quickly. Many organisations have simply not had time to run a full risk assessment or discuss their significant changes in risk profile with their acquiring banks. Whatever your circumstances, working from home and handling payment card data puts your homeworkers at risk of being approached by organised crime.”

John added, “Data breaches and compromises of personal data can be hugely damaging both financially and reputationally, with prosecutions making headline news. A breach of the Data Protection Act will also attract action from the acquiring bank on behalf of the payment brands (Visa, Mastercard etc). This means ‘penalties’ of up to €18 per card exposed and potential notice to withdraw payment facilities until evidence is provided that minimum data security standards were being met, which means PCI DSS compliance being certified. If a breach is found, it is likely that your operation will be suspended, at least temporarily but potentially permanently. This will have obvious effects on the business and your teams. The reputational consequences on top of the obvious financial implications could seriously damage your organisation in the long term. Put simply, you may lose the ability to take money through your agents in the short term, risk reputational damage and risk an ICO fine. Then there would be the added costs of forensic investigation, increased transaction charges and for either achieving or maintaining PCI compliance.”

He continues, “From a liability point of view, your customers are protected. The financial burden is on the merchant. Certainly, from a data protection standpoint if the merchant had failed to create a defendable position, by documenting a risk assessment to support the security of personal data in the home working environment.”

What does your business need to do to safely move into the ‘new world’ of homeworking?

Enabling homeworking on a large scale is an opportunity for brands to improve operations, manage costs and increase flexibility in the workforce. It’s vital that your business approaches this opportunity in the right way.

John says “Take the chance to reduce and remove risks from your operations. You can do this by carefully choosing your technological and communications platforms, finding solutions which are easy to implement and enable compliance with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards). There are compliant and rapidly-deployable options available including Ciptex RACE, built on the Twilio platform – which it shares with some of the world’s most successful, reliable and secure apps including WhatsApp, Airbnb, and Uber.”

By implementing effective systems rapidly, you can protect not only customers, but your homeworkers and ultimately the business. The rethink, which has been forced upon us all by a global pandemic, might be responsible for organisational improvements and increased protection.

Do you need to safeguard your remote payments?

If you’d like to talk about a technology independent way to quickly implement safe payment processing for your business, the team at Contact Centre Panel can help. We’ve built a technology network by helping contact centres to safely and securely meet business and customer needs.

What about your workforce?

What will your organisation do?

What can you do now to minimise disruption at work?

Do you need to evaluate your options?

For official advice on Coronavirus

The impact of not getting important information through to your customers?

Just imagine that a problem is found with one of your most popular products or services, meaning you have to contact all your customers to offer a solution or replacement. How would your service team, or your outsource customer service partner, cope?

Now, stop imagining and start planning. The last 12 months has seen some major brands fall foul of poorly handled product recalls or poorly communicated service failures. Nat West’s Black Friday experience was a prime example, where a lack of regular updates about the bank’s online banking failure, on the busiest online shopping day of the year, created further frustration for thousands of customers, who shared their discontent across social media. By not updating customers, the bank gave the impression they didn’t care, while no doubt they were working very hard to resolve the problem. Worse still, there was no apology once the issue was resolved leaving many customers feeling let down.

Product recalls, if not handled well, can have a very detrimental effect on a brand. Recalls are relatively common in sectors such as automotive, electrical appliances and pharmaceuticals. They must be handled well as the corporate consequences of failure can be serious. The reputational damage can be difficult to recover from, but more importantly, in some cases, there can be a genuine threat to personal safety.

How would you get critical messaging to all your customers?

If you had to get essential information to every single customer, how would you do it? If your customer service planning doesn’t include this as a possibility, there’s a risk that a product problem will result in a huge influx of inbound enquiries, flooding your team and leaving many customers unhappy with your performance. By getting ahead of the problem and proactively communicating with your customers, dissatisfaction can be minimised. A well-handled problem can result in genuine brand advocates, but a badly handled one can irreparably damage your brand reputation.
Critical messaging solutions can vary – using different channels according to the needs of the clients. However, they tend to be built on an initial SMS (text message) transmission. SMS messages, on average, achieve delivery and open rates of well over 90%, so with a suitably clear message, a huge number of customers can be reached and engaged extremely quickly and inexpensively.

The initial SMS will usually contain a call to action, a link, or rich media for an app like experience, that enables customers to self-serve and take control of their own problem resolution. This could be to make an engineer appointment or to arrange collection of a defective product. This is much more resource efficient than waiting for inbound enquiries following a news story or even a proactive email campaign.

Customers are also given the option to engage via SMS or social media to ask questions: this is also far more cost-effective than prompting calls, as agents can typically handle four text conversations at one time, and customers are more accepting of slower response rates via SMS or social chat (via your brand’s Facebook page, for example) than on the phone.

When you compare the self-serve option to staffing up your customer service department, or securing outsourced seats to handle a massive spike in demand, it is both cheaper and quicker, reaching customers more effectively and delivering the required results with minimum human involvement. This is more likely to result in more satisfied customers, despite the obvious initial bad news about their purchase.

How do you turn a negative situation to your advantage?

So, by adopting a proactive, planned approach to dealing with critical messaging, your brand can:
• Reach your customers quickly
• Get resolutions acted on efficiently
• Allow your customer service team to focus on just the complex cases
• Maximise cost-effectiveness
• Convert potential brand damage into happy customers

At CCP we work with specialist partners who are able to deliver the latest crisis management and critical messaging solutions, so if you have any customer service issues, or are concerned that your business is not setup to handle a crisis, get in touch. We’d love to help.

In recent weeks, the UK has been impacted once again by floods. For the hundreds of people in South Yorkshire and the East Midlands who’ve been forced to leave their homes or businesses premises, this disaster has been costly both emotionally and financially.
On a practical level this has meant that the government has had to deploy hundreds of extra staff to flood-hit areas, reducing the resources available for other initiatives. With water tables still very high and flood warnings by the Environment Agency still in place, the risk of further damage has not yet abated.

According to this well-researched Guardian article, a combination of climate change and manmade modifications to the landscape mean that floods are increasingly likely to affect the UK in the future. As employers and employees, we therefore need to consider how our businesses will react to both ‘natural’ and ‘human driven’ disasters when they occur.

Is your business ready for a disaster?

If you haven’t done so already, there are ways to prepare your organisation to the potential challenges to business continuity including extreme weather, cyber-attacks and sudden loss of access to your premises due to unrest or crime.

• The Business Emergency Resilience Group (BERG) has a ‘Readiness Test’ online and a Resilience Starter Kit, so this is a great place to start if you haven’t seriously considered your options yet.
• Produce a business continuity plan – mapping out your key business processes and systems and the measures required to ensure, if disaster strikes, the least amount of disruption to your business.
• Prepare a ‘Battle Box’ of key business documents including insurance details, which can be quickly relocated in an emergency to wherever you will temporarily run your business from.
• Partner with a trusted business continuity provider to reduce risk of operational downtown.

Are you helping people with their emergencies?

Many businesses, especially in the insurance, IT and finance sectors are faced with an increase in demand when extreme weather events affect the UK. The recent flooding, harsh winter events like ‘The Beast from the East’ and moorland fires can all result in an influx of enquiries and pleas for help.

In such cases, it’s vital to ensure that your teams and systems can cope with the additional demand and that you have contingency plans in place should the workload exceed your capabilities, whether that’s in-house or by working alongside an outsourced specialist who can represent your business competently and professionally.

So, will you be ready if your business is impacted?

If you believe your business isn’t prepared for all eventualities and is exposed to unnecessary operational risk, then it’s important you act quickly. The ‘it’ll never happen to us’ mantra can be very costly, both financially and reputationally. Downtime impacts service delivery, which reflects negatively on your business and brand.

If you need help preparing some business continuity in your operations or contact centres, get in touch with CCP today.

Most commonly, people associate Contact Centres with the long-established, bums-on-seats “cost plus” model, where clients are charged based on the cost of agents plus overheads and a margin, for an agreed contract or campaign period.

However, our industry is changing. You only have to read some of the articles on CCP’s News pages to understand that the dynamics around the introduction of automation technologies, the need to add value and planning for the future mean that traditional commercial models have to be challenged by Contact Centres and clients alike, to achieve the best results going forwards. If clients and are going to keep customers happy and Contact Centres are going to remain profitable, the charging regimes need to reflect the clients’ desired results much more closely.

To get a perspective from within the industry, we looked back at some research from within the sector and spoke to David Gauntlett, Managing Director of The Prospect Factory.

The Prospect Factory is a business built on outbound calls aimed at generating leads for business-to-business (B2B) clients. David set up the business in 2008 following a number of years in the Contact Centre industry, where he’d worked to generate sales leads for some of the biggest brands. Initially, on the client side for large automotive brands, David employed telemarketing agencies using a traditional retainer model and became frustrated that the charging models didn’t always reflect performance. As a result, he chose to set up The Prospect Factory to focus on results-oriented lead generation for clients who preferred to pay for qualified prospects.

David’s perspective should give some food for thought if you’re thinking of moving towards a payment-by-results model… although it’s important to remember that not all campaigns are outbound lead generation, so there are clearly environments where other commercial models will work best.

What makes a pay-per-prospect model different?

David explains: “We use a pay-per-appointment low risk telemarketing model to get appointments for our clients’ sales teams. This contrasts with the fixed price per day or hour that most Contact Centres charge, regardless of success.

“We agree in advance what a good prospect appointment looks like and we audit against those criteria, so we only send results to the client if they meet those criteria. Then our clients are billed per appointment each month. Any appointments that get cancelled are rebooked, ideally, or credited if we can’t reschedule them.”

As you’d expect, every appointment-generation job has a different level of complexity and difficulty, so the commercial model has to be adapted to reflect the client’s needs and the characteristics of the prospect audience. David gave us some examples, but it’s vital to use experience and industry knowledge to set pricing and expectations, which is where an in-depth knowledge of the client’s sector can be very handy:

“The price depends on the difficulty of the task. In the automotive industry, for example, there is a wide range of prices per appointment, averaging less than £300 but ranging as high as £700 for the most complex (but most rewarding) appointments.

“It’s also possible to have a tiered approach, where a lower price is charged, for example, for a webinar or conference call for a smaller opportunity or more exploratory sales conversation. This reflects the size of the opportunity or the stage in the sales funnel.”

What types of client do cost-per-result models suit best?

“Any business with a tangible product offering which salespeople need to be outselling can benefit from a cost-per-appointment arrangement. The salaries earned by salespeople in high value markets mean that their time is not well used prospecting – they can add value much more effectively when they’re in front of their targets having sales conversations built on high quality, qualified appointments.

“There are many sectors that don’t suit the model though. These include the Telecoms, IT and Software, Management Consultancy and other sectors. Also, it’s virtually impossible to apply a cost-per-appointment model to any sector that isn’t B2B as there simply isn’t the value per sale to justify it.”

Considering newer commercial models

David’s opinions about the future are worth noting: “The Contact Centre and Outsourcing sector is fairly settled, with most large operators continuing to price on an hourly retainer basis. It’s not very easy to find a great Contact Centre that’s happy to charge on a per-success basis. I don’t envisage much change in the short term, because the traditional retainer model is what most Contact Centres have built their business around. It’s what they do and it’s what they’re going to prefer to carry on doing.

“That’s what makes businesses like the Prospect Factory different. We’ve built our business on a cost-per-result basis and whilst that makes us careful about who we work with, it’s what makes us different and the right match for our clients.

“There are some very useful extensions to the cost-per-success commercial model though. Contact Centres like ours are also able to offer complementary services such as mid-life customer retention calls, renewal solutions for clients with near-expiry customer contracts, and customer satisfaction calls. These all build on the positive strengths of our pre-sales appointment-setting work and add value for clients who are looking to maximise returns from their outbound Contact Centre work.”

As well as the value-adding outbound services mentioned by David, there are a number of other commercial charging models that can be applied to Contact Centre and Outsourcing work. The right model to choose depends on factors such as what a good result looks like, agent availability, industry served and the length of the campaign/relationship, but typical examples include:

• Cost plus – The more traditional approach, agent costs plus overheads plus margin, based on volume forecasts and agreed in advance;
• Unit pricing – Per call/second/minute/incident – or per appointment/sale. This model can also be adapted by volume steps or complexity levels e.g. Lower cost per sales call than for a full meeting
• Fixed price – Typically per agent hour, especially useful for inbound work
• Incentive based – Per sale/appointment, but also rewards for other metrics such as First Call Resolution, Time per call etc. Payment for results, not for time
• Gain sharing – The client and outsourcer share a proportion of the results or cost savings, often beyond a minimum threshold
• Managed service – A fully customised payment regime based on client/outsourcer partnership agreement

How can Contact Centre Panel help?

At the Contact Centre Panel, it’s our role to find the perfect match between a client’s needs and a Contact Centre’s strengths. Ultimately all negotiations about commercial agreements are between the client and the outsourcer, but we are able to help in a number of ways.

At the outset of working with any client, CCP holds a consultative discussion around the pro’s and cons of various commercial models which might be able to meet the client’s needs. The general commercial terms of engagement are then set out and reflected in the brief we send to appropriate members of our Network of over 80 Contact Centres and Outsourcers. We’ll only approach businesses that can meet the needs of the brief, including the commercial model/s chosen.

We’re profiling all of our Network Members to establish which of our 80+ partners can satisfy a wide-ranging series of client requirements, from commercial models to compliance, from lead generation to excellent customer service.

It is important to us that our clients are able to compare potential partners fairly. We carefully prepare our briefs to ensure that apples are compared to apples, that fair comparators are included in our brief so that results are expressed properly.

Following receipt of responses to the brief, CCP collates all commercial solutions in a comparative matrix, allowing the client to compare like for like. Within this stage of the process, CCP will point out any obvious anomalies. This gives our clients the best possible information to choose their preferred Contact Centre partner, to meet their own specific needs. One size does not fit all!

If you’re not sure whether your Contact Centre is meeting your needs, talk to us here at The Contact Centre Panel for an unbiased review of your current status – just contact us by email or call 0114 209 6120 to talk about your needs. We won’t push: we will only help if you need it.

Keep in touch

Follow CCP on LinkedIn for regular industry news and updates. It’s not all about us! Just look at our website’s News & Publications page for many more helpful articles.

To find out more about working with the perfect partner for your business, give us a call on 0114 209 6120 or contact us using the form on our website.